Alex Salmond says Alba membership has risen after SNP leadership election
Nothing much to add to what I said before, but here’s something you won’t read in the MSM – what Alex Salmond is telling members of Alba, the new party he leads:
“At the start of this week I offered my congratulations to Humza Yousaf on his election as SNP leader and Scotland’s new First Minister.
It is now in the best interests of all the people of Scotland that he sets about restoring the Scottish Government’s reputation for competent Government. It was a hard won reputation, and sadly one which has been dissipated in recent years.
In the phrase which made the SNP leadership election campaign, “continuity won’t cut it”. It’s clear that people across the independence movement agree, and as a result we have welcomed hundreds of new members to ALBA, just over the past few days.
Therefore to all of our new members and to every single party member, thank you for your support.
As the new First Minister focuses on regaining the trust of the people in the delivery of our public services, the constitutional issue must not be kicked into the long grass yet again.
It is a false choice between campaigning for independence or governing well. The SNP governments which I led did both. That’s why the people of Scotland put their trust in the Scottish Government and it was that overwhelming support of the people that allowed us to bend Westminster to the will of Scotland to deliver an independence referendum in 2014.
Scotland is an energy rich nation but our people can’t afford to heat their homes. That’s the sort of issue that Humza Yousaf should be facing down Westminster over, not unpopular policies grafted onto the independence movement by the Green Party. Much less time should be spent pursuing self-identification and much more time spent on the achievement of self-determination. The people of Scotland have voted in election after election for Scotland to have a choice on its own future.
Humza Yousaf’s first serious initiative as First Minister should be to back the calls of other independence supporting parties and organisations and convene an Independence Convention. Indeed Kate Forbes and Ash Regan, who between them secured a majority votes, both backed this proposal during the leadership contest.”
Humza Yousaf’s kitchen cabinet signals more of the same from the SNP
SO it’s all over now, bar the shouting – the new SNP leader has been installed and he’s surrounded himself with a cabinet that wouldn’t be out of place in an old kitchen.
I’m not a fan of Humza Yousaf. I’ve always reckoned he thinks too much of himself, which was o
bvious during the leadership hustings. I thought it hilarious when Kate Forbes put him very firmly in his place during one of their debates, trashing his record in every government job he’s held.
She was correct there – can you imaging anybody in the private sector employing someone who had failed so abysmally in all their most recent jobs?
But he bounced back from that to win the race and pledged to reunite his party, which appeared more divided than ever after years of work by Nicola Sturgeon and her acolytes keeping their disagreements and splits well out of the public eye.
He was seen as the continuity candidate (ie more of the same) and we saw that with his cabinet of six women and three men – mainly allies of Nicola, including her close pal Shona Robison.
I do wonder what the new minister for independence, Jamie Hepburn, will do to justify his salary of up to £98,000 given the SNP’s total inertia on the issue since they came to power.
No wonder he’s smiling so heartily in every pic I’ve seen of him!
One thing Yousaf has not done is live up to the crap he spouted during pre- and post-election interviews regarding his contenders for the top job (keep your friends close and your enemies closer).
OK, he made Kate Forbes an offer she could quite easily (and did) refuse, apparently thinking that because she has a rural seat that she’d welcome a demotion to the rural affairs brief.
No chance!
What about his other rival for the leadership, Ash Regan? I don’t know if the new FM sees her as a particular threat, but in the latter days of the campaign there certainly appeared to be a groundswell of support for her as Yousaf and Forbes went for each other’s throats.
I’ve made no secret of my view that had I been a member of the party I would have voted for and probably campaigned for Ash, but I’m not so I didn’t.
I am surprised at Yousaf’s choice for energy minister – the potty-mouthed Aberdeenshire East MSP Gillian Martin – who apparently will never stop apologising: https://news.stv.tv/scotland/humza-yousaf-criticised-for-making-gillian-martin-minister-after-offensive-jokes-about-trans-and-black-people
That’s one that will come back to haunt him.
Pip pip.
How ‘fixed’ is SNP leadership contest?
via Substack
SO, Nicola Sturgeon has called it a day as Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the SNP and I’m sure that Gordon Wilson – the late party leader – must be birlin’ in his grave at the miles of worldwide newspaper coverage and hours of and broadcast news about it.
