Reflections - An interview with SPVR

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Mapping the World, or Maybe Just Rural Banffshire

Yesterday I set a new record for myself. I walked 7.17 miles. A new route which involved a walk of 110 minutes was the major contributor. And I did not stop once, not to look at the view, to take a photo, or to talk to a neighbour. And the sun was out. As with all my first time walking along roads I had previously only driven, I saw things I had never noticed. Because one of the benefits of travelling by foot is the greater connection with one's surroundings. One of our neighbours has turkeys. The distinctive "gobble, gobble" alerted me even though they were a couple of hundred metres from the road. I saw a small gravel pit just behind trees at the edge of the road that I had never known was there. And most important, I saw a sign saying "Footpath". Now that matters because although my new route was good exercise, it was comparatively boring visually. It has a long straight bit of road that seemed to take forever to get to the end of. About 22 minutes wa...

Life Behind the Gate

For the first time in many years, the gate into our house is shut. Not to keep us in but to keep others out. I will shortly be going out to put a table in place for delivery drivers to leave parcels. And attaching a few helpful instructions on the other side of the gate. Last night's statement from Nicola and the legislation that is coming shortly from Westminster and Holyrood will create a framework designed to protect us all. Our role as more vulnerable oldsters, whose bodily systems are gently declining as we age, is to protect ourselves from becoming a burden on our health service, our social services. People with serious conditions, whose immune systems are relatively ineffective for whatever reason, sick babies, need to able to get to the front of the queue without people like us who can take action to avoid, or at least postpone catching the bug, getting in the way. Reports coming to me from elsewhere suggest that there is still a minority who may need something a...

Unfinished ...

Yesterday was a hard day wrestling words. Or should that be wrangling? No; definitely wrestling. Because wrangling is defined as "engagement in a long, complicated dispute or argument." And that's scheduled for later today when I start my participation in the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No.2) Bill Stage 2 debates and the 55 amendments we have to dispose of between 0900 and 1400. The wrestling yesterday was trying to force words into a sensible structure for deploying in an argument. It took some time, five online meetings to be precise and a few off-the-field time-outs for tea, coffee and a couple of consultations with a dictionary. There's a rule of thumb about speechifying. Preparation takes ten times as long as delivery. And that's only about constructing the words into the right order for a decent wrangle. For some subjects, the acquisition of the background knowledge to enable you to find the right words is a lifetime's effort. I expect that I shall ...

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