… come back another day. Preferably one when I’m not going to play tennis.

London is wet this morning. Very wet. Ahhhh, that’s good for the lawn, the flowers, the water supply. But its pretty much shit for anything else. Certainly won’t be much good for the cricket, unless it happens to be dry up in Yorkshire at Headingley. But as Yorkshire is the wettest place in England (based on nothing but prejudice, contempt and the Londoner’s view that the rest of England is a great big, wet, windy slum), I doubt they’ll be bowling many overs there today.

Yet in a month’s time we’re going up to Scotland. Oooohhhhh, Scotland. If they’ll still let me in with my English passport, my London number plates and my horrendous attitude (see ‘slum’ etc, above). And I’m quite excited about it. Mainly because we’re driving up there and I’m hoping that they don’t have speed cameras in Scotland. That’s the main reason for going. The other is that other than 3 snowily frigid days in Edinburgh about 15 years ago, I’ve never been there.

This is part of the new policy of ‘seeing some of Britain’ which only started last year with my first ever trip to Cornwall. Mel had been when she was about 7 and once every 40 years or so is about right, I reckon. Lovely though it was. In fact it was wonderful.

But did you know that Scotch comes from Scotland? Amazing but true. I’d never realised that. I thought that Loch Sporran Single Malt was made in Korea, like everything else. But no, it actually comes from Scotland. Well ‘china’ comes from Dresden, Delft, Wedgewood and they ain’t in China, are they?? Anyway, we’re going to drink some Scotch in its natural environment. As opposed to in my lounge, where it normally gets drunk. As do I. So drinking Scotch/fast driving, they just go together perfectly.

We’re also stopping off in Liverpool for a night on the way (again, never been there before) and then on to Hadrian’s Wall, see if we can make it a bit stronger, higher, put some barbed wire on it, run an electric cable. And then up to Scotland itself. I see myself as a kind of Bob Geldoff in Live Aid, in all those film clips, visiting the third world places of misery and deprivation trying to understand their plight and let the world know such places actually do exist AND NEED YOUR HELP.

I’ve looked up some useful phrases to use with the locals up on the Island of Islay. Like “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH????” And I’m piling up the cds to play very loudly in case there’s any bag-pipers up there sneaking round and catching us unawares. I’ll just drown him out with some Bruce Springsteen. Because if you listen to bag-pipes for more than 20 seconds you either die or go insane. That’s a medical fact and explains a lot about the rise to power of the Scottish Nationalists.

So I’m really looking forward to the trip, and I think the Scotch people will really like me and my Cockney Charm. Just don’t mention football, goal-keeping, the Crankies or deep-fried Mars bars. And I suppose I should remove the effigy of Nicola Sturgeon that’s currently hanging (in every sense) from my rear-view mirror.

Bonnie Sunday

A xxxx