I’ll run through the leadership contenders shortly. For the moment though let’s look at Nicola’s legacy – and what has driven the deep divisions in the party.
Nicola always appeared to be a decent FM who managed to get things done eventually, but the incestuous and autocratic running of the SNP was not a good look and was always going to backfire on her and her husband and party chief executive Peter Morrell.
This isn’t the place to talk about his £107,600 ‘loan’ to the party, which Nicola claimed to know nothing about. Instead, consider where we are now as we wait for the dwindling number of SNP faithful to cast their votes for the next person to occupy the hot seat.
Neither Kate Forbes nor Humza Yousaf would get my vote were I still a party member, and for different reasons.
I think Kate has done a sterling job with the finance brief, especially after stepping to deliver a budget at such short notice after Derek Mackay’s departure, and she has been relatively competent in the role since.
But – and it’s a BIG but – her remarks on gay marriage and people having children outside of marriage were something else.
Her church, the fundamentalist Free Church of Scotland, sprang to her defence accusing her detractors of “a level of bigotry” that had no place in society.
Of course, Ms Forbes is entitled to her beliefs, but I can’t understand why, after she admitted “tiptoeing” around them on other occasions, she decided to air them in a series of interviews which, I think, highlighted her naivety, as well as losing her some major political supporters.
Then we have Humza Yousaf reckoning that he is the man for the jobs. In every interview he does he touts his “experience in office” – but this is a man who has made a dog’s breakfast of almost every senior ScotGov position he’s held.
He started in Alex Salmond’s administration as external affairs and international development minister. Then, under Nicola’s reign he went to: Transport (remember the horrifically expensive and continuing ferries debacle and the delayed dualling of Scotland’s most dangerous road the A9); Justice (the controversial Hate Crime Bill which critics said stifled free speech); and Health (blaming the pandemic for everything he got wrong – NHS performance and A & E waiting times among them).
That is not an exhaustive list, but if he had failed so abysmally out in the real world he’d be unemployable.
So, with two Sturgeon loyalists leading the field (allegedly) that brings us on to the third – and many say the best – candidate, Ash Regan, who held the community safety brief before she quit government over the gender reform legislation Nicola and her squad were determined to railroad through the Scottish parliament.
In my book she gets five stars for stepping away from something who has torn the SNP apart, wasted parliamentary time and detracted from the main purpose of the party – to secure independence for Scotland.
Regan was elected to Holyrood in the 2016 election when she saw off the then-Labour leader Kezia Dugdale with a majority of over 5000.
Before Holyrood, she worked in marketing and PR, studied international relations, worked as head of campaigns and advocacy at the Common Weal (think-and-do tank) and joined the national committee of Women for Independence (WfI) in 2014 – when she also (post-referendum) joined the SNP.
She has said she will “re-invigorate” the SNP, which had “dismantled” the Yes movement since 2014; she has pledged more power to members and will return the indy movement “back to the people” and focus more on the cause – which all sounds good to me.
She told The Herald in an interview ahead of her campaign launch that the wider Yes movement had become “marginalised” in recent years and that if elected, she intended to change that.
Regan said: “As a party, I don’t think we’ve listened enough to the groups who got us here. I know these people because I campaigned side-by-side with them throughout the first referendum.
“The party has effectively dismantled the Yes campaign, but I want to re-constitute it once more.
“It’s also important that we get on with the business of governing on the day-to-day issues affecting all of the people of Scotland. And, as much as possible, allow some of the groups who did amazing work for the Yes cause in 2013 and 2014 to do what they did so well back then. I want to get the band back together, if you like.”
In a world where the SNP establishment hadn’t stitched everything up, Ash Regan would be a shoo-in to the leadership and FM post, but sadly that will only happen if SNP members take a look around them and see what’s happened to their once principled party.
Shortly before he died Gordon Wilson told me the SNP had to learn how to cope with the mass influx of members who signed up to the party after the 2014 referendum. He recalled a surge of membership during his leadership – “nothing like as huge as this time, but still too many for us to cope with” – and how the leadership didn’t know how to handle it. He said the proper way to do it would be to embrace the wider Yes movement and bring them into the fold. Give that success pro-indy demonstrations since then – organised by the movement instead of a party allegedly supporting the cause – have been massive, he wasn’t far off the mark.
