It’s been about thirteen years now since I was last this far north at this time of year. Dad always used to tell us that it never gets properly dark at midsummer in the north of Scotland, but since I’ve spent nearly all my life in England, and we normally only head this way in August, I’d never realised just how not properly dark it doesn’t get, even though it is nine degrees south of the Arctic Circle.
This photograph, taken in Alford, Aberdeenshire just after 1am this morning, should give you some idea though. It was the point in the night when it gets darkest, and as you can see there is still quite a bit of light in the northern sky:
Technical details for the photo-geeks among you: f/2.8, two second exposure, ISO 80 film speed on a Canon PowerShot A720 IS digital camera. This is the same scene taken just over an hour earlier with the same settings:
Can somebody please explain to me why the pointy-haired bosses in the Scottish transport office have a fetish for ridiculously low speed limits at roadworks? It’s down to thirty miles an hour on the motorway leading up to the Forth Road Bridge and ten miles an hour on a stretch of the A90 a few miles south of Aberdeen.
I’ve never encountered speed limits that low in comparable situations south of the border, but then again there are other factors at play back home. The sheer volume of traffic on the M25 reduces things to a complete crawl at times, for instance.
We are being treated to some Highland bagpipe, erm, entertainment, this afternoon, from a busker in a kilt and a T-shirt just outside our offices.
It is absolutely excruciating.
Now before my readers north of the border burn me at the stake for being a Sassenach heretic, let me hasten to add that bagpipes can sound good in the right setting. At the Highland Games in Braemar, for instance, or at a wedding, when they’re played by someone with a bit of talent. Or, of course, on a Delirious? album.
Unfortunately, they never sound good just outside your offices. Especially when you’re a geek up to your ears in computer code and trying to concentrate.
Besides which, you need quite a bit of talent on the bagpipes if you don’t want to sound like you’re trying to give a cat a bath. And this gentleman doesn’t have an awful lot of that. He keeps making mistakes, with the result that it sounds at best like the musical equivalent of a teenager’s typo-ridden MySpace blog, and at worst like Vogon poetry.
In any case, he seems to be ignorant of one particularly important fact about Scottish culture. Kilts are formal dress. They only have the desired effect when worn as part of the full Highland regalia. Combining one with a T-shirt is on the same part of the bad taste scale as the combination of shorts and socks and open-toed sandals on a fifty year old obese American.
RSS feed
Comments closed » 
Posted at 11:42 on 20 June 2008.
Feel free to take a look round the site — if I
say anything that 
