It was a mighty 26 degrees here yesterday (79F), which pretty much constitutes a heatwave in Dunfermline. Sunglasses were needed in the high street to combat the blinding glare from pale topless men. Anything higher than 15 degrees then off come the jumpers and jackets and out come the bellies, concave or corpulent.

Down at the park the hillside was strewn with more bare-chested bodies. Birds sang and unprotected Scottish skin barbecued. On the bus the old ladies who moaned about the endless winter last week now moaned about the relentless heat. Hellish, they called it.

Drunk guy just sat down next to a bookreading girl on the bus.

BOOK GIRL: You are reeking of drink!

DRUNK GUY: And you are reeking of literature!

(this is just a wee tweet I wanted to preserve!)

Haggis, cheese and panini - together at last. But £5.65?!

Aside from that time I chased guisers down the street, I’ve not done anything Halloweeny since I moved to Scotland. But this year it was totally spooktastic.

Gareth carved two pumpkins - one for us and one for his Mum’s birthday, coz Mum’s dig the handmade gifts. We dooked for apples at work. Then Hippo played a Halloween gig at a local pub.

As mentioned before, Hippo already had a bass player so Gareth got lumped with the keyboards. At least this give you a great excuse to put on a flowing blonde wig and dress up as the legendary prog-meister Rick Wakeman.

It was bloody hilarious seeing G with hair. He didn’t stop fussing with it all night, tossing it over his shoulders; stroking it with tender absentmindedness; tutting when a rowdy reveller sloshed it with Guinness.

Aside from Rick Wakeman the band featured a pirate, a scarecrow, a terrorist and Australia’s favourite serial killer, Chopper Read. Here’s some footage of the noisy lads at work; they were ace.

The next night we went to a Halloween party. Gareth’s cape and wig were totally destroyed by the night of rock so he hastily assembled a new costume from his bike leathers and a grungy mask and club from the pound shop. He seemed to enjoy the raven locks even more than the Wakeman tresses. I bought a 50p pitchfork and £1 stupid hat that claimed to be devilish but just looked like a demented pilgrim.

Do you remember that shitty, sinking feeling you got at school when you had an assignment that you did at the last moment in a half-arsed manner thinking that everyone else would have the same crappy attitude, but then you get to class and realise everyone has gone all out and used glitter and stuff? That was My First Halloween Party. Everyone put in so much effort; I felt totally budget. There were geishas, zombies, hippies; a disturbing Josef Fritzl and an Optimus Prime. One couple had handmade Rabid Care Bear costumes - they fashioned the heads out of coathangers and cushions and furry fabric then splashed the whole ensemble with fake blood.

Still, I learned a lot from observing the locals this year and will be sure to do things properly next time.

“I don’t really get this Halloween stuff,” I’d told one of my Scottish pals a few weeks ago, “We don’t really do it in Australia.”

“Do you come fae Australia!?” she said, “Ohh. I always thought you talked a bit funny.”

Cheers to my colleague Simon for passing on this BBC News article: Washing up bowls 'a health hazard'

"Many commonly used kitchen implements are a threat to health and should be thrown away, scientists have warned.

Washing up bowls and re-usable dish clothes are thought to be a particularly good breeding ground for bugs."

The article is from December 2000. If I'd seen it at the time it may have killed my longing to move to the UK, especially with this quote from Professor Hugh Pennington of the University of Aberdeen, one of Britain's leading infection experts:

"I would like to get rid of washing-up bowls altogether. They are an absolute menace."

. . .
Blogging veteran Matt Haughey wrote an interesting post last week about blog comments and how he feels they've become a bit shit over the years:

"I have a feeling that if you've only seen blogs in the past five years (which is probably 95+% of people reading blogs today) you consider comments to be de rigueur and they are entirely divorced from the original concept of a conversation between the reader and the author of the original post. It's not an intimate conversation, it's just another content management feature available to you on the web.

This has a de-humanizing effect that I'm seeing play out more and more often in the weirdest places. People will post about their idle curiosities on their personal blog ("Why does x happen when I do y?") and instead of seeing friendly answers I would expect many years ago, I'll often see someone early on read into the question and assume all sorts of accusations ("well, maybe it's because you are a, b, and c, and everyone knows it!") and watch most followup comments start from there and go into darker directions."

Well, you do see more moronic semi-literate bawbags popping up these days, but it seems to be mostly on really mega personal blogs of Dooceian proportions. I have more issues with shameless pimpsters that skim one entry and write, Great Post, Shauna! This reminds me of my stupid diet pills / miracle face cream/ revolutionary health website which is 10,000 times more infuriating than the olden days of automated comment spam, because at least that was done by a machine!

At least with the blogs I stalk... there is plenty o' cosy chit chat goodness to be found. And here - 105 comments debating the merits of washing dishes in a plastic bowl? That's the sort of thing that makes you want to hump the internet with ecstasy.

I've come to love so many things about Scotland. The fish suppers, the mountains, the graffiti...

... but I cannot get my head around THE TUB.

You're familiar with a kitchen sink, right? Into which normal people would insert a plug, fill with soapy water and wash their plates?

Over here they ignore the sink and the plug and for some unfathomable reason place a large plastic tub inside the sink and fill that up instead.

Why?

Why?

Why oh why?

At first I thought this was just a weird habit of Gareth's, but as I mingled more with the natives I discovered they were tubbing it all over the countryside. My mother-in-law, friends, colleagues...

I just don't bloody get it. What purpose does the tub serve? You've got a perfectly good contraption there already with the kitchen sink, designed precisely for the task. Does the tub have historical significance? Is it an ecological or economical thing?

I've asked Gareth many times, why do they use it?

"Because we just do."

In my quest to fit in to my adopted country I'd come to tolerate the tub over the years and had actually stopped ranting about its pointlessness every single time I did the dishes.

Then my friend Jenny was over from Australia recently. She stared in bewilderment as I turned on the kitchen taps after dinner.

"What's the go with the tub?"

"SEE!" I crowed to Gareth, "Told you it was weird."

After staying with us for a week Jenny filed her report: "I can see only one benefit of the tub. If you forget to empty a cup or saucepan or something, you can tip it down the sink. But apart from that? It's just weird."

I'm curious if the tub phenomenon is a Fife thing or if it's rampant across the land. And what about the rest of the British Isles? Rhiannon reported with great relief when she first moved to London, "No tubs down here" but we've no data for the rest of England.

So... if there's any Scots out there:

1. Do you have a washing up tub?
2. If yes, why the hell why?

The seaside town of Arbroath is famous for many reasons:

• For the Declaration of Arbroath
• For its beautiful and incredibly history-riddled ye olde Abbey
• For being the home of the Arbroath Smokie, a tasty smoked fish that has Protected Designation of Origin status (just like Champagne, Parmesan and Newcastle Brown Ale) and its very own tartan!
• For being the toon where Mothership-in-law Mary is from!

When visiting Arbroath recently I found the above was the mere tip of the tourist iceberg. There was so much more to see, like the sandwich shop called Goodfillaz and the Macdougall Dentist Surgery:

We wandered round the town admiring the buildings, many of which were made from local red sandstone. Behind the Abbey was a bustling red sandstone bowling club.

"I cannae wait to be old," Gareth said almost wistfully as we peered through the fence, "I'm totally going to bowl. Grey trousers and everything."

I took a few photos of the Abbey itself but didn't go inside. It was £4.50 to get in and we only had a tenner on us. If we went into the Abbey we wouldn't have had any money for dinner. When choosing between stomach and brain there can only be one winner.

To me the jewel in the Arbroathian (?) crown was Peppo's fish shop. In my humble and gluttonous opinion it just may contain Scotland's deep-fried Holy Grail - the Best Fish Supper in the land! In my 4.5 years over here there have been two major contenders - the famous Anstruther Fish Bar (as graced by Tom Hanks and Prince William) and the fanbloodybrilliant Ben Ledi Cafe in Callander, but I think Peppo's has the edge.

Long-term lurkers may recall I moonlighted as a fish and chip shop lass during university, so whenever we're in line at a chippie I can't help provide Gareth with annoying commentary and analysis on their business practices.

• There were good signs right from the start - a queue of pensioners halfway down the block waiting for the place to open, and a gang of seagulls loitering across the street. If anyone knows good chips, it's pensioners and seagulls.

• When the doors opened the two charming fellas behind the counter greeted customers by name (except us two strangers, of course)

• There were framed poems on the wall written by satisfied customers. Poems with a dozen stanzas! Now that's devotion.