This is exactly what Ash Regan wants to do as SNP leader and I think she’d make a superb leader because she is willing to embrace EVERYONE who wants independence and not simply the SNP few.
In his second volume of The Battle for Independence, Wilson said: “The independence referendum has place Scotland on the world map … brought Scotland out of the shadows only to disclose an invincible ignorance as the campaign developed.”
Sturgeon’s resignation, as I said earlier, made headlines around the world.
Let us hope her successor can keep our country in the news – and for all the right reasons.
What next for Dundee’s Three Js as D C Thomson cuts hundreds of jobs?
I was as shocked as anybody at news that D C Thomson, the company that put the third ‘J’ in Dundee’s 3Js is cutting 300 jobs from its workforce of 1600 – a total that’s shrunk by over 500 since 2016.
From its newspapers such as the Courier, Evening Telegraph, Press and Journal, The Sunday Post and People’s Friend, to the UK’s longest running comic, The Beano, everyone in Scotland has come across DCT in their lifetime.
The notoriously private family firm is axing around 40 publications and will close its operation in Colchester – Aceville Publications – which publishes over 20 magazines from the 50 or so DCT acquired in 2018.
How did it come to the point where a stalwart of Scotland’s newspaper and magazine publishing sector – as well as the relatively recent addition of commercial radio to its portfolio – can deliver such devastating news?
DCT has always been cautious when planning ahead. Moving into radio and taking on Wave in Dundee, Kingdom FM in Fife and Original 106 in Aberdeen was a brave move, but not an ultimately fatal one.
Management at DCT are now planning a digital reset as more and more publications go online, where they are likely to stay.
It’s a great shame that one of the biggest names in Scottish newspapers and journalism should stumble over a digital hurdle.
I will always remember the day I stepped into the magnificent, red sandstone-clad building in Meadowside, Dundee for my first day at work there.
From a uniformed doorman at the main office of the Courier Building, to the rumble of the presses underneath and the hissing of the compressed air system that sped messages between Meadowside and the Bank Street offices and press hall, I was an awe-struck young man.
A reporter came down to meet me and guided me into the lift that trundled us to the fourth floor. I had been there before for an interview with a stern-looking relic with a grey, handlebar moustache who had demanded to know what my religion was, but this was different – I was about to start work in a place whose training had help journalists secure placements in national publications and further afield in print and in broadcasting.
I made many friends at DCT, but a number of them are unfortunately long gone. I did my fair share of council meetings, district, sheriff and high courts, all helped by DCT’s in-house shorthand classes.
The company knew what it wanted from its reporters and its training ensured that they were fit for the job, either in Dundee, one of the many branch offices, or at other newspapers.
I only stayed at DCT for a few years before spreading my wings and departing Clootie City for pastures new, but I treasure my memories of the time and the people.
Every time I am back in the city I like to walk around just to see the New York Times-inspired Courier Building dominating the town centre.
I am sure DCT will survive this “blip” and welcome many more generations of young hopefuls into Meadowside’s hallowed halls.
Picture Copyright 2017 Laerol. First publication through Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-4.0 license).
Unions flexing their reformed muscles … but will it work against an intransigent government?
WHAT a year it’s been, from the musical chairs in Downing Street, to the reshaping of the SNP’s Westminster contingent, the tragedy of more refugee deaths in the English Channel, and union strife at levels not seen since the Winter of Discontent in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher launched war on the unions – branding them ‘the enemy within’.
In the first in this series of festive posts I’ll start with the industrial unrest that’s plaguing the NHS and ambulance services (not in Scotland), airports, schools and what used to be ‘our’ trains, buses and postal services.
The scale of this unrest is reminiscent of the 1980s, when Thatcher crushed the once-mighty NUM and Rupert Murdoch (through his mouthpiece Andrew ‘Brillo Pad’ Neil) saw off the powerful print unions at Wapping after a lengthy and exceptionally bitter dispute..
So, how have we come to this?
Brexit had a major part to play making Britain a laughing stock around the world as the Tories realised that people in European nations, as well as countries outside the EEC bubble, didn’t like them, or Britain, at all.
The UK’s departure from the bloc meant nothing to those within it, who were free to get on with their prosperous lives without being barracked by ministers who thought they still ruled the Commonwealth.
In the months and years before Brexit, I wrote many times about its potential effects, along the way interviewing politicians, business people and lawyers whose warnings were dismissed as ‘scaremongering’.
