I'd have to say that there is nothing quite like getting up at four in the morning to write. I'll let you know in a little while if this is bad or good.
My wife and I just returned from the land of my ancestors: Scotland. It was a short jaunt, merely a week. Couple this with our desire to have a relaxing vacation and you might say we didn't do very much.
Contrary to the media hype, Scotland is not a heap of smoldering carcasses. Yes, it was hard to forget that there was a epidemic on, what with signs and disinfectant stations along every road, but the skies do not glow at night with funeral pyres.
Driving in the UK was fun. All the roads were in pristine condition and incredibly well posted. We found it nearly impossible to get lost. Of course, reprogramming my driving computer was a bit of a challenge at first. I wouldn't even call it reprogramming. It was more like building an emulator, big-endian to little-endian, left to right. Here comes an intersection. Make sure the emulator is running. Left turn! The emulator preempts the call and converts everything: look mainly to your RIGHT and at the completion of the maneuver you should be in the LEFT lane. This works fine until you get a little tired, make a turn, and wonder why your wife is having fits in the passenger seat.
The heart of the matter here, however, is the dreaded roundabout or "rotary". Here the fantastic Scottish road signs can actually work against you. For each lane of incoming traffic the roundabout is posted with a graphic representation of the circle and all its exits. The first time I approached a large multi-lane roundabout, this helpful sign looked like a well-labeled road-kill octopus. My scalp tingled with fear. Soon after leaving Edinburgh we had the good fortune to witness two native drivers have a bit of a traffic circle smash-up right in front of us. This made my wife and I feel relieved in a perverse sort of way. If the Scots themselves can't keep from bouncing off each other, then the pressure is off of us to do any better. In the end, once we'd figured out the technique and etiquette, we came to appreciate being able to zip through a roundabout without having to come to a complete stop. The Brits (and the Scots) might actually have something here.
>From our limited sample, we're able to tell folks that Scottish weather is beeyooteeful. The sun was out every single day. We got mildly sprinkled on once.
A general discussion of Scotland cannot avoid the subject of haggis. "Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!" my ass. It's like chitlins and greens. It's the trash left over by the folks who could afford to eat something, anything else. But I have the feeling that I am preaching to the converted, churning old compost. The new delicious datum I bring back from our trip is this: Haggis-Stuffed Chicken Breast. I had thought, rather naively it turns out, that haggis itself was a stomach stuffed with trash and boiled. Apparently, those inventive Scots, the ones who brought us penicillin, viable steam power, and postage stamps, have applied their devilish cunning to haggis. They now use haggis-trash to pollute otherwise perfectly edible foods. Diabolical.
As for getting up at four in the morning to write, aside from a shattered drinking glass and a puking cat, the experience has been satisfactory.
Pakeha