• Everything was cooked to order. Big deal! you may say, but in sooo many places over here the goods sit in a warmer getting all soggy then get resuscitated in the fryer upon purchase.

• Most places cook chips by putting them into a basket, then lowering the basket into the oil. These chips were free range! The basket was tipped out into the fryer so they could swim about, instead of being squashed up in their metal cage. They splashed and dove then fished out once they'd floated back to the top, all crispy and perfect.

• Once the fish came out of the fryer they stood each piece up vertically for a couple of minutes to let the excess oil drain. Such innovation!

It was bloody delicious too. Clean light crispy batter on succulent fish and chips that seemed the marry the best of Australian and Scottish chips - crisp on the outside but tender in the middle. Hubba hubba!

NOTE: Sorry about the Internal Server Errors. I have no idea why this is happening and will try to fix soon! Comments are being received by MT, just not published to the blog. ARRGH!

Last weekend Dr G and I stayed in these rockin wigwams with a bunch of mates. After stuffing ourselves stupid with barbequed vegetarian sausages on bread rolls we all went for a walk to Tyndrum. Here we are clomping back through all the heather with Ben More and Stob Binnein glowering down at us.

The only thing that spoiled the weekend was when a pack of BASTARDS stole five of Dr G’s beers from the communal fridge. That was NOT in the Spirit of the Wigwam! Grrr.

After nearly 4.5 years in Scotland I've finally exchanged my Australian drivers licence for a UK one. You're supposed to do this after 12 months of residency, but strangely I couldn't bear to part with it.

My Australian Capital Territory licence was a particularly shithouse shade of lemon yellow, looking like it was cobbled together by kindergarteners with a laminating machine. Splashed across the top was a stern warning: DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE. Every time Gareth saw it he'd sqwark, "DOWNT DRINKEN DROIVE!" in his really convincing Australian accent. Sometimes when intoxicated I'd gaze at my old Braddon address and postcode and get a wee bit misty-eyed.

Now I have this shiny new drab and dreary UK licence. For some reason they've turned the photo into black and white so my features are smudged and broody like a serial killer. There's a dorky sense of pride at finally having a proper photo ID with my Scottish address, but more pathetically, I feel bereft. The last little piece of Australia is gone from my wallet! Oz just seems further and further away lately, yet there are moments (like at a wedding last night as I bumbled through all the ceilidh dances) when Scotland feels as bewildering and foreign as that first day.

I don't know about you but I am just writhing in my chair in anticipation of the announcement of the 2007 Airport of the Year Award. Will Singapore's Changi run away with it again, or is there room in our hearts for a newcomer?

I know it's too late to nominate but I believe the gong should go to the teeny tiny gem that is Sumburgh Airport, the bustling hub of the Shetland Isles.

It may lack the razzle dazzle of your Heathrows or LAXes with its crumbling high school looks and absence of restaurants, Duty Free or vibrating massage chairs, but Sumburgh would charm the pants off the most hardened traveller.

- Instead of the usual fast food monoliths, Sumburgh has a cosy cafeteria with a wholesome K-Mart style, with fresh scones and traybakes made by the local hotel. There's even a real live bloke frying up eggs and bacon and black pudding, ready to plop onto a fat bread roll for your dining pleasure.

- The Hotel makes sandwiches for the outbound flights too; so going home feels like a jolly picnic. No dodgy pretzels here!

- The normal procedure for returning a hire car involves a surly bastard inspecting your vehicle with a magnifying glass and questioning every scratch. But at Sumburgh Airport there's no one waiting - there's just a little slot in the office window for you to chuck the keys into.

- Old red tractors at work!

- Instead of warnings about illegal parking or unattended luggage, the only announcement we heard over the airport PA was, "Attention ladies and gentleman, if you are the owner of a wee powder blue Nissan Micra, you've left your lights on!"

I think I'm fitted with 12-month goldfish memory when it comes to the Highlands. When the days get long and our neighbours turn an alarming shade of terracotta, once more my thoughts turn to soaring mountains, campfires and snuggly sleeping bags. Twelve months is long enough to think that camping is a great idea. Twelve months is long enough to erase the memory of the most evil of all insects - the Scottish midge.

On Friday night we packed up the tent and the veggie sausages and headed back to Glen Etive. The weather forecast was good, with no chance of our campsite being turned into an island by torrential rain like last year. The sun was shining when we arrived and chose an extremely stunning spot.

Miraculously we managed to get the tent up before the midges arrived in a black cloud. I'd stuuupidly left my trusty Avon Skin-So-Soft repellent at home, but I thought I'd be okay with my gloves, long sleeves and had my jeans tucked into my socks. Best of all we both had these sexy new midge hats. Sure we looked like beekeepers in mourning, and we could barely see each other or the gorgeous scenery. But at least the bugs couldn't crawl up our nostrils or eat our faces.

Yet the midges were determined to ruin any enjoyment of our night. I'd never seen such a relentless swarm. You may be thinking, how can something so small cause such angst? I am telling you, they are truly the most maddening creatures on earth. We tried going for a walk, but they just followed. I tried to read a book, but the pages were soon smudged with tiny corpses. We tried to make tea, but as soon as we poured it they kamikazied into the cups. We fished them out, but whenever I dared venture from beneath my mesh hat to take a sip, they'd swoop down on my hands. I could feel them dive under the gloves to gnaw on my wrists.

You can see/hear the carnage for yourself in this stunning video that I made. Warning: video contains the word BASTARDS.

In the end insanity forced us into the tent. We zipped the door then spent five minutes swearing and slapping at all the midges that followed us, smearing them over the tent walls and over each other while screaming, "I WILL NEVER CAMP AGAIN!"

Despite all my protection, the little bastards managed to get me. Big time. Even worse than last year. My face may have been spared, but they squeezed past my socks and chomped their way around my ankles. And in my desperate scramble to get into the tent, my top must have got seperated from my jeans, so the midges nibbled a neat row all the way across my back. I am wearing a MIDGE BELT, people.

It's made worse by my severe reaction. Some people get tiny red dots that disappears after a few hours, but I get giant, red, swollen, festering insanely itchy sores the size of dimes. Speckled on my wrists. Tattooed right around each ankle. Circumnavigating my waist. And as a very special bonus, there's three bites forming an angry red arrow right above my BUTT CRACK.

I will spare you a photograph of my rear end, but you can witness the hideousness of my right ankle here from two different (but equally repulsive) angles.

I'm so freaking itchy right now I am ready to bite my feet off. My skin feels like it's on fire. I look like a leper. I'm never going outside again. Not without a full space suit, anyway. Same time next year?

I picked up my complimentary copy of Highland Life magazine while in Shetland. Check out those prizes!

We went to the Shetland Islands and they were chock full of Shetland Ponies! It's like the joy of arriving in Australia and discovering they weren't kidding about the kangaroos and koalas.

Half pony!

This one chased us down a road.

Also, PUFFINS!

Saw this poster at the local primary school on Election Day. Nashty!

My visa arrived in the mail today. You'll never get rid of me now, Britain!

In the end there was no need for immigration lawyers or angry letters to MPs or copulation on the steps of the Home Office to prove our devotion. I simply sent them 58 new pieces of evidence. And one lovely letter of hearty endorsement from Rory.

You may ask why I didn't just send 58 pieces of evidence in the first place. But when the form requested "a minimum of 10 and ideally 20", somehow I missed the invisible sentence that followed, "and another 38 would be quite handy."

My advice to anyone planning to apply for permanent residency: start saving everything. Every bank statement, insurance policy, phone bill, Post-it note, parking ticket, Durex wrapper, milk carton, flat tyre and soggy teabag. Put it all in a big box and send it to the government. Recorded delivery, of course.

Gareth has already skipped off to see his solicitor. I personally wanted to go to Reno so we could end this charade in sunny Nevada where it all began. But now that I'm a permanent resident of Scotland I'm far too tight to fork out for airfares.

Seriously comrades, I'm happy. I love this wee country. Thank you for your kindness and tolerance during my moments of madness. You rule the school.

Headache No. 1 came from slamming my head in the car door. I'd opened the door and was sliding onto the front seat with a bag of groceries when my foot slipped. POW! The right side of my noggin smacked hard against the side of the car, which was unfortunate enough. But alas, at the same time my left hand happened to be pulling the door shut. POW! The door thwacked into the left side of the head. Just to even things up.

I've seen cartoon characters getting smashed with a pair of cymbals by their arch rivals; it looked a lot like that. Except more industrial. And because I inflicted the damage myself, it was a hoot. Gareth almost wept from laughter. And so did I, until it turned into searing tears of PAIN.

