Play Nice (retrospective from 10 years ago)

 We all have those moments of deep reflection about past events in our lives.

I have written before on how a sound, smell, touch or taste can transport us back to a specific moment, even if that memory has not been foremost in our mind for decades. I of course refer to happy and joyous reminiscences and not tragic or melancholy ones.

In my own life, whilst I may not be able to remember everything that I did yesterday, I can with clarity experience distinct sensations from early childhood. These invariably revolve around the fact that I was allowed to just play by my parents and amongst my four sisters and brothers.

The importance of play especially in the period of seven to eight months up to the age of five cannot be over-emphasised in the development of the brain and, as I discussed in yesterdays blog "PS I Love You", in establishing empathy with others.

I was perfectly happy in my pre-school years and could spend hour upon hour drawing a road network on a big sheet of brown paper on which to drive my toy cars or in the safety of my parents back garden making a landscape out of mud and twigs for warfare by mini 00 scale soldiers.

In group play as an under 10, I was part of a large neighbourhood gang, in the loosest non threatening form for a "gang", ranging about on bikes, on foot in formation like a Roman patrol or in crudely fashioned soap-box  carts. Play was a good thing and as children there was no right or wrong way to play. Empathy was the strongest outcome of the play and that meant that we all got on, well generally as much as competing kids can.

My own home environment permitted  play as it was a safe and loving place with doting parents and no real worries, or at least that we should be bothered with.

I grew up in momentous times with the threat of Nuclear conflict in the Cold War and although I knew about such things I was protected from the stress of worrying over it. My mother and father lived near an airbase in the 1960's with frequent take off and landing activity linked to some world crisis of other being a constant reminder of potential peril. Even in the 1980's I remember my mother having a letter published in a regional newspaper about the damage being done to young minds and aspirations because of the hype and panic arising from the distribution  of "Protect and Survive" or in layman's terms the leaflet in which the UK Government suggested what its citizens must do in the event of a nuclear attack.

We could as easily have become depressed by this impending nuclear holocaust but myself and my siblings were allowed to play. The opposite of play is not, as you may think, work but depression.

I have been fascinated by reading about a psychological project carried out in the 1960's where the subjects studied were imprisoned killers.

The first one interviewed , Charles Whitman, attained notoriety by carrying out sniper shootings at a US University which at that time was the largest mass killing of its type in that nation. His had been a violent childhood with abusive father, access to weapons and a bi-polar condition. Neighbours and those in the community who had known his family told the research team that they had never, ever seen the young Whitman engaging in free play. His father had beaten him for attempting to go out to play and had forced him to play piano at the age of 4. His tutors throughout his schooling saw him as a quiet and withdrawn student who had to be encouraged to play and participate with his peers.

In further unprecedented access to 26 jailed killers the research found a similarity in circumstances that had existed in their formative years to prevent play.

This lack of interaction meant that the social skill of empathy had not developed and with devastating consequences for the victims and perpetrators. It is now the consensus in medical science and psychology that a lack of play in those crucial formative years affects the development of the brain.

In the state of play the frontal lobe of the human brain somehow becomes unhooked and is unfettered in making associations with other parts of the brain in a glorious symphonic existence. There are benefits in  mood uplift, health and well-being and overall happiness.

Where animal brains have been studied in more detail the act of play has been seen to chemically light up the whole spectrum of functions in a riot of technicolour.

Play can also be an aid to survival in stressful situations.

A study of rats involved two control groups. One group was permitted to just behave in a typically inquisitive rat like manner whilst the other was suppressed and contained. When confronted with a cat odour soaked blanket the normal rats investigated and, sensing the danger, fled. They had obviously learned from their experience for another time. The restrained group just stayed where they were, none the wiser and died.

We should therefore, as adults, not overlook the importance of play and playfulness even though we may feel that our seniority, social standing and the respect from others depends on a certain expectation and standard of behaviour. We may feel that as humans we are too civilised to recognise our base instincts around play. Other mammals place a great emphasis on play as it allows the exploration of options, introduces novelty and newness, promotes thought and an ability to adapt and above all it is fun.

