Miss Best Friend is suffering Political Disillusionment. Naturally, being a Labrador, she voted for the Food Party, who ran a most successful campaign under the banner ‘Chicken For Dogs’. Chicken there has been, but as she has gloomily discovered, not enough of it, and accompanied by brown rice. These meals, moreover, are sprinkled with some […]
I was just out in the garden with Miss Kit when a couple of geese landed on the lake. I’ve never seen that before. Geese fly fast and high, talking all the time, so I was surprised, and Miss Kit rather frightened, when a pair of large birds shot over us only about a hundred […]
We’ve been having a proper old three ring circus with Miss Best Friend. She’s got very set in her ways. I can’t remember what started the being sick, but it was probably eating something she shouldn’t. Then we went onto this regime of eight pills a day, each one a battle, in case it was […]
The Professor was in Edinburgh at the weekend, premiering the Ice Opera all over again, which was a somewhat more socially complex affair than doing it in Aberdeen. Having had a taste of the Whig ascendancy on parade in the capital, he then went to Fife where he was talking about a distinguished […]
Miss Best Friend hasn’t been having her best week ever, despite the appearance of Dr Biswell and Mr Wil. There have been what are in labrador circles referred to as Hilarious Vomiting Episodes; not the sort which result from self-catering ( a term of doom in doggy contexts) but clearly, the sort which result from […]
I discovered this morning that the swallows have returned to the North. Sadly, I did so because Miss Kit came in with one. She hadn’t killed it, it was completely stiff. It’s been so cold that the insect population isn’t at all what you’d expect at this time of year, so the poor thing must […]
We have, as Ed Burra once said, been having quayte a social layfe in our fashion (he is also responsible for the phrase ‘apothosis and fish fry’). No sooner had the Japanese manuscripts expert departed, than Dr Biswell and Mr Wil turned up from Manchester for the opera. The Northern Professor wrote the libretto for […]
After the winter we’ve had, I must say that I was absolutely incensed to go into town to pick up a bus this morning and find there was BLOODY SNOW IN THE AIR. It hailed on the poor old bus most of the way to Aberdizzle, and then there was some snow, though thankfully, by […]
We spent a quiet and meritorious Sunday marking undergraduate dissertations, which have settled on the both of us like dandruff. Then we took the dog for a walk. Then there was a cold, harsh wind from the north, and then it rained quite a bit. After which, we put on our brave little soldier faces […]
This has been a crowded week, adorned by the Tropical Godfather, and packed with incident: I had to go to Edinburgh, where I was giving a talk in the National Gallery (this went well), annoyingly, lost most of Thursday to going into Aberdeen to meet an old friend who — it transpired — had been […]
One thing I didn’t blog last week because events sort of rolled over it was a visit to Tynet with an old friend we were entertaining. This is somewhere up the North coast, and is significant because it’s the first Catholic church was built in these islands after the Reformation (the area was, and […]
We have had an unusually cultivated day, in that the French Correspondent came by to talk about the work of a very fine contemporary — if elderly — French poet who we have had the privilege of entertaining. So the Professor and the FC spent the afternoon on the eternally fascinating problems of literary translation […]