One company in the south-west of Scotland with a substantial European order book told me several times that exporting to the bloc had become so difficult that it was easier to export to Canada, New Zealand or Australia. The loss of the European market had left them seriously concerned about their operation in Scotland and the people they employed. I will revisit them soon for an update, although I do fear that the news won’t be good.
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin revealed in a study earlier this year that Brexit has had cut the potential value of goods exports to Europe by 16 per cent, while EU exports here represented a 20 per cent loss in potential sales.
Their study used a hybrid model combining UK and EU data, and assumed that had Brexit not happened, UK import and export levels with Europe would have mirrored the EU’s relatively stronger internal trade performance last year.
Desperate to continue some kind of trade with the bloc, the UK has imposed few post-Brexit restraints on EU imports, meaning European goods have continued to flow into the country.
However, exports to the EU are subject to extensive customs and other checks that increase costs and delays, which manufacturers – already working on low profit margins – cannot afford.
We might ask ‘will it get any better?’ but that would seem unlikely as long as we have a government populated by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg – accused in 2018 of copying the style of Beano character Walter Brown – who still appears to be inhabiting a parallel universe somewhere in the 1800s.
More follows later… Pip pip.
Could Rishi Sunak take a leaf out of Francis Urquhart’s book?
I CAN barely look at newspapers or news programmes these days – full of politicians, their pals and unelected peers sneering as they trouser vast sums of money while the rest of the country counts the pennies and wait for gigantic energy bills to thud through their letter boxes.
Westminster is a never-ending carousel of corruption, and it seems to be getting worse.
The ineffectual Rishi Sunak, bolstered by his chums, treats SNP politicians with barely concealed contempt.
These are the MPs that we in Scotland returned with several mandates which – unfortunately – they have ignored until it is now too late.
Nicola Sturgeon’s ill-thought-out attempt to look as if she was doing something positive about independence is in tatters, and all this nonsense about using a general election as a de facto indyref is a complete non-starter.
I don’t know where we go from here when our democratic processes are being dismantled by a government we did not elect, but it’s bound to get worse before it gets any better.
To get away from it all the other night, I binge-watched the first series in the House of Cards Trilogy, where the ruthless Tory chief whip Francis Urquhart, played by the late, great Ian Richardson, sets his ducks in a row as he prepares for a run at No 10 – all the while denying that he’s interested in becoming PM.
To a constant refrain of, “I’m simply a back-room boy,” FU schemes, plots, manipulates and manoeuvres everyone around him, including young journalist Mattie Storin (who was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for her role), until he is the only real
choice for the top job.
Former Tory MP Michael Dobbs, who now sits in the Lords, wrote the trilogy in 1989 during the last days of the Thatcher reign and the book spawned the TV dramatisation, as well as a US version made by Netflix.
Although it is fiction, much of the story is more than believable and illustrates the truth of the ties between power-broking media moguls and top politicians.
I’m now waiting for the opportunity to re-watch the rest of the trilogy, only too aware that the real House of Cards is probably slightly more feral than Dobbs’s writings.
Pip pip.
Westminster circus is demolishing what’s left of MPs’ reputations
IF my CV showed a job I’d only been in for 44 days before being forced out, I’d be ashamed to show it and I’m fairly certain potential employers would have trashed it way before the interview stage.
But what does Liz Truss get?
A yearly allowance of £115,000 for a job she couldn’t manage for even a decent part of her probation period.
And lo and behold Boris Johnson, the previous PM – the least trustworthy and most duplicitous and sleekit ever to have graced the corrupt ‘corridors of power’ is preparing a comeback to rival that of Lazarus.
Behind the scenes though, sensible Tories, realising that Jane and Joe Public would never stand for it, have tried to avoid the need for a massive damage limitation exercise by setting the bar for anyone entering the new leadership contest at 100 votes, in the hope that the divisive former PM will not be able to garner enough.
So, the House of Cards is beginning to collapse, but it has to fall completely and spectacularly.
Why should the new PM be decided by 350-odd Tory MPs? The last incumbent was at least chosen by 172,000 people – granted they were members of the Conservative Party – but what of the wider population?
Ask why the voting population of the UK should be denied a say and the ‘experts’ come back and say we live in a ‘parliamentary democracy’ – where representatives are elected to parliament to make the laws and decisions for the country – and that cannot be changed.
