Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Jul 2, 2010 | Uncategorized

And so it is the night before hols and this computer is shortly to be switched off and put away for a week or so.  I do not intend to be anywhere near the internet while we’re away. Any blogging or diary entries for the next few days will be written in longhand in a notebook and then, perhaps, written up here as a report on holidays.

It rather depends what I write – four years ago in Italy a goodly chunk of my journal was taken up by comments on the text of the two main novels which I had with me (James Hogg’s “Three Perils of Man” and “Three Perils of Women”). They were excellent novels but I didn’t bring the notes over to the blog.

Also on that trip I had with me Charles Stross’ “The Atrocity Archives”, the first of his novels about Bob Howard inThe Laundry – the branch of the British secret service which concerns itself with defending mankind from gibbering horrors from beyond the boundaries of space-time.  By happy coincidence I have just finished reading the third in that series which has just been published – “The Fuller Memorandum”.  I had bought it to take on holiday but couldn’t help myself reading it the moment it fell into my clutches.

It is excellent.

And so to hols.  We’ll be up in Sutherland on the Northwest edge of the Scottish Mainland with only the northern tip of Lewis between ourselves and Canada.  If the weather remains as it has for the past week then we will have no complaints but the weather up there is, er, changeable.

I’ll have my walking boots with me together with my binoculars and camera – and a couple of other thick books just in case.  Whatever happens I won’t mind too much – Sutherland is a place that I love and I’ll be happy just to be there.

If I do get out though I’d like to go back to Sandwood Bay – my favourite place on Earth – where I haven’t been since Kirstin and I walked there some time before Lindsay was born (and she is 21 in three weeks time).  Handa Island would be nice too.

We’ll see.

Keep the place tidy while we’re gone – and no wild parties.