So this may have contributed to Headache No. 2 - Filling out my permanent residency application for the stinking Home Office. It's all been sent away now and I'm praying I didn't make any errors while mildly concussed. I shall find out in 4 - 12 weeks.

One question in the form intrigued me:

"Have you or any dependants included in this application ever been involved in acts of committing, preparing, financing or instigating terrorism or acts of encouraging or inducing others to commit, prepare or instigate terrorism, or the attempt of any such acts, either within or outside the UK? Or have you or any dependants included in this application ever been a member or supporter of an organisation which has perpetrated or supported acts of terrorism in furtherance of its aims?"

I know they've got to ask these things, but I wonder if anyone has ever actually ticked the YES box then sent the application in? Yes sir, I am a terrorist, and here's my cheque for £335!

Incidentally, if you've fallen in love with a British citizen, may I suggest you hurry the hell up and apply for your visa before 2nd April, as the already heartbreaking fees are set to rise. It's proposed that Indefinite Leave to Remain, aka permanent residency, will leap from £335 to £750 for postal applications, and £500 to £950 if you want to apply in person. OWW. The price of love ain't cheap, baby! But as you gaze at your British beloved as he heats up a tin of Tesco Value Baked Beans with a single match, you'll know it was worth it.

Likewise I was looking forward to applying for British citizenship next year, but that's set to rise from £200 to £575. I guess if you're not tempted by the right to vote and the right to a snazzy passport with a lion and a thingy on it, you could always just remain a permanent resident. You will always have the right to pay TAX, and that is a joy in itself!

Today I became a dog owner again. For two whole hours!

Gareth and I were walking home this afternoon and as always I was commenting on every cute hound that went by and whinging, "I wish we could have a dog."

Two minutes later an orangey ball of fur whizzed across the road, narrowly dodging a bus.

There was no owner in sight. She just trotted along, pausing to pee on tyres. She was only a wee puppy and I had visions of her pancaked under a truck. Gareth chased her down the hill and managed to call her over. A tag hanging from her glittery pink collar said her name was Fudge. I called the phone number but there was no answer. So what else could we do? We left a message and carried her home.

She was so very cute. And so very stinky. And whiny. And yappy. I'd forgotten how high maintenance puppies are compared to slow and independent old hounds.

After awhile she calmed down and was content to wander round the flat. It was kinda nice having her around, the quiet pad of her feet and the constant snuffling of her wee nose.

But then there was a new sound. Crunch crunch crunch. She'd helped herself to a carrot from the vegie box and was scarfing it down, dirt clods and all!

Needless to say shortly after all that fibre, she was whining by the door. We made a makeshift leash out of string and took her outside. It's not often you pick up someone's shit after you've only known them half an hour.

Her grateful owner came home from work and discovered Fudge had escaped again. I handed over the hound and was happy to see them reunited, but now I'm feeling quite bereft. A carrot-eating canine would have been ideal for our pseudo-vegetarian househould.

But we'd gotten too cosy too quick, already calling her "Fudgster" and "Fudgo". Gareth had even gone round to the corner shop and bought a tin of Pal Puppy Food (with Beef and Poultry!) just in case she had to stay late. I guess we're sorted for dinner then.

I changed my surname when I got hitched. Not because I had aspirations of being a docile 1950s housewife, rather I just felt like a change from the one I'd received upon exiting the womb. Plus, when you added Reid to my given names Shauna Lee, it made me sound even more like a clapped-out country and western singer. SHAWWWNA LUHEEEE REEEEED. Who could walk away from that?

Shauna Lee, my Shauna Lee
Why won't you come back to me?
The fridge is empty
And I need my tea
Come home, Shauna Lee.

If you change your name by marriage the Australian authorities give you 12 months in which you can get a new passport for free. When did I discover that? After 23 months of marriage. D'oh! So now I have cough up the handsome fee of £75.

And of course this comes after already paying £50 to obtain a Change of Name Certificate from the NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages people because the Passport people don't accept non-Australian marriage certificates. Are they suggesting a marriage certificate with a floating head of Elvis it is not legitimate? That's an outrage.

Last night I was tearing through the flat looking for even more forms of Identification to satisfy the Passport people. I could not find a bloody thing. I upturned boxes, emptied bookshelves and unmade the bed all in vain. There was a panicky, unsettling feeling that the search should have been a lot easier than it was. It wasn't til later on when I wanted to read Gareth a funny bit from a book that I figured it out. I was flicking through the pages and getting increasingly cranky at not being able to find the right passage. It was like I had typed the keyword into my brain and could not figure out why the book wasn't automatically searching and turning itself to correct the page. That would be because IT WAS A BOOK and not a computer.

Likewise when I was sitting on the floor surrounded by shoes and dumbells and dirty socks, the keywords DRIVERS LICENCE were zapping across my eyes and I couldn't understand why the drawers were not opening themselves and why the boxes were not automatically being sorted. I thought there should be random objects floating in the air Mary Poppins style from the sheer force of my searching thoughts. But instead I was getting your search has returned 0 results. It was such a crushing feeling to realise I would have to look in a completely manual, analogue fashion.

Long ago I abandoned my Abandoned Gloves of Scotland project. I was obsessed by all those single gloves on the streets of Edinburgh, so frozen and lonely. But I'd given up taking photos of them since most gloves were black and laying on dark backgrounds like cobblestones or pavement.

Thanks to global warming this winter has been much more photogenic. Gareth went walking in the Ochils, high above Castle Campbell. The air was crisp and the landscape was bright as he sat at atop the hill, sipping coffee from a thermos and rejoicing in the brief respite from his pesky wife.

It was on the descent that he spotted the glove sitting on top of a fence post, artfully arranged by some young punk.

Thank you kindly for your muffin stump advice! It's definitely our shitty old oven. You can whack in a tray of chips for an hour and they'll just lay there, all pale and indifferent. So you say to yourself, Okay, I'll give them five more minutes, then POW! They've turned into cremains. The oven is almost as rubbish as the microwave, which takes six minutes to reheat a small bowl of soup.

I'm in denial that these appliances need replacing. I reason that if I glare at them long enough, they will feel the heat of my rage and transfer that to the uncooked food.

Speaking of ovens, we have some neighbours that can only be described as skanks. There are four generations of them: Grandma Skank, Mama Skank, Teen Mama Skank and Baby Skank. They all have bleached blonde hair and orange complexions courtesy of The Tan Stand and they each drive a Vauxhall Corsa. Actually I am exaggerating because Baby Skank doesn't have hair or a Corsa; it would be unfair to pigeonhole someone at such a tender age.

Anyway, they all live in a flat on the second floor and they always have incredibly important and urgent business to do in their Vauxhall Corsas. They get in the car, crank up some pounding techno, drive away with a squeal of tiny tyres, then return in five minutes. This process is repeated about thirty-seven times a day.

Sometimes the Skank Family have gentleman callers. They drive Corsas too. We are often privvy to their conversations. It's kind of hard avoid, when the blokes don't even bother getting out of the car or switching off the engine or turning down the stereo. They just pull up underneath the Skank Dwelling and roll down the window. Then the Skanks lean out of their window and they shout sweet nothings to each other over the booming bass. It's just like the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.

The other day I was watching a bowl of frozen edamame circulate in the microwave to no avail when I was rudely interrupted by the stereo throb of a hatchback in the car park. And then came the siren call of the Skank:

MAMA SKANK:  OVEN! Hey OVEN!

SHAUNA:  Did she say Oven?

GARETH:  I think she did say Oven.

[We move to the window and twitch the blinds]

SHAUNA:  What kind of a name is Oven?

GARETH:  Maybe she said Owen.

MAMA SKANK:  HEY OVEN! OVENNNNN!

SHAUNA:  Crikey.

OVEN:  Arriiiiiiiiiiiiiight doll.

MAMA SKANK:  Oven! You're fucken hot, Oven.

GRANDMA SKANK:  I'd totally do you, OVEN!

MAMA SKANK:  I'd totally do you tae, Oven!

GRANDMA SKANK:  Aye only if I can watch, but. OVEN!

So... do we fork out for a new oven and microwave that will enable food to be cooked correctly OR do we save the money so we can afford move far, far away from our annoying neighbours who have lovers called OVEN! This is the conundrum we wrestle with daily.

I have officially just run out of festive cheer. I was all fired up after watching Nigella groping dried fruits and tree ornaments on her show last week and thought, Capital! I am going to do some baking for my work colleagues. Much better than a tin of Quality Street!