Why not, when the previous incumbent trashed the reputations of many politicians while he and his cabinet helped line their friends’ pockets?
After all, they work for us, not the other way round.
As Dr Andrew Corbett, from the Defence Studies Department at King’s College, London, wrote: “Since Prime Minister Boris Johnson was voted into power, his Government has threatened parliamentary sovereignty, the independence of the judiciary, the independence of the BBC, the individual right to trial by jury and has undermined public confidence in all institutions of governance to an extent never seen before.”
You can’t really argue with that can you?
Nobody in the Tory Party wants a general election, that is patently obvious given the slim chance of them being returned to government.
But they should remember that the people are sovereign and that politicians are only in Westminster for as long as the people vote to keep them there.
Quite simply the next PM (and governing party) should be decided in a general election – it’s that simple.
That’s enough for a Friday night – the No 10 picture was sent to me via LinkedIn by a colleague and it was too good not to use.
Pip pip.
We gotta get out of this place … if it’s the last thing we ever do
IT seems there’s not a day passes but the news gets worse, and our politicians are making it that way.
Successive Tory prime ministers are doing nothing to improve this Disunited Kingdom – Major was the Grey Man, Cameron was hopeless, May was hapless, Johnson was a Billy Bunter figure full of his own self-importance, a penchant for gaffes, a constant smirk on a face you’d never tire of slapping, and an inveterate liar.
And now of curse we have Liz Truss.
Sandwiched between them all are Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but their tenure was almost as bad as that of the Tories (some might say worse).
But Johnson is also as crooked a politician as I’ve ever seen.
What he has left in his wake has made UK even more of a global laughing stock than it was. Whereas Johnson tried to be sleekit
about actions that were of benefit to his City pals, including those from his chancellor Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are quite open about it.
The largesse delivered by Kwarteng is destined only to be of benefit to the wealthy and super-rich.
I find myself wondering if either of them knows what a food bank is, and that more and more working people are being forced to use them.
It’s unthinkable that they have scrapped the limit on bankers’ bonuses (bear in mind the financial crash of 2008) and no doubt we’ll be seeing them regularly quaffing bottles of Champagne as they celebrate their seven-figure pay days.
A friend of mine who has the good sense to be a resident of another European country, puts it thus: “Assume you have traded all your pounds for groats, Cadbury creme eggs, camels or even nigerian nairas.
“Kwasimodo Kwartermaster in charge of the economy is like letting an evil devilchild humpback ring the church bells at Christmas.
“Heard latest Tory economic strategy is they exhumed Harold Macmillan and found the notes in his back pocket: observe Keynesian economics (not Trussonomics), join the EEC, support a NHS, some nationalised industries and strong trade unions.
“Oh wait a f*%#ing minute, we just undid all that!”
Well said Mike.
Cost of living crisis a ‘looming catastrophe’ as beanz meanz parting with £1 a tin
It’s been a while, but I’ve been completely scunnered by the worsening state of the UK as a handful of the population decides on their replacement for what is beyond a doubt the worst prime minister in living memory.
However, I don’t intend to dwell on my contempt for the Tories. They will – eventually – get what they deserve.
I will say I was disappointed, disgusted even, with Ian Blackford the other day drooling in an interview about how he loves the ‘cut and thrust’ of Westminster – this coming from someone who has told me umpteen times how he and the other SNP MPs were desperate to get out of “that place”. In response I told him that the SNP MPs had become too settled in the Commons, which he fervently denied. Just thought I’d mention that.
Over the past few years I’ve written a fair bit about a New Scot I’ve had a fair amount of contact with – Mark Frankland, who runs the First Base Food Bank in Dumfries, as well as being a published author.
He told me earlier this week that the cost of living crisis and social emergency is set to worsen as supermarkets ration the amount of groceries food projects can buy or are given in donations, and he’s urging Holyrood to step up to the plate.
The coming winter is a “looming catastrophe”, unlike anything we have seen “since Hitler was strutting his stuff”, he says.
And in an open letter to the Scottish Government he urged them to meet the challenge in the same way as they did in March 2020, “when the pandemic threatened to tear apart the social fabric much like it is doing in China right now”.
Frankland says the Scottish Government made quick and decisive decisions then, like making funds available for front line charities to meet the needs of self-isolating communities, and made the cash available quickly with the minimum of red tape.
