When is a holiday not a holiday?

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We've now returned from our Scottish holiday, taking in 5 days of the Edinburgh Fringe and a trip to the Highlands. It's been a wonderful time away, my nails have grown substantially, and despite the food and whisky I only seem to have put on a pound in weight. 

Like many "holidays" it turned out to be rather busy and many of the things I thought I would do in my downtime (a lot of writing, for example) just didn't get done. 

Here's a run down of some of the things we got up to:

 

  • We saw about a dozen shows, not including the freebies and impromptu acts in streets and bars. This included big names such as Rich Hall, Sarah Millican, Ed Byrne and Dave Gorman (who was brilliant) as well as less well-known acts such as James Acaster and Andrew Lawrence (also exceptional); of course, not forgetting our favourite magicians Barry and Stuart. 
  • We frequented The Whiski Rooms - a wonderful bar, bistro and whisky shop, providing exceptional food and great live Scottish Music. 
  • We woke up at 5.45am on our first day thanks to Veolia coming to empty the bins at the travelodge. Well done folks. 
  • We walked between 20 and 30 miles over the week, as tracked by DeviceLocator and Google Latitude on my iPhone. That helped keep the weight down.
  • We avoided blisters by wearing state of the art Rohan footwear. 
  • We fed a Squirrel in Princes Street gardens and watched it burying his food. 
  • We discovered bumblebees going nuts over Oregano and Marjoram. 
  • We drove 1200 miles. 
  • We had a spa day at Bannatynes in Edinburgh to try and recover. It really helped!
  • I processed a few photos while on the move, but most still have to be done :) 
  • We did some "baby sitting" with my niece Chloe, who was wonderful entertainment. 
  • We gave an impromptu talk about bumblebees to a nursery of twelve 3 and 4 year olds. We managed to succesfully keep them entertained for an hour and got a wonderful thankyou card made by them all.
  • We did a circular tour round the back of Loch Ness to soak up the scenery and make the best of a window in the weather. 
  • I had a meeting with Cafe Beag who agreed to display and sell my scottish photos
  • Roy Bridge post office also agreed to stock and sell my photos
  • I had a very interesting and productive meeting with Me On My Wall canvas company who have agreed to licensing some of my images for their Highland Collection of canvases. This is a really exciting complement to my Scottish prints, which will see them on display in some prime locations.  

 

Here's a mock of up what's coming:

example canvas

Not a moment was wasted - my last meeting took me to within 15 minutes of my planned leaving time for the journey home and I still had to pack! Most of my photo processing, blogging and writing all had to go on the back burner and  didn't get done. But as you can see, it was a very productive and busy time nonetheless, and I was really delighted to be making progress with getting the photography "out there". All part of the long term Scottish plan. 

 

What's going on here?

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I make no apology for the fact that over the years I have been quite a prolific content producer. I say "content" because my output is everything from songs and music to photos and art and writing in general. Oh, and of course unfinished websites by the dozen. Ever since I could coordinate my fingers I've been bashing them on various bits of gadgetry in order to create stuff.

This hasn't been helped by the fact that I first started publishing to the web roundabout 1993, which is actually before most people had heard of it. (Such is the privilege of working in telecoms). Consequently I have a virtual ton of material rather loosely assembled and scattered carelessly around cyberspace. It's got to the point where not only is it confusing for my audience, but even I am starting to wonder if I have multiple personalities.

So, I'm using this new website as a vehicle to try and draw some of it together, at least some of the better bits that are not going to make me blush (too much) - with the possible exception of my Loch Ness Monster story. One problem I do have is that the content I have produced on easypeasy.com has become quite popular, and to move it to this site would do some of my readers a disservice; so while I ponder on this, I'm leaving that material where it is.

Some of the most popular material there is my commentary on mental health and since this is something I am deeply passionate about, I don't intend to disrupt it. However, I expect that any new ramblings will appear here. Or both. As a temporary kind of solution, you can try this mixed RSS feed of both sites.