So I spent five bloody days poring over my cookbooks and finally decided I would do a Festive Muffin Fest. I narrowed it down to five recipes and spent a fortune on ingredients and even got a new muffin tray. And after all that? THE MUFFINS TURNED OUT SHIT.

I started with the trusty Chocolate Banana muffins that I have made a million times to great acclaim but tonight they were a disaster. Crusty on top and slimy sludge inside. And then the ones with the Nutella in the middle all broke in half. And now the pineapple tropical-ish ones refuse to come out of the tin.

I have no idea why the first dozen failed, let alone THREE DOZEN FAILURES. I am far too cranky to speculate. You can't get much easier than muffins. And I was so careful measure everything properly and not overmix. Perhaps the muffins sensed they would be going before a critical audience and just collapsed under the weight of expectation.

Gareth is a resourceful fella and sawed off all the muffin tops which are almost edible, albeit ugly. He may eat one with a cup of tea as he is contractually obliged to be polite. But all I have to show for three hours of labour is a big bag full of greasy stumps and a filthy kitchen. And no stinking presents for the lads at work.

And I still haven't written any stinking Christmas cards. I am just waiting for the right pen, you know. Hopefully in the next couple of days the right pen will come along and jump into my hand and make the propsect of writing Christmas cards seem wildly exciting.

And I still don't have anything to wear to the stinking work Christmas party on Friday. I spent two hours in the shops this afternoon and just wanted to strangle myself with the nearest bit of tinsel. No matter what the shop, change room, mirror angle or configuration of fluroscent lighting, I looked completely shit in everything.

I quite fancy going outside and hurling muffin stumps at passing cars but it is SLEETING right now so I shall go to bed instead. Rah!

Frequently Asked Questions
Q.  Is this the best you can do after twelve days of silence?
A.  Yes.

I was watching Heather do the Weather on Reporting Scotland the other night and right at the end she stepped to the left to allow the graphic to pop up beside her and proclaim the next day's weather in a giant font. In some countries you'd get Fine and Sunny or maybe even Cool and Cloudy but what did we get here in Scotland?

I just thought that was so depressingly eloquent that I laughed for ten minutes. Sure enough the forecast was accurate!

Yesterday was magnificent. There was a wee football match in Glasgow with Scotland taking on the mighty World Cup finalists France in a Euro 2008 qualifier.

Scotland won! 1 - 0!

We were in the car at the time; our mate Steve had issued a last-minute invitation for a night out in Weegieland. I'd forgotten all about the match, but when we flipped on the radio to find Scotland had scored with just twenty minutes left to go, I got swept up in the agonising, hysterical countdown to the final siren.

It was a historic victory, as the presenters on Radio Scotland breathlessly reminded us every seven seconds. The Scottish team hasn't enjoyed much success in recent years; the match reports are usually pretty grim. On a good day you'd get a "gallant in defeat" sort of headline. They have been rebuilding nicely under their new manager Walter Smith, but last night's victory was still a major upset.

The presenter's voices were raw with pride and emotion. In Australia we're so confident about sport and victory is often expected; demanded. But when it happens over here it can be a magnificient surprise and everyone goes mad in the most joyous, infectious way. Forgive the paraphrasing here but one radio presenter rasped, "Everyone out there keeps saying we're crap! But we're no crap. We just beat France. So everyone, just stop saying we're crap! Because we're no!"

Then another bloke got carried away interviewing Gary Caldwell, the Scottish goal scorer. "Hold on... I have to give you a cuddle first before I ask you any questions. Ahhhh... this cuddle is from all of Scotland!"

Steve lives right near the stadium, so by the time we arrived the Tartan Army had flooded the streets. A singing and dancing swarm of blue and white; flags and kilts and Jimmy hats. People jumped out in front of our car, waving and cheering.

And other folk just tried to flag us down. Gareth's car is a six-year-old silver Peugeot 406, which happens to be the same vehicle as a great number of taxis in this country. Ever since he got it a few weeks ago, we can't go anywhere at night without some drunk leaping out and waving their arms, then giving us the finger when we don't pull over.

So we had a nice night out in Glasgow; it was impossible not to with everyone in such a good mood.

"It's just so brilliant," gushed a woman on the train, clearly overwhelmed by the victory, "At best I'd hoped for a 1-0 win to France. That would have been a respectable gubbing."

"Oh aye!" said her companion, "And now we're the best team IN THE WORLD!"

"How do you get that?!"

"Well Italy won the World Cup, but France beat Italy the other day, and now we beat the Froggies... so that makes SCOTLAND the best team in the world!"

"Ahh," said Gareth. "I love the logic of ten pints."

Monday night I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival for a session called 'Tips On Getting Published', my attempt to seek inspiration beyond self-publishing avec photocopier.

A lot of people turned up for the Tips. They filled the hall and sat up straight in their chairs. They opened their notebooks, clicked their pens and waited to be filled with information. I just had some tissues and a box of mints. Amateur!

On the panel was a literary agent, three publishers and a lawyer. They expelled much wisdom about queries and manuscripts and money (or lack thereof) and agents and enthusiasm, and the crowd dutifully scribbled it down.

Then it was time for audience questions.

"Please keep your questions nice and general," requested the host.

"You were talkin' about libel," growled a large man with shaved head, "Well, say you just got out of prison and you've done a memoir about bein' in prison and in the memoir you talk about people who're still in prison... can they sue you from there?"

Then someone else piped up, "How much would it cost me to send you my manuscript? Is it going to be expensive?"

"You mean like... postage?" asked a baffled publisher.

"Yes!"

The stereotype of the tightarsed Scot won't be dying out any time soon.

We went back last night see David Sedaris. I'd never been to an author reading before so this was a brilliant place to start. SJ got me hooked on his stuff many years ago, so I admit to getting the dopey Fan Girl grin as he read his stories. And he was extremely charming and hilarious during the audience questions too. It's one thing to be a brilliant writer, but to be brilliant out loud, without cigarettes or weeks of editing too? Bonus.

Afterwards, I joined the typically lengthy but civilised queue to get my book signed. I was anxious and wanted to spew, because a girl in the audience had asked Sedaris about the most stupid or irritating thing fans have said to him. He said book signings can be nervewracking for all involved, because you have just a few seconds of contact and you feel some sort of pressure to say something interesting. Apparently some smartarse will always say to him, "Do you talk pretty yet?" and it drives him demented. So what was I going to say? Love your work? I didn't have delusions of being funny or engaging, I just didn't want to be a starry-eyed dickhead.

I was distracted from my angst by an evil triumvirate of journalism students behind me. They made me shiver with their retro shoes and carefully careless hairdos. I pegged them as second years, because they were still in that Holier Than Thou phase of a journalism student's career in which all you can do is MOCK STUFF, or tell the world of your disdain for The Media with its unethical chequebook-weilding practices and how you will Never Be Like That, because you are a real journalist with Integrity!

(This phase ends when you graduate and soon realise there's nae jobs and perhaps you shouldn't have been so hasty in turning down that cadetship at the Hicksville Herald.)

Once they had argued which university had the superior student newspaper, they discussed what they were going to say to David. Should they approach as a trio, or go separately?

"If we go up together and say something collectively brilliant, maybe we'll appear in his next story!"

"Yeah! Although he might blend us into one character. With boobs, two penises and six legs."

"Brilliant!"

More interesting was the veterinary student waiting in front of me. She was making efficient use of her queuing time to study. First it was something about cells with intruiging blobby diagrams, and then she moved on to a page of case studies.

Female intact dog presents with dullness, lethargy and vaginal discharge. She was on heat eight weeks prior.

What the hell was an intact dog? You'd presume it would have to be intact if it had managed to present itself, especially if lethargic. But what about the discharge? Is that terminal?

I scribbled down the case as I peered over her shoulder, word for word; because I had come prepared with a notebook this time and I had make use of it somehow.

I was so busy pondering the plight of the intact dog that I forgot to think of anything interesting to say to David Sedaris, and before you could say "dullness and lethargy" it was my turn.

"Hello!" I said.

"Hello!" said David Sedaris.

He asked my name and I said Shauna and he asked how to spell it so I said S-H-A-U-N-A and he said M-A? Shauma? And I said, No it's N-A you know like Shaun with an A attached. He said Oh I see then asked where was I from. I said Australia and he asked whereabouts in Australia and I said, Oh just a country town that nobody's heard of.

And then he said, "I like those flat whites you have in Australia."

"Oh yeah! Flat whites. You don't really get those over here do you."

"Actually I think there's a cafe in Soho that does flat whites, it's called -"

"Flat White! I heard about that!"

"Yeah!"

