Bonnie Scotland

Jimmie McGregor (back) & Robin Hall

I was transported back to my home country the other night. I’d switched to the Scottish news, 90 percent of which was about the weather and just as it was finishing and I’d usually switch back to the London station, a programme was just starting which caught my attention. It was about a Scottish folk singer called Jimmie McGregor.

Now I do try and keep up to date with what’s happening in that frozen northern country. I usually call my brother once a week and get all the gen on the things which don’t make the news or the papers but this programme initially grabbed me as they said they were celebrating the 80^th birthday of McGregor, one half of a very famous folk singing duo – Robin Hall and Jimmie McGregor (R&J for brevity later).

I appreciate that as you get older, older people look younger, but this guy didn’t look any older than 60 so I started watching it and it was like being given an armchair tour of Scotland by an old friend.

In my twenties, I was quite into folk music. Indeed, I was into all sorts of music – Scottish folk, Simon and Garfunkel and Deep Purple (look them up kids) – there was no limit to my musical diversity. I’ve been to concerts for the Carpenters, Cream, The Corries (another Scottish folk group), various operas and even Abba! But it was because R&J were just ending their public performances when I was attending these concerts, that I wanted to learn more about him/them.

What struck me was just how interesting McGregor was when he spoke about even the most mundane of subjects. His use of the spoken language was inspiring (not bad for a Scotsman) and he had an opinion on everything, indeed when he finished his singing career (there was a brief mention of Hall ‘disappearing but the programme didn’t elaborate), he featured in a Scottish TV programme called ‘McGregor’s Gathering’ which is a strange name for a TV show where he basically wandered around Scotland talking to everybody about anything.

The Capercaillie

The scenery was breathtaking. The subjects discussed were astonishingly varied (capercaillies and The West Highland Way – a bird and a walk respectively) and throughout, Jimmie McGregor showed why he’s lasted 60 years in Scottish show business.

Finally, a link to one of Hall and McGregor’s songs – not one of their more sophisticated performances (they did wonderful harmonies) but one which resonates with me because of its association with football. It became their standard.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDRBDX3nt_o

Causing Havoc in Tourrettes

Tan - my neighbour and friend

It was Tan’s birthday lunch in the village on Sunday and a very good time we all had, that was until we tried to leave the car park. In a gesture of amazing generosity, I grabbed Tan’s car park ticket and said I’d pay for it – all of €1.50!

Now I’ve not paid a parking ticket in our village square for a couple of years because I usually travel in on my scooter which I can literally park anywhere and whenever I have been in the car park, it’s been with J and she pays.

So I head up to the Caisse (pay machine) and see another couple heading in the same direction. I don’t want us all to be delayed as this other couple fight about who’s going to pay and then empty the contents of her handbag looking for first the ticket and then the cash to pay, so I quicken my pace and put Tan’s ticket in the slot. The fee, as expected, is €1.50.

I’ve only got notes and the machine spills out loads of coins in change so I stick my bank card in the slot and then I hear an audible gasp behind me. The machine immediately lit up with ‘hors service’ in large letters – it seems I’ve put my bank card in the parking ticket slot instead of the bank card slot.

I don’t think this is a major problem so I press the ‘return’ button to get my card back and the machine makes some clicking noises but no card appears.

There’s a ‘contact’ button which connects you to the person who looks after the car park so I press that and as I start to speak into the intercom, I notice that there’s quite a queue forming behind me. They all have something to say, probably most of it non-complimentary but I just keep saying ‘desolee’ (sorry).

The queue was getting longer by the minute .....

It’s not very warm out and the rain isn’t far away and there’s only so many people who can huddle in the Caisse so there’s lots of shuffling of feet and then after about a 5 minute delay, a man in his twenties appears. He’s not very happy that his Sunday afternoon has been disturbed but he opens the machine and after a few minutes manages to extract my card.

As he hands it back to me he points to an A4 sign on the front of the machine with arrows showing which slot to put bank cards into. I’m not too happy myself so I tell him where to stick his sign – 6 inches higher so that people like me are left in no doubt where to put the cards (most car parks take both the parking ticket and the payment card into the same slot).

