Category Archives: the old country

Scotland, and Scottish things

Pwned by King James V

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The Earl of Northumberland had dismissed as mere bragging the expressed intention of the Scottish government to try to do something about the Liddesdale robbers. Like Sim the Laird, he believed the Armstrongs were far too powerful for King James. But he was wrong. The young king had undertaken to “proceed to the sharpe and rygorouse pwnyssching of all transgressioune apone the bordouris”, and he now went to work, beginning with a gentle approach.

—  from The Steel Bonnets, by George MacDonald Fraser, chapter 27.

Yes, the Scots. We may have been the bunk at spelling, but we’ve been pwning since 1529.

randomly remembered from the UK trip

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  • The M8 through Livingston is now tree-lined, with no sign of the buildings behind. I remember when all of it was scrubby shrubs and boxy buildings.
  • The A174 between Saltburn and Whitby is perhaps the world’s most gratuitously wiggly road in the Z-axis.
  • You can actually get an amateur radio magazine in most newsagents: Practical Wireless.
  • Driving to Fala to join the A68 from North Berwick has extreme XY wiggliness.
  • S. Luca of Musselburgh make very good ice cream, and their purple Mini-based truck is quaint.
  • Either the routing database from the UK is weird, or the Garmin nüvi 760 can’t route for toffee.
  • Eyemouth is much more fun than I expected. Oblò is a great wee restaurant.
  • With a £20 O2 SIM and an unlocked GSM phone, I had calling ability for the trip.
  • Kirkintilloch has a marina! Southbank Marina is quite spiffy.
  • The Quayside in Whitby has fab fish and chips.
  • I actually heard someone use the expression “fandabidozi” in a non-ironic setting in Glasgow
  • Yum yums aren’t as good as I remember them being.
  • Walking barefoot on a Scottish lawn is an exquisite pleasure.

Pictures later.

For St Andrew’s Day: Flower of Scotland

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Arduino and the Irn-Bru Can Choir present Roy Williamson’s epic anthem:

Like O Canada and The Star Spangled Banner before it, it’s a random midi file (grabbed from Midi files of bagpipe tunes: mercifully, does not autoplay) converted to RTTTL and played through a glued-on piezo.

Actually, I don’t think that the Notional Past was being ironic

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It’s hard to call anything “breakaway” when the combined current ages of the proponents would put them born in the same week as Lord  Rayleigh. The major schism would be over who had the more outlandish hat: radar station vs lampshade.

RIP Michael Foot

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We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer ‘To hell with them.’ The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.

– Michael Foot, 1983

i wonder if these are as bad as i remember?

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Ladies and germs, I give you … pickled onion Monster Munch. Let me get back to you on how they taste.


… deep fried barf is the best I can come up with. Crispy, yet vile. By the end of the bag, my tastebuds gave in, leaving me to lever the compressed corn pulp from my molars. It feels like I’ve ScotchGarded the inside of my mouth. Just as I remember them, then.

only in Scotland …

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Tyre sabotage brings race to halt
Police are investigating after carpet tacks were spread across roads bringing a major cycle race to a halt.

Just a few reasons why sabotaging the Étape Caledonia was wrong:

  • it’s a charity event – it was supporting Macmillan Cancer
  • it’s the only mass-start bike race of its kind in the UK
  • the roads were closed for three whole hours; c’mon people, it’s not like it’s days of inconvenience.

At least the race will go on next year.

George Stewart

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BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Man ‘killed as he walked his dog’

I’m not sure what made me look at this article on the BBC News website, but when I did, I think I just discovered that one of my friends from Strathclyde University has been murdered.

George Stewart was a mature student from Darvel (or ‘Dervel’, as he insisted it be pronounced) who joined Mechanical Engineering in second year in 1988. He’d worked for de Havilland in Ayrshire, and was a time-served engineer. He was working for one of the big engineering companies (maybe Howden) that were just waning under Maggie’s relentless efforts. George breezed through practical work (especially drawing) but found some of the theoretical stuff more challenging. He was a jovial soul, and good company in a lab or tutorial.

I can’t say for certain that this is the same George Stewart – but Darvel’s a small town, his picture looks the same, and he’d be the right age. Condolences to his family and friends – George was a great guy.
If you know anything, please contact Strathclyde Police Force.

aagh! brainscrub required!!

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So I was idly picking away on the mandolin sort of playing scales when this song from my childhood starts playing itself. It’s the Uist Tramping Song, and has ultra-cheesy lyrics:

Come along, come along, let us foot it out together,
Come along, come along, be it fair or stormy weather,
With the hills of home before us and the purple of the heather,
Let us sing in happy chorus, come along, come along.

No, really. I always thought that footing it out would involve a lot of squelching, this being Scotland. Must’ve learnt it when I was 8 or so; our headmaster was a teuchter, so my head is filled with Gaelic-ish things still. One of the pieces I recently heard Rhiannon Giddens perform with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, so they’re not all bad.

Anyway, to share the brainmelt, here it is in all its awfulness:

Plus the score, if you care to: Uist Tramping Song [pdf].