"It's all those Aussies in London," I mumbled helpfully, "They really need their flat whites."

And then followed what I perceived to be a pained silence. We were all out of words, so he handed my book back.

They always say you should never meet your heroes. Whenever I read a David Sedaris book from now on, I will remember that vaguely uncomfortable expression and my complete... flat whiteness.

I slinked away and the three Journalists of Tomorrow stepped forward. I should have told him about the dog with the vaginal discharge. That could have been interesting.

The Edinburgh Festivals are quite a different experience now that I'm not living in the middle of Edinburgh. It used to be a short bus ride or walk home after an evening show. But these days if we miss the last train, it's an epic journey on the 1AM bus.

It's an eclectic mix of screeching hens, football revellers and middle-aged Girls Night Out-ers, with the odd posh couple hiding beneath the wife's pashmina as they wonder whose idea it was to leave the car at home.

The air is thick with beer breath and nobody seems to know each other, but drunkeness unites. It's all belching, farts and bellowed banter.

LADY 1:  Can you stop the bus please, driver! This lady is gonnae be sick!

LADY 2:  Dinnae worry, hen! I'll be sick in ma handbag.

LADY 1:  Dinnae worry, driver! She's gonnae be sick in her handbag!

LADY 2:  [BLUUURRK]

LADY 1:  Lucky you had that handbag because I wouldnae be cleaning up your sick. I'll clean up piss, but I hate cleaning up sick.

BLOKE:  Oh that's good coz I'm totally burstin'.

When we finally got off the bus we had to jump right over the stairs and onto the footpath, because some lady had spewed all over them.

Last weekend we made our triumphant return to the very top of Scotland and my favourite village... TONGUE!

You may remember our last trip to Tongue and the bazillion photos I'd taken of signs that said TONGUE this and TONGUE that. Turned out I'd missed one!

Before we got to the Tongue we were in Inverness, stopping off at Culloden - the site of the last major battle to be fought on British soil. It's quite interesting and moving wandering through the field, visualising the brief and bloody battle. But I have to admit my favourite bit was this sign:

We also popped by the Clava Cairns. They date back to 2000BC but they'll be more remembered by us as The Place Where Shauna Did An Enormous Fart That Echoed Through The Trees, Not Noticing The American Tourist Standing Behind Her.

But back to Tongue. We ate dinner in a pub beneath the Tongue Hotel, where the locals played darts and spoke with bizarre accents. They were such decent folk that the barwoman wandered off for twenty minutes and nobody stole anything! Not even a wee bag o' pork scratchings. That wouldn't happen where we live.

We stayed in a lovely B&B that served delicious breakfasts with Madonna's Greatest Hits playing in the background. Our room became slightly less lovely when I stupidly opened the window to let in some fresh air. A giant black cloud of midges immediately stormed in. D'oh! So we spent the next ten minutes swearing and thrashing the air with towels, in the hope of snuffing out the little biting bastards. And then a further ten minutes was required to wipe their smeared corpses off the walls. But it was too little too late. I was awoken on Sunday morning by the sound of my own fingernails frantically scratching dozens of giant red lumps all over my body. And let me tell you, those little shits are NOT shy about where they bite.

After breakfast I picked up some souvenir I HEART Tongue fridge magnets for my colleagues, then we crawled along a single-track road to Durness. Oh baby! Caves! Sheep! Pristine sea and spectacular white beaches! And the sky was more blue than a pervy old man's video collection. Scotland is so breathtakingly beautiful it just makes your bones ache.

I'm aware this has been a What I Did On My Weekend blog lately, but it's summer and one has to turn off the computer and go forth and Do Stuff because soon it will be too dark and depressing to get out of bed. Rather than ramble on further, go forth and check out the photies! They have glowing captions too, so you can see I am doing my bit for Scottish tourism and not just slagging off the food!

LAST FRIDAY, 5PM 
Gareth collects hire car for the big camping trip. We'd booked a Vauxhall Corsa Or Similiar on the internet, it turned out to be a Nissan Micra in an embarassing pastel shade, designed to appeal to old ladies who want their motor to match their blue rinse.

SATURDAY, 11AM 
Check weather forecast on the BBC. Here is an approximation:

SHAUNA:   Hmmm.
GARETH:   Do you think we should still go camping?
S:   Looks a little bit cloudy.
G:   Looks a little bit Scotland.
S:   Well... I'm sure we can handle a bit of water!
G:   Of course we can!

12PM 
Quick trip to supermarket to pick up a disposable barbeque.

1PM 
Finally leave supermarket after wading through aisles full of mothers screaming, "JORDAN! I'LL NO TELL YA AGAIN! YER NO GETTIN' SWEETIES!".

We head north.

3.15PM 
Essential ice cream stop at Tyndrum. It's the last place to get ice cream for bazillions of miles. THE LAST!

3.30PM 
S:   Ooh. Ominous.

4PM 
Arrive at Glen Etive. We unimaginatively decamp at the same spot as last year. It's a nice big flat bit surrounded by a stream with no other people in sight. There's a chunky stepping stone path over the water that seperates the camp from the car.

G:   Right, we've got exactly one hour to get everything over and put the tent up before the forecasted rain.
S:   Allez!

4.05PM 
Rain arrives early.

4.30PM 
Tent erected after much swearing. Our fingers are red and numb. Our jeans are drenched and cling unpleasantly to our thighs like icy toddlers.

4.31PM 
Retire to tent to sulk.

5.15PM 
Legend has it that Avon Skin-So-Soft moisturiser spray is used by Royal Marines to ward off Scotland's notorious midges, the teeny tiny biting insects that are on a perpetual mission to destroy any human enjoyment of the brief summer.

There's a sudden break in the rain, so we slather ourselves in the stuff and seize our chance to crank up the disposable barbeque. A cloud of midges descends immediately.

G:   ARRGH! This Avon stuff is BULLSHIT!
S:   But they're not biting us! Sure there's millions of them in your face and up your nose but they're not biting! It's a miracle!

5.30PM 
The sky starts to spit again, just as the vegetarian sausages hit the grill. We huddle around, trying to figure if it's better to keep your head down and get a faceful of charcoal fumes, or heads up for a mouthful of midges.

5.45PM 
I rearrange the sausages with a fork. They look juicy and brown, which is remarkable for pretend meat cooked on a cardboard box filled with charcoal. You can hear the raindrops sizzle on the plate.
S:   Almost done! Fetch the sauce and rolls. We're going to eat our meal outside if it kills us!

5.50PM 
Rain.
S:   This tent is going to stink of pretend meat all night long.

6PM 
Wild, crazy, tent-rattling rain.
G:   Got any jokes?
S:   Nup. Do you?
G:   No.
S:   I could tell the Stevie Wonder one again. What did Stevie Wonder say when he got a cheese grater for his birthday?
G & S:   It was the best book he'd ever read!

6.20PM  
G:   So this was all your idea, wasn't it?
S:   Oh YES. I had the brilliant idea that after sleeping on a crappy futon on the loungeroom floor for the past week while the Mothership visited, we should go camping and sleep a night ON THE GROUND.
G:   Ahh, you're always having great ideas!
S:   Even better, I thought we should go camping on the day of the women's Wimbledon final, the World Cup play-off AND the season finale of Doctor Who!
G:   Genius!

6.30PM 
S:   I'm just going to close my eyes for a minute.
G:   Me too.

9.30PM  
We awake from a surprisingly deep sleep.
S:   It's stopped raining!
G:   Quick! Let's go outside and make a cuppa.

10.15 PM 
The kettle boils just as the last of the sun is sucked from the sky. Stupid camp stove that unlights itself. We barely have time to add the milk before it starts to rain aaagain. We retreat to our quarters.

10.30PM 
S:   Know any ghost stories?
G:   No.
S:   Oh.

10.35PM 
Zzzzzzzz.

[Then it rains all bloody night.]

SUNDAY, 8AM
Arise to find our dainty wee creek has swollen considerably. As in, completely drowning the stepping stone path. We are now stranded on an island.
S:  Camping RULES!

8.10AM 
Midges swoop as we dismantle the tent.
G:   Why are those little bastards up so early?
S:   We forgot the Skin So Soft!
G:   Arrgh! My eyes!
S:   Arrgh! My ears!

8.30AM 
I volunteer to carry our stuff across the water. My shoes were best sacrificed as they were old and crap and Gareth was driving home, which would be most unpleasant in wet boots.

The water is knee-deep and icy cold. Right on cue, the rain cranks up again.