It is time to accept that we are designed to play over our lifetime so whatever your age, go and  find that frisbee, retrieve that bouncy ball, toe-poke that football , fire up the Play Station and get on with it,

Olympic Blames

 It was the Cold War Era and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did what they did best- spied and reported back to the US Government on all and anything involving the USSR. 

In early December 1979 a dossier was presented specifically on the preparations by the Soviets ahead of the Olympic Games in the Summer of the following year. It begrudgingly acknowledged that Moscow had made considerable efforts to win the bid and that it would represent a major showcase event. 

There was speculation by the analysts that the facilities and infrastructure would struggle to be completed in time for the Opening Ceremony. Almost all had been built for the Olympics under a project purported to have cost $9 billion (roughly $26 billion today). 

The wide ranging scope of the report also gave comment and opinion on how the massive costs would be financed, the dependence on non-Eastern Bloc countries for technology and specialisms, the organisational framework and also how the Soviets would act and be perceived as hosts to the global influx of Athletes, tourists and media. 

It was to be Moscow’s moment to shine. 

The date of the report was significant as within a couple of weeks of its Confidential circulation the military forces of the USSR invaded Afghanistan and all of the preparation and investment was as quickly undone by geo-politics: 

65 countries, led by the United States, boycotted the Games in protest of the invasion of another sovereign nation. In partial support of the American-led boycott the UK government allowed its athletes to choose whether to compete but only a few athletes chose to stay away. There was a token GB boycott of the opening ceremony, the Olympic flag was raised for the British medal winners and the Olympic anthem played for the five gold medallists.

Cynics said that it was a calculated participation by Great Britain with many key competitors and medal contenders being absent leaving the field, track, hall and pool open for a serious attempt at winning medals. 

Despite the boycott, the Games generally were deemed a success. 

The Soviet economy did later falter and the communist superpower collapsed just 11 years after being in the world spotlight. How much the financial burden of hosting the Games contributed to the eventual demise of the USSR was touched upon by the CIA as a matter of speculation.

There was a great cartoon in the satirical Punch Magazine in the UK showing two chubby, unshaven and beer drinking Russian athletes, kitted out on the stadium track with the caption "To be frank, we didn't think anybody would turn up".

I remember watching the BBC TV coverage of the Moscow Olympics at the age of 16. I was quite sporty myself, a bit of a sprinter and keen on the 800 metres but the event that really caught my attention was the Javelin competition.

Because of the depleted attendance from the boycott the 18 competitors took part in one qualifying group. This was staged on July 26th 1980, with the automatic qualifying mark set at 80.00 metres (262.47 ft).

In rainy conditions several favourites had difficulties getting through. All three Soviet throwers and Hungary's defending champion Nemeth reached the automatic qualifying mark (80.00 m) in the first round, but the other Hungarian, Paragi, who had broken the world record earlier in 1980, only got a good throw in the third and final qualification round and East Germany's Detlef Michel, who was one of those expected to do so and would win the World Championship in 1983, failed to qualify. 

In fact only 10 participants attained the qualifying standard and so two Detlef Fuhrmann and Stefan Stoykov although not reaching the mark were drafted in to make up the required twelve finalists^.. The final took place on the following day.

Best expectations in the final were Paragi, three Soviets and East Germany's Wolfgang Hanisch, a three-time medalist at European Championships. Hanisch was an early leader after throwing 86.72 m in the first round, closely followed by two of the Soviets, Heino Puuste and Makarov, and Finland's Antero Puranen. 

Paragi had problems with his technique and failed to get a good throw, and the third Soviet thrower, Dainis Kūla, had no valid mark after two rounds.

In the third round Paragi got his best throw, 79.52 m, but it wasn't enough to move him to the top eight that would qualify for rounds four to six.

