Holidays are coming, holidays are coming.
Not content with forcing us to take a holiday soon when the whole country will grind to a halt, we then have to face a barrage of commercials promoting the benefits of toasting our beefy behinds on distant Spanish shores.
Yet we have wonderful beaches here. Luskentyre, Seilebost, Hushinish and Scarista on Harris, Berneray on North Uist and Tangasdale on Barra. There are many others.
Even here on Lewis, great stretches of golden shell sand, such as Bosta on Great Bernera, are sheltered and almost tropical in fine weather. OK, tropical may be taking it too far but that’s how it seemed to us growing up there.
Uig is the ultimate body-bronzing location, however, with beaches like Ardroil and Reef. With a hot sun up above, Reef is my absolute favourite and compares with some of the best around the world. Come and see Reef beach for yourselves next summer.
Some doddery old boffin with a claim of accurate weather forecasting said on the radio recently it’s going to be great next summer – so it must be true. Book now to avoid the rush.
Knowing you probably prefer a holiday with some sun, why not take a chance on a staycation? Brexit and all that has not helped with choosing European destinations.
We are a divided country. The actual outcome of the election will be that 100% of Britons will think 50% of Britons have lost their marbles for voting the way they did. And they probably have.
Which reminds me – will someone please tell me how to vote tomorrow? When I heard Boris Johnson promise he was going to build 40 new hospitals, hire 50,000 nurses and put 20,000 new cops on the beat, I obviously thought his party was the one to vote for. There was no alternative.
Then I look at what the other parties are saying. Jeremy Corbyn is promising 20,000 new teachers. Nicola Sturgeon says they’ll block NHS privatisation. I love all that.
The SNP also promise to fix Scottish trains. Why? They go, don’t they? We don’t much care about trains up here. Not because we have none but because there was no mention in any manifesto about fixing CalMac’s fleet of past-their-best boats.
Does no one in the central belt care about island ferry links? That’s why we don’t care about your high-speed choo-choos and your electric trams.
The north of Scotland is way down in all parties’ priorities. There are two Scotlands. North of Perth should be important, attracting visitors from around the globe, so you would think all political parties would be vying to take the credit for making it better.
Never complain the UK is divided again. It’s us. There seems to be an enduring Scottish Government regional economic strategy that can be summed up in this adapted bit from The Corries’ famous song:
We faught at land, we faught at sea,
At hame we faught my auntie, O;
We’ll get nothing fae Scotland’s big bankie
Cos we’re north o’ the Braes o’ Killiecrankie,
O.
Enough. I must stop being so negative about these confounded politicians. We should be upbeat that we even have a chance to vote.
So we should make it a celebration about voting for the whole family and get younger ones looking forward to the day when they can cast theirs for the first time.
We should make it part of growing up and make it fun. Hey, wee Calum, eat your sprouts or you will never grow up to Votey MacVoteface.
Voting is important. We already vote on many things – without realising we do that because we do it on a device. This week I have already voted to give 10 stars in an online review for the supplier of that ointment that gave me great relief. So I’m not walking funny any more. And I don’t think I’ll be voting in the new X Factor series about bands that began this week.
I might watch it so I can be as smug as I was last week when Megan McKenna won the celebs’ version of that show.
From the off, I had been touched by that magical, crystal-clear voice and, on Megan’s very first audition, I said to Mrs X that the winner was right there.
She’s not happy with my smugness and she’s not happy about my choice of our next holiday destination. I told her I was taking her somewhere nice where she could lollop about on a beach without a care in the world.
Of course, she asked how much that would cost and where? So I told her and she was ecstatic.
She immediately phoned up her pal to say: “I don’t believe it. The tight-fisted old git is splashing out. I don’t know where he got the cash but he’s taking me to Tenerife.”
Er, not quite what I said. How do I tell her? She asked me how much it was going to cost us and where we were going? So I just said: “Tenner. Reef.”