8.50AM 
S:   Righto! I'm going to chuck my shoes over to you! Put them on and keep your Docs dry!
G:   Okay!
S:   Are you ready? I'm going to throw them now!
G:   Yes!
S:   Are you sure you're ready? I'm chucking them now! Get ready! Here they come!

[PLOP!]

S:   D'oh.

10.30AM 
We drive through Glen Coe then down the coast to Oban where we stop for a traditional Scottish breakfast of chips and brown sauce. Which seemed nutritionally sound compared to the gigantor deep-fried haggi.

MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY: 
My midge bites swell into giant, festering, itchy sores so I spend the week surreptitiously rubbing my flaming limbs against furniture until I fork out for some antihistamine cream. Remember kids, Avon WORKS!

...

drookit
(droo·kit) Dialect, chiefly Scot ~adj.
1. drenched, soaked through.

Tonight the sun will set at 10 o'clock. Precious, precious sun. I want to sit in the back yard, tune out the sqwarking baby upstairs and the village skanks in their Vauxhall Corsas, then watch the sky until the last bit of light has drained.

This will be my fourth Scottish summer. I've completely erased the memory of Australian summers, where it was so hot I was an apple in the mouth short of resembling a pig on a spit. Now I've completely adapted to the Northern Hemisphere, thus finding today's maximum temperature of 21 degrees (70'F) positively subtropical.

Would you believe that for the past three days I have walked to the train station at 6.45AM without a jacket. After months of darkness, scarves and coats, it feels almost obscene to feel a breeze crawl up the hairs on your forearms. Not to mention sunlight oozing over bare toes! You may as well be naked.

Until I lived here I never understood the big deal about seasons. I remember in high school English, when John Keats asked, "Where are the songs of spring?". My response was, "WHO CARES!". And how dull to write a whole stinking Ode To Autumn in the first place. Seasons to me were just endless variations of Hot, occasionally interrupted by rain or hayfever.

But now I'm sad bastard who crows at the sight of a blossom after a long winter. I'd gladly pen poems about bunnies and bumble bees if only I had the rhyming skills. Instead I've been doing the next best thing: tuning into Spring Watch.

Non-Brits will remember Bill Odie as the wee one from The Goodies, but apparently somewhere along the line he turned into a birdwatching camouflage-wearing nature-guru TV presenter.

At first I couldn't believe something as tedious as Spring Watch would be allowed on air. Basically, there's Bill Odie and crew on some farm in England, poking cameras into ponds, nests and burrows. Then they wait and they wait and they wait. Then the footage of various creatures engaging in springtime activities is broadcast in a prime timeslot every weeknight. There's a lot of bird migration stories, bird-on-bird action stories, bird laying eggs stories, bird fishing for insect stories, bird leaving the nest stories.

When Spring Watch returned last week I screamed at the telly, "Not freaking Bill Odie and his freaking birds again? WHO CARES!?".

Because British animals are boring. They don't kill you. They don't bite, maim or strangle. They don't have to trek through a desert for water, or run like the clappers from a roaring bushfire. They don't sit in trees getting drunk on eucalyptus. They don't eat babies. Without fangs, poison or fearsome jaws of death, where's the entertainment value?

But somehow this year I've been hooked, just in that idle half hour before The Daily Show starts. I blame the Red Squirrels for being so rare and prettier than the bastard Grey Squirrels. Then the badgers were endearing, digging tunnels at midnight. Then the kingfisher was fishing and the otters were frolicking in Shetland. All these creatures I'd only previously known from Beatrix Potter books. Tits, swallows, robins, wrens! British animals may not be cold-blooded tourist killers, but they are cute and wholesome; and entertaining in their own way.

Where was I going with this? I can't remember. It's 10.47 now and there's still bits of blue outside. Spring Rules. That's all I meant to say.

Trade advertisments in the local newspaper today. I'd hire them for the puns alone!

Today we finally wind up Anniversary Week, which somehow ended up morphing into six weeks.

In the interests of balanced reporting, I decided to speak to some Edinburgh expats to gauge their views on being a stranger in this strange town. You poor readers have been subjected to three years of my personal rants and raves, but what do other foreigners think of the place? Am I the only one who goes on about the food? Am I the only one with a pathological fascination with River City?

Let's meet our panel...

Rhiannon - My sister is blogless but has consulted on many WNP entries. She now resides in London after putting in a good stint in Jockland.

Pille - Estonian foodblogger extraordinaire. I stumbled across her blog when she'd written about a restaurant I'd been to in the Estonian countryside, and then discovered she lived in Edinburgh... the world is too small!

Rory - A fellow Canberra escapee, Rory is a blogging veteran and if not for meeting him I'd never have met Dr G, which is just one more reason why he's a top bloke.

Anna - A lovely Canadian and seasoned traveller, now doing a stint in Scotland before moving on to Australia.

Now on to the questions!

I kept a paper diary during 2003, our first year in Scotland. As a teen I'd been an avid devotee of the paper diary, until one day aged seventeen I had an attack of paranoia, convinced that my angsty scribbles were being intercepted by the household authorities. I unceremoniously burned five years of Collins A5 To A Page and vowed never to write again.

But I'm glad I revived the habit for 2003. We didn't get internet access at home until September so blogging was sporadic. By the time I'd get to an internet cafe, my entries were heavily edited and largely cheery. People constantly reminded me how lucky we were to have this opportunity, thus I was loathe to focus on any negatives less I be told I was an ungrateful arse.

So the paper diary tells the real story of the ups and downs of moving to the other side of the world. It's uncensored, illegible, whiny, lonely, banal, self-absorbed, scared, obnoxious, bitchy, paranoid, pathetic, and gramatically incorrect. In the spirit of honesty and laughing at oneself, here is a few selected high(low)lights.

WARNING: Angst and self-pity ahead!

25 March - Have packed up entire life. Never thought would happen. Doesn't seem like a "Shauna" thing to do, does it.

Clearly crapping my pants here!

March 28 - Flight [from Frankfurt] to Edi was uneventful, Rhi and I reminisced about Aussie food.

We'd been away from Oz less than 48 hours and we were already getting misty-eyed on about Australian cuisine! Priorities, man. The next day I wrote in Edinburgh, "Every shop seems to sell pre-made sandwiches wrapped in plastic. Must be all they eat over here."

April 1 - Got our first taste of Scots rain today. Went out to library and it just PISSED down. Nicked into Boots to get brolly. Fuck everything is so expensive. £15 = $45 for brolly. Then Rhi leaves hers in the bloody shop.

We almost bawled when we realised we'd left the $45 brolly in the coffee shop where we'd just spent approximately $30 on two hot chocolates and a scone. Three years later, I still can't break the habit of translating prices back into Aussie dollars. I quite enjoy it in a sick and twisted way.

April 4 - Got up and went to Argos, funny shop. You write down numbers from a catalogue then they get it from 'out the back'.

There's something about Argos that is infinitely fascinating to foreigners. I remember when my friend Jenny returned from two years in London, one of the first things she mentioned was her trip to Argos to get a hairdryer, how you just browse the catalogue then the magic elves fetch it from their mystical store cupboard. Momo wrote about it too! Argos sounds like a Soviet relic where one collects their brown overalls and soap rations, but you can buy anything from a watch to a saucepan to a freaking home gymnasium and somehow it's all there waiting for you, Out The Back.

April 12 - Americans truly SHIT ME to tears. I try & be openminded, non-judgmental, but every one I have encountered in person this yr has been a loud & annoying FUCKWIT. Our bus trip was full of em today. Went to Loch Ness via Trossachs & Ben Nevis. Pretty cool.

OH DEAR! Now before you send that hatemail, ask yourself - have you ever been tired and cranky and made a gross, sweeping generalisation about a country? If not, I deserve your flaming missive! But please bear in mind I was very new to this tourist caper. I'm quite the diplomat now but that day I was impatient, intolerant and positively seething at a family whose son never once looked up from his Game Boy to admire the scenery, and asked the driver approximately every twenty minutes when were we stopping for more food. Apart from that one family three years ago, I love Americans!

April 28 - Work. Blah blah work. Rhi and I ended up punching each other out of sheer boredom.

Rhi and I worked at the same place for our first Scottish job - data entry. We were quite literally locked away in an attic typing medical information all day long, unsupervised. After typing for eight hours together, we'd descend the stairs together, catch the bus home together, cook dinner together, sit down to eat together. One of us would say, "How was your day?" and the other would say, "It was shithouse!" and the other would say, "Yeah I know, I WAS THERE!".

All that tedium and togetherness soon sent us over the edge and we resorted to primitive hair-pulling and assault to pass the time.