Dainis Kūla's third throw immediately became controversial as it landed almost completely flat (rather than point first), and a flat throw should have been ruled illegal. It was at this point that it appeared that the Soviet Officials were showing bias towards their own countrymen as no sanction for a foul throw was taken. Had that ruling been made, Kūla would have been out of the last three rounds. It was also claimed the throw's distance had been exaggerated at 88.88m with the actual distance being around 87 m.

Flat or ambiguously flat throws were not uncommon with the old javelin designs then used, nor were "generous" judgments by officials. Kūla's case, however, gained much notoriety as it not only secured him Olympic gold, but was seen as being a wider pattern of Soviet officials favouring their own athletes throughout the 1980 Games.

In round four Kūla improved further to 91.20 m, the eventual winning distance. Makarov got his best throws in rounds five and six and took silver ahead of Hanisch

I found the competition fascinating but sadly my abiding memory is about the further and most enduring controversy surrounding Soviet officials who reputedly opened the stadium's outer gates when Soviet athletes were throwing, letting more wind in to aid the throws.

In Finland (which had three athletes in the final), the gate issue spurred much discussion and lived on in public memory for a long time. In a bit of a sarcastic protest Kūla was greeted with shouts of "open the gates!" when he competed in the 1983 World Championships in the Finnish capital, Helsinki and when the 2013 World Championships were held in Moscow the gate controversy again became a talking point.

At the time there were arguments that the Javelin competition should have been voided by the IAAF and either held again at some future date, or removed from the Olympic records

However, no official complaints or protests were filed, and the original results were allowed to stand. 

I did see a bit of a footnote that scientists did actually carry out an experiment to see if a howling tail wind would be a benefit to a javelin's trajectory and range.

They concluded that it was in fact more of a hindrance for the aerodynamics of a steel javelin and so the whole controversy may just have been a bit of anti-Soviet propaganda by the interfering West. 

No doubt there is a CIA Report all about it somewhere in the archives.

Reds in the Hedge

There was a lot of activity at the end of the street.

In fact, I tend to think that what I could see was actually a Police cordon.

That was definitely a first for the area. Not just one officer on duty but three, edgy and nervously glancing at the cars and pedestrians as they either passed by as a matter of fact or were just a bit inquisitive about the unusual goings on. A few brave persons on foot were poised to ask that inevitable question about what was up but a stiffening and bristling of those on guard duty was enough to deter them.

The reason for the formal roadblock was not, obviously, down to a leaking gas or water main. I could not see a glow nor smell the distinctive odour attributable to an outbreak of fire. I suppose it could have been a murder or a domestic incident.

The traffic had slowed enough for me to glance past the street end. In the cul de sac beyond there was a fleet of squad cars and those big black, unmarked vans often referred to as Marias  (mer-rye -ers) used to cart off the naughty boys and girls to the nearest police station.

More of the local constabulary could be seen chatting with some quite ominous looking para-military types in full combat gear and casually swinging machine pistols on their hips as they hung down from heavy duty canvas straps slung over their padded shoulders.

It was a couple of days before the local  paper realised the newsworthiness of the event. They speculated wildly on the first front page account out of desperation to beat the free weeklies to the story.

Gradually some semblance of professional journalism emerged and in the following days an incredible tale was recounted.

The target of the attention of the authorities had been a single semi detached house in that quiet suburban road, Kirkham Drive, Hull, HU5.

It was just an ordinary red brick built place with a rosemary tile roof, tidy woodwork and a neat front garden. In the windows hung those detestable net curtains giving just enough privacy and an implied  message of 'there's nothing worth looking at or to be bothered about here, thank you very much'.

After the initial assault on the house and whoever its occupant was a good proportion of its contents had been removed by the task force. The local newspaper had published some grainy internal photographs to pad out its now top running feature.

