I'd like to say that it's because Scots are less racist and more leftwing than the English but that wouldn't actually be true (social attitude studies consistently show little difference - for example this report (pdf) "Is Scotland more left-wing than England" finds very modest differences in concern over income inequality and support for tax-and- ( Read more... )

I think I spent more of my long weekend watching the Tour de France and reading Ghost Ship from cover to cover, than I did tidying but I only have 2 plastic crates and 2 document boxes left to go through and the cupboard is looking fairly civilised (a lot of what we've kept is actually packing materials, but it seems silly to throw out bubblewrap ( Read more... )

5 months ago I walked home from work in the snow and this evening I did similarly. 5 months of on-and-off snow in this city, which is basically at sea level, has got to be some sort of record.

Why did I think this week was the time to break out my spring user icon?? We currently have a blizzard outside...

This weather is seriously crackers! I mean it's OCTOBER tomorrow and I just nearly cooked on my lunchtime constitutional - it must have been about 25 degrees C in the sun in the park, I wished I'd put a loose summer blouse and my sun hat on, and had to shade-hug all the way home after cooling down in CO-OP under their blissful, usually far too cold ( Read more... )

*Big work meeting on Thursday went pretty well - have comprehensive plan of attack for getting paper accepted in GCB and detailed to do list. Spent the evening at the student union creating my character for the Boy's 7th Sea game inspired by the Dorothy Dunnett books we have both been reading. Can't wait to play her, she's a beautiful and deadly ( Read more... )

*York was lovely - I'm a big fan of medieval architecture so just wandering around the place is lovely, especially when the weather turned out to be far less wet than I was expecting, but we also did something of a museum tour - the Merchant Adventurer's Hall (we are roleplayers, how could we resist something so named?!), the Jorvik centre, York ( Read more... )

More snow last night and a veritable blizzard this morning. Now into 13th day of snow lying around these parts and the wind has got up too so it feels really bitter. My heating has hardly been off in the daytime for about a week, despite turning the thermostat down and sitting in the house in 3 layers. The little snow plough was out doing the ( Read more... )

I've been moping about for the past 2 weeks because I've had annoying mild flu and head coldy-type symptoms and felt too crappy to do any exercise, which is what I really needed after the double disappointments of no pottery and the poor Boy missing out on his uni place, putting all our future plans back by another year. But we are off to Northern ( Read more... )

I've been meaning to post about this ever since the campaign posters started appearing around my local area a few weeks ago, but a post on the Fword blog has just reminded me.

Rape Crisis Scotland are running a new campaign, This is not an invitation to rape me, aimed at tackling the frankly appalling attitudes towards rape in Scotland, for ( Read more... )