May 20 - Went to net cafe & was annoyed to see noone's commenting these days. Fuckers.

Around this time I was feeling friendless and pathetic, so I clung to my blog as a connection to my treasured Old Life. So a lack of comments or emails would make me mope for days, convinced everyone back home hated me and had moved on. Sob sob... don't you love how now matter how old you get, you always sound thirteen years old in a paper diary?

June 3 - Tonight was pub quiz @ Baillie in Stockbridge... Rory, Jane, Rhi & David were there, & this guy Gareth. He really grew on me. Very shy smile & soft accent. Quiet sense of humour. Oh I do believe I have a wee crush.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship! *gag*

June 6 - Gareth is really sweet & has a lovey accent. Just something about him... Maybe I am just getting a wee bit frisky & lonely?

Yeah? Well maybe you shouldn't have chucked out your vibrator before you left Australia?

June 20 - We came up the Champs Elysses & there was the Arc de Triomphe, HUGE & so beautiful. Eiffel Tower was cool, & I classily did a fart there. HA! It's so surreal being in this stinkingly famous place.

This was our first European jaunt! For dinner we ate ham and cheese sandwiches from the supermarket. As we have unimaginatively done in every city we've visited since.

July 21 - I'm scoffing chocolate orange. WHY? Because it was on special. OH DEAR.

Rhi and I were flamingly broke in 2003. We were alarmed at how quickly we adopted the Way of the Mothership, buying everything generic or whatever was On Special.

August 5 - News was all about the 'heat wave' today. 25 bloody degrees if you're lucky. Ha!

And I still say, Ha!

August 17 - Oh what a nothing sort of day. Mum called, was nice. Feel a bit homesick lately, disconnected. Was upset by dumb things, like a pissweak bakery section at the supermarket.

It's always about the bloody food!

Around about this time Rhi and I started working two jobs so we could save enough dosh for our Russia Trip in 2004. The seven-day working week was a real bitch, so all we have now is page after page of exhausted whining. And angsting about boys. I won't subject you to that!

November 27 - Tonight I bummed around watching stupid reality shows about people leaving the UK. Sure can see now why they do it.

Despite finally hooking up with Gareth earlier that month, I was still a grumpy bastard and clearly struggling to adjust to a Scottish winter!

And now we have another wee gap in proceedings, because every entry is about Gareth and how dreamy he is and how paranoid and insecure I am. You really don't want to read that!

Now I truly embrace the Inner Teen! After months of anticipation, I had dear friends staying from Australia and the weather gods were conspiring to show them the crappiest time as possible. Every tourist attraction we visited was closed, then Edinburgh's famous New Years Eve festivities were cancelled due to appalling winds. Plus work was hellish and I hadn't seen Gareth for days, fuelling my pity party.

December 31 - I just don't see how he will possibly stay interested in me... But I will try not to wreck it. Please don't let me wreck it. It really was a good 2003 though. Did a lot of things I never thought I'd do. Now I just need to be optimistic & positive & try harder in 2004.

DRAMA! WOE! INSECURITY!

I bought another diary for 2004. But I quit after three months, when I discovered living the life was much more fun than angstily writing about the life :)

Today is my three year anniversary of living in Scotland. I cannae believe it, hen!

So let's all celebrate with a week of special Anniversary posts, gazing fondly back at 1096 days of adventure! But don't panic, I'm not going to rehash them individually. And when I said "week" I probably mean "month", knowing my typically slacketyslackarse rate of publication.

. . .

On a particularly miserable rainy night last week, Gareth and I were watching the Commonwealth Games. It was shot after shot of lovely sunny Melbourne - all blue skies, cafes, green parks and goodness.

"WHY did you come here?" Gareth cried, "WHY?!"

"I don't knoooow!"

We howled at the telly for awhile.

Why indeed? Goodness knows I've spent much of the past three years whining endlessly en blog about my homesickness and the apparent superiority of all things Down Under. I am always waiting for the indignant email, "Well if you love Australia so much, WHY DON'T YOU GO BACK THERE!?".

I may bitch about the darkness, the deep-fried and the price of undies, but I do love it here! While I will never stop pining for the friends, family and food back home, I have settled into life in the UK. We humans are good at adapting to new environs; we make things work wherever we are. That's what makes us the superior species! You never hear a koala say, "Dude, I am going to live in the Bahamas just to see what it's like". Nor have I met a monkey just back from a gap year in Iceland.

So here's a few things I've come to love over the past few years:

The Food
While I've got good blog mileage from the shitty cuisine of Scotland, it's not all lard and animal bits. I now can't imagine life without clementines, curry, creme fraiche or Green and Blacks chocolate (although G&Bs is now sold in Australia). British cheese rules. And you can't beat the local berries in the summertime. Berries are about the only thing cheaper here than in Oz.

I love the comfort foods like sticky toffee pudding and bacon sandwiches. I love eating a hot Christmas lunch when it's actually cold outside. I love fish and chips at the beach in summer when it's almost as cold as Christmas. I love reading food magazines where they talk about damsons and treacle and rhubarb and toad in the hole; all that stuff I previously only knew from Enid Blyton books. It all just makes me want to knot some sheets together and climb out the window of the boarding school, and meet up with my pals for a midnight feast. HURRAH!

Twice The Workplace Bludging
Summer is in July, Christmas is in December. Obviously. But this means DOUBLE THE BLUDGE! The festive season is a blur of boozy office parties and diminished work ethic. Then once you've survived the bleakness of February, it's almost spring, which is almost summer! So the workload slows a little, and everyone nicks off to Spain. They come back blistered and glowing and their colleagues squeal, "You're looking well!".

Meanwhile back in Australia, July is the start of the financial year and the middle of winter. We're all working like mad and there's no fun until Christmas. I have grown fond of the UK working year; the next holiday never seems too far away.

The Benefits of a Small Island
After the vastness of Australia, I still can't get my head around the weeness of the UK. An hour in the car and you're in the Scottish Highlands. The same on the plane and you're in London or Amsterdam, and one more you're in Paris. New York is a long weekend instead of your life savings and possible deep vein thrombosis. "Are we there yet?" has vanished from my vocabulary!

The Telly
The telly's good here, kiddies. If you can wade through the reality shows there's some cracking stuff left behind. My favourite shows are Top Gear, Grand Designs and The Hairy Bikers, the latter I believe is now being shown in Oz, hurrah!

Top Gear is, oddly enough, about cars. As well as road testing posh vehicles, they also engage in brilliant acts of destruction like:

• A football match with a giant ball and ten Toyota Aygos as players
• Racing a Mazda MX5 against a greyhound
• Putting a Citroen 2CV behind a jumbo jet with engines blazing - POW!
• Strapping a couple of rockets to a Mini and blasting it down an Olympic ski jump - watch here!

I also love this whole interactive digital television thingy. We paid £30 for a wee box that you plug into the telly, and were rewarded with oodles of extra channels. Which we hardly watch.

However, it's all about the sport! I already loved watching sport on the BBC - no advertising! - but now magic happens when you press the Red Button. Interaction! Multiple screens! For free! During Wimbledon you can flip between all the different matches. During the Commonwealth Games when the synchronised swimming became too exciting, I could just press Red and switch to Weightlifting or Bowls. The plethora of choice makes me feel all giddy with the power!

The Sunday Papers
Soon after arrival, I discovered that the Sunday paper was the best way to fake knowing what the bloody hell was going on in this country. News, sport, arts, all for £1.50! These days I get The Observer mainly for the supplements. They are the Master of the Supplement! They're better than many glossy magazines, packed with quality photos and cracking stories. I always make myself read the newsy newspaper bits first, then carefully fold them up and put them in the recycling, and only then am I allowed to read the supplement. Ooh there's nothing like prolonged anticipation.

There's a different theme each week - Food, Sport or Music. Is there anything more important in life than Food, Sport or Music?! Not to me, chaps. If they could rename the fourth supplement Sleep, it would be the perfect quartet.

Three years ago today, Rhi and I were floating somewhere above China, halfway between our old life in Australia and whatever lay in store for us in Scotland.

Yesterday afternoon Gareth and I were walking down North Bridge in Edinburgh, picking our way through the crowds of tourists and goths. A woman was sprawled on the footpath, her bleached tresses askew, her trousers around her ankles.

Her equally inebriated mate was trying and failing miserably to help her to her feet.

"'Scuse me pal," he yelled out to Gareth, "Gis a hand to pick her up?"

It took all three of us to haul off her the ground. Unusually she had not been floating in a puddle of vomit or pee.

