On a cheerier note, a public thank you to Mr Wrinkled Weasel and his wife Kirstine for hosting me for lunch in Edinburgh on Saturday.

WW (aka Ged Eastick from the family that invented Golden Syrup) and I somehow got in touch a few weeks ago via all this blogging and agreed to get together in real meat-space for a natter when an occasion presented itself. So we did. And had a fine time.

Apart from chatting freely about our utterly different lives and times (Crawfs in minefielded Bosnia, Weasels living on a canal barge) we agreed that we run our respective websites just because we enjoy the act of writing.

And his output is querkily full of verve, even if in real life he was not quite as Biggles-like as his blog picture suggests.

The next one’s on me.