Nowadays I never have a bath. Smelly me.
I meant only when our shower isn’t working. Who has time for wallowing in your own soup when you can jump in a shower and scrub here, there and a bit under there, and off you go?
Although, it can be very relaxing just lying there, doing nothing but contemplating the taps. I can really switch off and make it a proper relaxing break – at least until the water starts to cool. Then I put in more hot water… and relax some more.
Soon I’ll go pink and wrinkly, and then I wrap myself in a warm, fluffy bath towel. Yay.
Which reminds me that when I had a weekend bath as a wee kid, there was nothing I liked better than creating extra bubbles in the tub when I was, er, relaxing. They would suddenly rise from the depths. I called them gloop-gloops. Which is a bit coincidental because, after a weekend searching for Nessie, the cryptozoologists and researchers heard four distinct sounds they called gloops. Too bad they were so excited at the bathtime sounds from the bottom – of Loch Ness, I mean – that they forgot to turn on the sound recorder.
So, I think that is all it was. Nessie was just relaxing in her 27-mile long bath, maybe having a wee norrag and, as we’ve all done, creating extra gloops to baffle the boffins.
I am quite baffled to hear Home Secretary Suella Braverman say that police throughout the UK must investigate even small-scale thefts. Really? So that confirms they haven’t been doing so – until now. We’ve read the reports, particularly outside Scotland.
Braverman also says the police have the resources to do it. If that is the case, why did they refuse to respond to theft reports for the last few years? If they had the resources and cop numbers, what were these English cops actually doing? You can only polish your helmet so much.
And you can only muck about with the UK’s all-singing, all-dancing air traffic control system so much, or it will melt down – as it did on Monday. NATS Holdings (formerly known as National Air Traffic Services), of course, claimed it wasn’t that bad and that traffic flows were merely “restricted”, but you could tell from looking at the online flight trackers that something was amiss. About 1,000 flights were grounded and many, many more were delayed.
I’m told one flight on Monday, from the Central Belt to Stornoway, arrived here more than two hours behind schedule. That wrecks important business appointments and can cause havoc with family arrangements during very difficult times.
Fred Again (again)
Meanwhile, it’s been difficult for our daughter to learn that her adopted city is not first with everything. She was living it up at the Connect music festival in Ingliston at the weekend. A revelation for her was hearing a new dance DJ. She thought he was fantastic and was keen to tell us about her new discovery that is going to transform the world of boom-boom music. She said that he had announced something about the Isle of Harris. Who was she on about?
It was Fred Again, she said breathlessly. We were not impressed. That Fred fellow? Huh, that’s nothing. I told her that if she had been here a few months ago, she would have heard Fred Again at an intimate and unadvertised performance he gave at Talla na Mara, the community venue in south Harris. Somehow his local fans found out about it and it turned into an amazing gig. Not quite sure what older Hearachs thought of it, but it was a success.
She was awestruck to hear Frederick had actually been up in the islands for an intimate wee gig in May this year before making a big appearance in Edinburgh. There she is, mingling down there with the fashionistas and the techie whizz-kids in the capital who think they have discovered the next best thing – only to find Fred Again has already been rocking the Hearachs. I love it. She was utterly shocked.
And a lot of people were shocked that the effects of the air traffic control chaos this week even hit smaller airports which normally are unaffected by city airport meltdowns. A few years ago, a class of primary kids were on a visit to the air traffic control tower here at Stornoway Airport. One wee lad was particularly excited and said he wanted to be a controller one day. He had loads of questions.
He went up to the duty controller and asked: “Please, mister, have you ever had a real emergency here?” The controller pulled off his headset and said: “A real emergency, son? Oh, yes, indeed. There was that one time when we ran out of coffee.”
Iain Maciver is a former broadcaster and news reporter from the Outer Hebrides