The source of the pictures was not clear. They may have been acquired in a plain brown envelope from a person in an official capacity. In fact, one of the neighbours trusted with a key for those emergencies that always occur when the owner is away on a trip was responsible either willingly for a cash consideration or had been duped by a young, attentive reporter type.

Again, there was nothing remarkable about the house. A bit plain and drab to the décor and furnishings but nevertheless functional and comfortable. There were, however, a lot of shelves packed with weighty books in every room, lavatory included.

This was not the norm from my experience of the typical residents of the street. They usually had a small collection of those thick volumes produced with regular monotony by Reader's Digest on such subjects as Heritage, General Knowledge, The Royal Family and of course the Book of The Road. These themes were all that was required to answer the persistent queries of small children or settle a dispute after a Pub Quiz Night.

The shelving was stout and wall to wall, firmly fixed to the masonry and not flat pack or unstable if overloaded. Most of the horizontal surfaces of tables, window cills, kitchen worktops and even either side of the staircase treads were covered with files and loose papers and more were protruding out of a great variety of cardboard boxes distributed under and around the furniture.

I had seen similar ordered chaos in the homes of academics and those of respectable and apparently harmless eccentricity.

The former was applicable in this instance.

The owner occupier was a lecturer at the city University. One of those small columns on an inner page of the local paper gave a potted biography of the man. Born up North, State School educated but bright, earned a Scholarship to a prestigious southern place of learning, excellent First Class Degree , a gap year of letting rip on a global circumnavigation, a stop off in the Soviet Union, post graduate studies to Doctorate level, teaching posts at a number of worthy establishments, then what to me appeared to be a bit of a breakdown in that he ended up here in a good, steady but lower league of academia.

The high flyer appeared to have hit one of those glass ceilings.

His subject had always been Economics and Social History. In his first Uni year he had joined the Communist Party. It was a small branch of disaffected sons and daughters of the wealthy. His motivation was primarily to meet the volatile female members who were like nothing else he had encountered in his previous life. They were an active group, mainly because being of limited numbers they only required the hire of one mini-bus for a campaign outing to attend picket lines, support striking comrades or attend regional and national conferences and gatherings.

The highlight of each successive year of being a Card Carrying Communist was a visit to the Motherland. These were officially received and he had built up quite a network of contacts in a number of State Departments in the USSR.

His profile in the newspaper column all pointed to one outcome.

He was eventually recruited as a Spy.

It was not at all glamorous or hazardous. A job in London had enabled him to mix and fraternise with women working in Ministry positions. His handlers seemed pleased with the non-specific information that he was able to gather.

It was then a period of upheaval and political activity in the eastern states of the Soviet Bloc. Solidarity Trade Union in Poland had begun the process of  dismantling and then collapsing the Russian Empire. Their man in our city provided information of the level of support both collectively and from powerful individuals on his side of the North Sea.

A few in influential positions in UK Universities were exiles from behind the Iron Curtain and were befriended and quietly relieved of any matters of potential interest from their ongoing involvement with their beloved but imprisoned colleagues in the Old Country.

All of this was done with skill and diligence.

To the neighbours he was just someone clever who worked at the University and was away a lot.

His career in espionage had lasted for 12 years being curtailed only by the change in outlook and Regime brought about by the events around the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing domino effect.

I still glance up that street whenever I drive past the road end but nothing has come anywhere near to that series of events in terms of intrigue and excitement.

Monkey Puzzle

 

Monkey Puzzle

Legend has it that during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, a shipwrecked monkey was hanged by the people of Hartlepool, believing him to be a French spy!

To this day, people from Hartlepool are affectionately known as 'monkey hangers'.

A French ship was spotted floundering and sinking off the Hartlepool coast. Suspicious of enemy ships and nervous of possible invasion, the good folk of Hartlepool rushed down to the beach, where amongst the wreckage of the ship they found the only survivor, the ship’s monkey which was apparently dressed in a miniature military-style uniform.

Hartlepool is a long way from France and most of the populous had never met, or even seen, a Frenchman.