He goes off and there’s more shuffling of feet as there’s an expectation that we’ll all be back in our cars in a minute or so but then I get a tap on my shoulder and it’s an extremely attractive Belgian lady I know saying she hasn’t seen me for ages. I’m momentarily non-plussed as I try and say hello, give and receive a peck on both cheeks and tap in my pin code. ‘Incorrect code’. I try it again as Isobel continues to chat to me. Incorrect code – last attempt’!! I’m in a bit of a panic now as I have one last try at my pin code and Isobel is still holding onto my arm and laughing and joking. If I get it wrong a third time, the machine will 'eat' my card and then the guy will have to come back again - wouldn't that be a laugh - not!

The queue is now even more upset as word of my pin code predicament filters back amongst their numbers so I turn away from Isobel, get my head back into gear (she is VERY attractive) and type in four more digits – success! My card pops out and a paid for parking ticket.

I’m sure I heard a small cheer behind and a few grumbles about ‘les Anglais’ but I’m not too worried – as long as we get back to Tan’s for the Spurs game, that’s all that matters.          

Freezing At Ze Edge

Kisumu, Kenya 

Yup – it’s pretty cold down here, we even had some snow on Friday which pretty soon turned to rain, and now it’s just cold – between 5 and 7 degrees. Not as cold as the UK of course, which is suffering a closedown due to unusually freezing weather.

I have to admit, we’ve never had it so cold so early. I used to watch my old French neighbour (now departed) to see when he covered up his lemon trees to protect them from the frost and I would follow suit. He never did this before January but already the trees are shivering and my poor fish in the pond have been ice skating – upside down!

So as we freeze down here where everybody thinks we have beautiful weather all year round, J is sunning it on the equator having reached Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria. A few months ago when she was planning her trip, I wondered why she wanted to go in November. Now I know.

Kisumu - Right on the Equator

Whilst she’ll be poncing around in shorts and t-shirts, me and the kids continue to watch the electricity meter flash like a disco light and throw mountains of wood on the fire. The electric blankets are on all night and even Shadow sleeps at the bottom of my bed rolling around and wrapping himself up in the shagpile carpet.

It’s just too cold to do anything. I got all wrapped up this morning and cut some wood and I have to say I was nice and warm but as soon as I stopped, the feet got cold and I had to have some soup to defrost myself.

And then there was a knock at the kitchen door. That’s twice this week. The other day I thought I could hear a knocking and went to the main front door but there was nobody there. I shouted out just in case the person, if it was a person, had walked down the lane but again, no answer.

A few minutes later the knock returned so this time I opened the kitchen door and there, standing in the pouring rain was a pompier (fireman) calling to sell me one of their calendars – their annual way of raising a bit of extra cash. I await the postman who will call and sell me exactly the same calendar for the same purpose and for the same 15 euros – or whatever you’re prepared to give them.

It’s a no brainer really. Don’t pay the fireman and your house will burn down with the pompiers standing round warming their hands, whilst with the postie, important mail will be returned to the post office which means a pain of a journey and standing in a long queue.

This time, I was in the kitchen so the door was opened pretty quickly.

‘Ze edge’, said this guy whom I’d never seen. ‘Ze edge’, he repeated.

‘What edge?’ I replied.

“I’m ere to do ze edge’, he stated.

‘What edge? The edge of the path or the car parking area?’

‘No no – I am ere to cut ze edge.’

How would you like to cut 200 yards of this ?

And at that I realised he was the gardener from next door who, poor souls, have to cut a hedge which must be all of 200 yards in length and in some places is 15 feet high.

The neighbour who lives in Brussels is obviously coming down for Xmas and before she arrives, a team of gardeners descend on her property and manicure her garden to within an inch of its life. As for me, it’s great having this edge, sorry hedge, which bounds my garden from hers, beautifully trimmed. And it’s all free!

Makes a change. 

Ireland's Bailout - How Did It Come To This ?

Ireland finally agreed its €85 billion bailout with the EU yesterday – how did it get to this stage?

So this guy goes into a bank in Ireland and says to the manager, “I’m a buy-to-let landlord. Can I have a €1 million to buy 5 more flats to rent?” ‘Of course sir’, says the manager and the money is put into his account.

The landlord then goes to a property exhibition and buys 5 new €200,000 flats off plan, paying the full price over the following 18 months as the flats are built. He’s not raking in any rent at this point of course, funding the interest on the loans from his other rental properties. He’s a bit stretched at this stage but as soon as he rents the flats he’ll be ok.