“And it worked … better than anyone could possibly have imagined,” he says. “All over Scotland, new community projects joined with existing projects like First Base and by hook or by crook, the vulnerable were looked after.
“We all proved it could be done and it was done. It was done in double quick time and it was done unbelievably well. And it was done by an army of volunteers.
“You guys provided the funding and the community did the rest.”
Frankland says that in his “60+ years” he has witnessed two huge “£1 a … moments” – when he was 18 during the 1979 winter of discontent when petrol increased to £1 a gallon.
“Eighteen years later, an older and still broke me got to know how it felt to pay £1 a litre for the first time. This summer I had my third ‘pound a …’ moment.
“I was online in Tesco Groceries ordering the weekly First Base delivery and there it was right there on the screen. As bold as brass. Heinz Baked Beans. Not 440g any more. Only 415g now. £1 a tin.
“Quite a moment. And it seemed clear neither Heinz nor Tesco were in any mood to water it down. I mean they could have bottled it and gone for 99p. But no. They clearly were intent on sending a message.”
Frankland says that by autumn, anyone relying on Universal Credit with the average cost of domestic power forecasts to reach £70 a week will be left with £3 to feed, clothe and clean themselves.
He says projects such as Fareshare, which helps supply food banks, will suffer as supermarkets ration what charities can buy and increase sales of reduced “yellow ticket” items, for which people have started queuing up every night.
But he says the network of volunteers that exploded into life early in the pandemic is still there.
“We all know how to deal with a huge crisis. We proved we could do it in 2020. We can do it again.
“As a legacy of the pandemic, every council in Scotland now has a relationship with the community groups who stepped up when everything was grinding to a halt … provided us with the funds we needed in the pandemic. You can do it again.”
In a plea to the Scottish Government, he adds: “And you guys? Well, you need to do exactly the same job you did in 2020. You need to make sure no emergency food project ever has to turn people away due to a lack of food.
“It didn’t happen when 2000 people a day were dying of Covid in the darkest days of 2020.
It doesn’t need to happen in the darkest days of the coming winter. You have two months to … be ready for the worst.
“And when the tsunami hits, you can be ready to press the button and the community will do the rest. Please don’t blow it.”
You can read more of Mark’s blog here: http://marksimonfrankland.blogspot.com/
Still working, but …
Have you noticed there are never enough hours in the day?
I’m sure I could draw up a long list of things I could have done with them, but then again I would probably have been distracted by something – my latest new guitar perhaps; the urge to drive for a couple of hundred miles for a night away and a long cool beer in a strange pub; or taking to the hills, maybe bagging another couple of Munros.
No worry – I’ll get round to all those things when I have time and a half-decent weather forecast.
As it was we did have a very pleasant holiday in the Canaries – Fuerteventura to be precise – just relaxing, walking around the island’s beaches and towns, eating nice food, chatting with some very pleasant people and sampling the odd beer or bottle of wine.
It was our first holiday in a long time – thanks to Covid – and it gave me the opportunity to look at Britain and consider what people thought about what is happening here.
Of course when you arrive on a UK flight you are automatically labelled a Brit, until you tell people you are actually a Scot. Then, as conversation develops with the odd remark about Brexit, they can’t understand why we are no longer in the EU when we voted to remain.
Then you name the culprit, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, our scheming, conniving, lying and mendacious prime minister
who has turned these isles into a world laughing stock. He is the only man who is more Trumpian than The Donald himself.
It’s not only Johnson of course, but the overprivileged and loathsome Eton and Oxford educated coterie that inhabit the corridors of power with him.
Tempting though it is, I’m not going to waste my words with a diatribe against such enemies of the state. Their time will come, sooner rather than later.
But shortly after returning from holiday I met and spent some time with a sibling I never knew I had – a sister who has made her life in Canada. Shock doesn’t begin to express my initial reaction, but we spent a very pleasant day discussing familial affairs – quite literally as it turned out.
For the past few of days I have thought of little else. But there is more – a cousin (?) – of mine who lives down under and who has been engaged in some very impressive research into our family history, which is quite stunning.
One day when I’ve made sense of it all, I might put fingers to keyboard, but I’m still trying to digest it all and I’m in need of a nightcap.
Until the next time – pip pip.