Some satirical cartoons of the time pictured the French as monkey-like creatures with tails and claws, so perhaps the locals could be forgiven for deciding that the monkey, in its uniform, must be a Frenchman, and a French spy at that.

There was a trial to ascertain whether the monkey was guilty of spying or not; however, not unsurprisingly, the monkey was unable to answer any of the court's questions and was found guilty.

The townsfolk then dragged him into the town square and hanged him.

So is the legend true?

Did the good folk of Hartlepool REALLY hang a poor defenceless monkey?

There could perhaps be a darker side to the tale – maybe they didn’t actually hang a ‘monkey’ but a small boy or ‘powder-monkey’. Small boys were employed on warships of this time to prime the canons with gunpowder and were known as ‘powder-monkeys’.

Over the centuries the legend has been used to taunt the residents of Hartlepool; indeed still today, at football matches between local rivals Darlington and Hartlepool United the chant, “Who hung the monkey” can often be heard.

Most Hartlepudlians however love this story.

Hartlepool United’s mascot is a monkey called H'Angus the Monkey, and the local Rugby Union team Hartlepool Rovers are known as the Monkeyhangers.

The successful mayoral candidate in the 2002 local elections, Stuart Drummond, campaigned dressed in the costume of H'Angus the Monkey, using the election slogan "free bananas for schoolchildren", a promise he was unfortunately unable to keep. However this appears not to have dented his popularity, as he went on to be re-elected two more times.

Whatever the truth, the legend of Hartlepool and the hanged monkey has endured for over 200 years.

Source; Historic UK

My Dad made a Canoe

 A 23 foot long through lounge may have been top of the wish list for aspiring homeowners in the 1970's but for my Father it afforded an opportunity to build a canoe in the rear 11 feet whilst still retaining the front 12 feet, with settee, pouffe, coffee table and TV aerial socket for family use.

My Mother may have agreed to the idea prior to the commencement of the project but had she known that canoe launch day did not actually take place for another 2 years she may have had a different view.

The canoe was in kit form through a company called Ottersports and arrived in a very large box like an oversized Airfix model.

The particular project was entirely in wood which must have been marine ply or laminated .

The parts forming the hull had to be glued, taped and carefully pinned in position and some evenings and some weekends when not attending to family responsibilities my Father did a little bit more work on the single seater.

On finer days the work took place on the patio with the superstructure, bows and cockpit taking shape al fresco.

The lounge carpet held up well on inclement working days.

My parents, then in their early forties , had "Keeping fit Commando Style" on cassette and the same rear section of the lounge doubled up as a gym in early morning sessions . This was apt as many of the exercises around the boat assembly line took on the appearance of training for an amphibious assault.

Progress with the wooden torpedo was slow and my Mother took us kids off for a week after matrimonial relations became strained over the prolonged project.

I often thought that the all-pervading smell of varnish in the later stages may have contributed to behaviour otherwise totally out of character for a loving couple.

It was a very proud day for my Father when the completed canoe was loaded onto the VW roofrack as part of the mass transit that was the Thomson's going on holiday- estate car, boat, caravan, 5 children, overflow tents and chemical toilet, in fact all the trappings.

On it's maiden voyage what a machine the canoe was.

The steeply raked hull made for a very fast speed through the Scottish Loch but on the downside this was accompanied by considerable instability. It had the sensation of riding  white water rapids but in fact the surface of the Loch was nothing but a smooth mirror of water.

I seem to remember initial enthusiasm from us kids for a paddle but second requests were not forthcoming and we busied ourselves with looking for fish, bleached sheeps' bones and following severed fishing lines to find abandoned spinners and lures stuck in the rocky floor of the shallows of the Loch.

I must have put 'Experienced with watersports' on my CV as I soon found myself being pushed headfirst into a fibre glass canoe at my Scout Troop Hut in order to resin together the moulded hull and deck. It was a very unpleasant task indeed and only bearable for a few minutes and probably outlawed now in all but the most dodgy backstreet sweat-shops.