Another Unsold Development

But …… in the course of those 18 months, Ireland’s property bubble bursts. The flood of new money taken out at cheap eurozone interest rates means there are tens of thousands of new flats being built and nobody can sell them so they are put on the rental market – which doesn’t help our landlord.

He’s now stuck between a financial rock and a hard place – he can’t rent his flats because there are too many available and he can’t sell them even at a lower value (they’re now worth about €150,000 each). So he bites the bullet and hands in the keys to his bank and stops paying the mortgage on his €1 million loan.

The bank now has 5 flats which they didn’t want. They’ve ‘lost’ €1 million but at least they have five flats, which they initially write down in their books to €100,000 each but as the situation worsens, they take the full hit and write them off one year later, to zero. The problem is our guy is one of the smaller borrowers, the average loan taken out for property developers is around €3 million.

Losing an average of €1.5m on each of these loans soon adds up. You only need 56,000 of these bad loans and hey presto, you reach the magic figure of €85,000,000,000 (€85 billion) – the sum the Irish government has just borrowed from the Eurozone.

So who has lost the money?

Our landlord has lost a bit by paying for the mortgage on his €1m without getting any return whatsoever. The bank has lost it’s €1m but it still has 5 flats on its books which eventually they’ll sell, even if it’s only for €50k each. The flat builder was initially laughing as he got his €1m but he’s now got 200 flats on his books which he can’t rent or sell so he goes bust, throwing 300 guys out of work. He also owes the banks €20m.

The banks are down €85 billion so they get a bail out from the government who has borrowed the cash from the European Central Bank and the IMF at high interest rates. The government now own 80% of the banks and have to put up taxes and VAT in order to get their budget balanced. Even our landlord, who didn’t lose that much initially now has to pay more tax and has to try and find a job, but as the government cuts start to bite, employment rises and he cannot get a job. He signs on the dole but after 1 year, his benefits are cut and he ends up living in the one flat he has left on his books.

What goes around comes around.

Going Commando

The time-honoured practice of wearing nothing beneath the kilt has been condemned - by an organisation dedicated to upholding Scottish traditions.

The Scottish Tartans Authority has decreed that not wearing underwear beneath a kilt is "childish and unhygienic". It also warned that "going commando" flies in the face of decency.

Tartans Authority director Brian Wilton said kilt wearers should have the "common sense" to realise they should wear underwear beneath their country's national dress. He said "Just because Highlanders wore nothing in the days before Y-fronts were invented, doesn't mean that we, in the 21st Century, should wear nothing too. "You only have to ask hire specialists about the problems they have cleaning their kilts. We have heard of quite a few hygiene horror stories."

But Scotland's kilt wearers condemned the advice. Former Formula One racing driver, the Scot, David Coulthard, said: "Kilts are from the past and so is the tradition of not wearing any underwear. I'm proud to be a true Scotsman. It's a tradition that should be left alone. I've been wearing kilts since I was a little boy and will continue to wear my kilts in the time-honoured fashion. There is nothing childish or unhygienic about it."

The Bride Goes For It

Earlier this month, 23-year-old Scottish tennis star Andy Murray revealed he had been made to wear pants under his kilt at brother Jamie's wedding, and Highlands and Islands Tory MSP Jamie McGrigor, who campaigned for the introduction of a Scottish Tartan Register, said: "I have normally worn underwear with my kilt. In the West Highlands, midges can mount alarming and unexpected attacks on so-called true Scotsmen."

My own personal experience of wearing a kilt falls into two distinct categories – those functions where I feel ‘safe’ and those where I do not.

I’ve been to weddings in my kilt where female hands suddenly started playing with my ‘sporran’ during the lunch and they weren’t my wife’s and I’d never met the person before! After that I wore two sets of pants – a set of briefs and a pair of boxer shorts over them. Safety in numbers!

And then, when I feel safe, I’m happy to go ‘commando’ as I did at my wedding but even then I had to fight off my new wife, and whist I was standing outside the auberge having a cigarette, an old lady, who must have been in her 90s shouted over, ‘levez votre jupe’ – lift your skirt! 

A Couple of Commandos

I'm sure she'd have been terribly disappointed if I'd been wearing pants when I did!