Was it my experience or as I suspect that I was undersized for my age and ideally suited to the fume laden , runny eyes and wheezy chest operation in the narrow confines only intended for the canoeists legs.

A bit later on my Father acquired another canoe - an open deck Canadian version for expeditions up river but it was just too heavy to be even lifted on and off a roof rack and I am not sure now that it ever had a christening under our ownership.

I am still fascinated by all things canoe and recently marvelled at a metal hulled Grumman canoe on the canal at North Frodingham. It was a  flat bottomed tourer in which the elderly owner regularly took his grandchildren and multiple dogs up river for hours on end with no jeopardy or instability even with an unruly and inquisitive crew.

I have some intentions to one day canoe the full navigable length of the River Hull from the Tidal Barrier to its deep set source in the hinterland.

My wife has expressed some concerns but it's not as if I'm going to disappear off the coast of Hartlepool and turn up in Panama.....is it?

There is to my knowledge no direct route from the Humber Bank Horsewash to South America - or is it there jjust waiting to be discovered..........?

Jaws at 50. A local retrospective

 

Scunthorpe. Bite Me!

The summer of 1975 changed my life and perceptions for ever.

Prior to that watershed I was just a daft 12 year old kid, fairly normal I think amongst my peer group although a bit shy and introverted.

I was into football even though I was not that good and followed the trends of the time in the collecting of football cards (sold with or without bubble gum),playing Top Trumps, watching black and white TV and playing outside at every opportunity.

I would like to spin a great yarn about the specific thing that impacted on my very existence in that summer 40 years ago.

Was it that I left home and travelled the length and breadth of the nation in railway boxcars and communed with hobo's?
Alternatively I may have joined up with best pals for an epic wilderness adventure in a coming of age type scenario.
What about running away to join the circus or being kidnapped by pirates, that sounds plausible.

Well, the truth be told it was the release of the blockbuster movie "Jaws" that did it for me.

It was in retrospect one of the greatest releases of all time but more significantly for me as a sub-teenager it was my first proper cinema experience of a real life action film.

I vividly remember going to see it at the single screen venue in Scunthorpe which was the nearest larger town to where we lived at that time in North Lincolnshire. My Father took me as it must have been rated for children if accompanied by an adult.

The release of a mega film in the summer months was unheard of as traditionally the run up to the Christmas Holidays was regarded as the best time to capture the market. It was a clever ploy given that the theme of the movie, a man eating shark, was set in a summer season in the fictional small eastern US coastal town of Amity.

For the rest of the school vacation with the images and sounds of shark induced death very much in my thoughts I dare not even dip my toe in the sea at Cleethorpes or wider afield on a family fortnight to the west coast of Scotland. As for a trip to the local indoor heated leisure pool, well, this was also pretty traumatic.

I was not alone in my phobia as many who also saw the film could remember the lines in the script spoken by Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) about most attacks by sharks being in comparatively shallow water and quite close to the shore. It was irrational in the extreme but still a strong emotional influence nevertheless.

The whole idea of "Jaws" was that of Steven Spielberg based on a novel by Peter Benchley published in 1974 but even whilst the filming was underway using the natural beauty of Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Massachusets the script was still being worked on by Carl Gottlieb and Spielberg.

This was not a typical Hollywood method but the main collaborators found the experience productive and ultimately successful. Writing was just keeping ahead of the on-location filming pushing the crew and cast to the limit but out of it came some very classic lines which not only captured the very tone of the killer great white shark but became infinitely quotable and memorable.

Best of all is "we're gonna need a bigger boat" which was improvised by Scheider's character  and has been applicable as a comic throwaway in many life and death situations subsequently.

The shark itself was, for the pre-CGi cinematic era, a mechanical wonder of a size and complexity not attempted before. The original schedule was for 55 days of filming but the production had to be continuously extended because of constant breakdowns by the quirky machine.

As for the soundtrack, it was a central part of the horror, suspense and action and yet was reputed to have been composed by John Williams in one sitting at Spielberg's house. The recording session involved the use of 12 bass violins in unison which caused the two theme  notes to resonate to the very core of my 12 year old bone marrow as I sat and cowered in my cinema seat.

The world to me, post 1975, would never be the same again.

Mary, Mungo and Midges- Scotland

 

Mary, Mungo and Midges

Scotland....
still part of the United Kingdom and my location for the past week for an early annual vacation with the family.

It is a magical place.

Mountains in and out of the mist, lochs and glens in and out of the mist and ravenous tiny, wee insects, something certainly to be missed.

Those pesky midges.

We giggled a bit on our first morning in Scotland seeing an obviously seasoned hill walker shrouded in a fine mesh veil over his head and face rather like a shy bride but for the rest of our week our admiration only grew for the man as we found ourselves pursued relentlessly by the beasties.Hiding behind an improvised net curtain or fly screen was inspirational.

Frantic scratching and itching gave, perhaps, a millisecond of relief from the incessant irritation and we had to resort to wholesale and mutual dabbing with a roll-on type insect repellent. The small cylindrical container with the chemical deterrent had a knack of becoming lost in a cagoule pocket, in the folds of a rucksack or disappearing under the car seat. These events incited huge panic amongst our party.

There were brief moments of escape behind the firmly fastened doors and windows of our vacation timber lodge but we had to draw lots to see which hapless individual had to go retrieve any items, such as food, from the car parked just thirty feet away. In the process we felt like we were sending a family member outside to confront a herd of zombies.

Other apparent midge free zones were to be found out in the middle of Loch Lomond on a water taxi ride, in a coffee shop of extortionate pricing (Mocha £3.10), at an altitude above 3000 feet (approx 1000 metres) where, according to my wife and daughter, the intrepid climbers of Ben Lomond, the sleat and snow in mid June were just too much for the creatures to maintain a direct course to extract blood.

I felt almost justified wandering into a McDonalds fast food restaurant to benefit from the rarified atmosphere, oh, and of course McDonalds has a Scottish Heritage making it permissible .

The week was very active with adventures on mountain bikes and in walking gear.

The changeable weather and threat of perforation by midges, should any bare skin be exposed, had no real impact on our determined pursuit of recreation and leisure after a very busy first half of the year in work and home life.

As that great son of Scotland, Billy Connolly said, "There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong choice of clothing".

I am at that age, early fifties when I have an over-active interest in and fascination of the climate.

Scotland presents a wonderful opportunity to witness this at close quarters.

In the floor of the glacial valley that contains Loch Lomond, (the largest area of freshwater in the UK), there can, in the course of a few minutes, be alternate scorching sunshine, drizzle and torrential rain, significant variations in temperature, howling gale and complete stillness. For example, a rainbow suddenly appeared to us, flat to the surface of the black cold water only to evaporate within seconds. It was a marvellous, fleeting vision against the backdrop of steep pine clad hillsides and, in the distance, some residual snow filled deep gullies that had so far resisted the spring and summer thaw. On that theme a local resident was heard to say "I love summer in Scotland....it is the best day of the whole year"

We could carry out our own weather forecasting quite easily.

If we could see the upper slopes and summit of Ben Lomond from the log cabin window, looking north, then we could usually count on a few hours of reasonably predictable weather. Just to be safe we could also see through to the Loch shore itself. There was either a glassy sheen of perfect calm on the water or a maelstrom whipped up by winds funnelled through the Glen so that the handful of boats, at anchor, danced around with the clink, clink of masthead gear in accompaniment.

Most of these sights were, unfortunately, viewed through a strange shimmering.

We had seen this before whilst on a Mediterranean holiday as a heat haze effect but in Scotland you can attribute this to the clouds of midges just gathering in the Highlands for another feast on the oh, so foolish, English tourists.