"Aww thankshh," she slurred, wrestling her handbag back over her shoulder. "Thankssho much!"

"That's okay," said Gareth. "See ya later." We headed off down the street.

"Wuh-wuh-wait!" hollered the guy. We turned back.

"Would you mind pulling her troosers up?" he asked me. "She cannae dae it hersel'."

Without hesitation, I walked behind the woman. Crouching down, I regarded her bare buttocks - pale, gelatinous and bisected by a sparkly black g-string. I gathered up her jeans and gave a brisk upward yank.

"Aww thanks. Yer so kind hen thanksshomuch."

"No problem!"

We strolled on. It wasn't til about an hour later that Gareth said, "Wait a minute, did you just pull up some bare-cheeked lassie's trousers in the middle of the street without even pausing for thought?"

After three years, it had seemed like just another sunny 4 o'clock in Scotland. But had that happened on Day One, I probably would have run screaming straight back to the airport.

You might recall my eyebrows were waxed into a state of Permanent Surprise back in September. It's taken all these months for them to revert to their usual feralness. Not wanting to risk Lynette The Ripper again, I scoured the Yellow Pages for somewhere new.

I'm somewhat wary of Beauty Establishments here in Scotland. I've not had much luck. Take hairdressers, for example. It took me two and half years to find a goodun. After three lopsided chops from a curly-haired Kiwi, I jumped ship, oddly enough to another Kiwi. He became known as the Nicholson Street Butcher and we must never speak of him again. And then there was a third Kiwi, who was a genius and restored my faith in her people. But she disappeared after three cuts, deciding that the grass was greener back in Auckland.

So I moved on to a Scottish lass, who was quietly spoken but deadly fast and accurate with the scissors. Which suited me fine, because I don't go there for the banter. It was all going beautifully until I showed up for a colour one day only to be told abruptly that she, "No longer works at this establishment". After sobbing briefly that the good ones always leave me, the head stylist assured me it wasn't personal and tended to my locks herself.

It wasn't until a few months later when we'd built up that inane hairdresser/hairdressed repartee that she casually mentioned that my former stylist had been fired for repeatedly showing up drunk. And by the way, she was now in jail for attempted murder! She'd stabbed her boyfriend! How deliciously sordid. But... but... what about all those times she'd asked me in hushed tones, How bout I chop off another inch? What was that? Practice?!

Anyway, there I was last week in the waiting room of my chosen New Place. It was dead charming, like walking into a teenage slumber party. There were comfy old couches, wooden floors, magazines and ladies with cotton wool stuffed 'tween their toes as they waited for polish to dry. I would have been content to sit there all night reading, and was almost annoyed when the Wax Mistress called my name.

She was smiley and she had red hair.

"So what can I do for you?"

"It's the eyebrows. They sneak up on me all the time. They're pale and hard to spot, and they switch from neat and tidy to pure mental overnight. I can never catch the bastards!"

"Tell me about it!" She pointed to her own ginger brows.

Maybe it's true what Gareth says about the Ginger Understanding. There's a scarlet-locked baby living in the flat upstairs that we refer to as the Ginger Bairn (where ginger = redhead, and bairn = baby in the Scottish vernacular). Ginger Bairn recently learned to walk. Actually, it bypassed walk and went straight to run, and spends its days galloping round on the cursed laminated floors.

"Shauna!" Gareth will often scream above the din, "Will you please go tell the Ginger Bairn to sit down?!"

"Why me?"

"Because it will listen to you. Just talk to it, Ginger to Ginger. It will understand its own kind!"

This Wax Mistress certainly understood her own kind. All the perils of gingerism. The paradox of the pale eyelashes yet the crotch so lurid it can be seen from space.

"I had a bad experience last time," I said.

"Oh? What happened?"

"I was butchered. My husband said I looked like the headlights on the new Mercedes. My expression was locked on 'surprised'."

"How surprised are we talking?"

"Like, surprise tinged with alarm."

"Like, surprised like the plot twist in The Crying Game."

"Yes!"

"Well I won't let that happen again," she soothed, "You're more suited to a slightly thicker brow anyway. Now just lay back here and I'll sort everything."

Every other brow wax I've had was over in a minute. A perfunctory brush, a slap of hot wax, a rrrrrrip, then a brief exchange of many pounds. But this woman took her time, all seriousness as she combed and measured. Did she brutally rip the stray hairs with wax, or did she just coax them out with some sort of musical interlude, a la the Pied Piper? I can't recall.

"Your brows have a fantastic natural arch to them," she cooed afterwards, massaging lotion into my flaming forehead, "They're really lovely."

"Oh cheers," I mumbled. Take that, bitches! Finally, something to feel superior about. Bums may shrink or widen, and breasts will rise and fall, but eyebrows are forever!

The whole experience was magic. My brows were tidy but not anorexic. And instead of dismissing me with a bored wave then nicking oot the back for a fag, the Wax Mistress helped me with my coat and waited politely while I fumbled with my hat and scarf. She even held the door open and wished me goodnight!

The biggest shock was that it cost four pounds less than the old place. That's two pounds less per brow! Value for money and stellar customer service in Scotland, all in one day! This was definitely an anecdote I would store up for when I next met up with expat Australians and we sit around eating cake and making bitchy generalisations about our adopted nation.

Yes indeed, my complete surprise would still be registered on my face today, a whole week later; except of course the brows don't do that anymore.

Well, I've been a moody little shit this week. The Darkness is getting to me again. Going to work in the dark, getting home in the dark. Etcetera, etcetera. Then I got into a huff at work this morning because I had to put up the Christmas decorations, and they were in the same jingle jangle tangled state I'd left them in last Christmas, when I'd once again stuffed them into the box in a huff because I'd been convinced Gareth wouldn't propose and I'd be deported from the UK and definitely not be around the next Christmas and some other Antipodean temp would have to deal with them. Ha!

Putting up the decs at work contains none of the joy of putting up the decs at home. There's no nostalgic crowing over heirloom ornaments or fighting over who gets to put the star on top of the tree. There's not even anyone to fight with, because you have sole decorating duties. And there's no tree, unless you count the plastic plants. There's just a pile of tinsel bought at Safeway ten years ago, choked with ancient lumps of cellotape.

After I halfheartedly threw Christmas cheer over all the cubicles I asked one of the managers could I take the afternoon off.

"Why?" he asked. "Is it because you're cranky?"

"Yes!"

"On you go then."

I really love the guys I work with. They are gems.

So I stomped off at lunch time, stopping at the gym to do a Body Pump class in the hope of producing some happy chemicals. Then I came home, did the dishes, then decided to go back out and take a photo of the wintery landscape for you, in order to illustrate my shitty mood. By the time I got beanied and gloved up it was too dark to get a decent shot. Instead I am going to post a mediocre blog entry, and by the time it's finished I will have snapped out of my sulk and be sane again, so I'll scurry off to watch Ready Steady Cook.

During my first Scottish winter I began to notice all these lost gloves in the streets of Edinburgh. Some on footpaths, some on stone walls, some impaled on fence posts, some stuck up trees, some floating down the canal, some caked with spew. I don't know how so many people come to lose just one glove. I started taking photos of them and had this brilliant idea that I would create a photo gallery called Abandoned Gloves of Scotland and put it on the internet. But once it got to the next winter I realised what a crap idea it was, because 95% of the gloves are black and 95% of them are found upon grey backgrounds (pavement, road, cobblestones) which makes for really shithouse photos. Och well.

I sacrificed another pint of blood for the People of Scotland today. Just like the first time, I am not doing it for the common good but only so Gareth can't outdo me in the Smug and Righteous department.

The room was full of mothers who'd brought their little kids along for some sort of ghoulish entertainment. The wee girl on my left chanted Ten Little Indians over and over again until her Mum had surrendered her pint. Then the little tacker on my right covered her face with her hands, peeking through her fingers from time to time to shriek and gasp dramatically. And then, "Mummy! Get the doctor! YOUR BLOOD'S TURNING GREEN!".

Unlike last time there were no queues today. Most of the town seemed to be queuing at the fish and chip shop down the road instead. They say only 6% of Scots donate blood. So if 90% of the population were having deep fried shite for tea tonight, how's there going to be enough juice to revive all those flabby hearts when they finally give out? It just doesn't add up.

Just when you think you ken everything there is to ken about living in Scotland, you get a rude awakening. Last night the doorbell rang and we argued half-heartedly over who would extract themselves from the couch to answer.

"Go on, you get it."

"No you get it! I know like two people in this town. It'll be someone for you."

"But it will be good for you to interact with the locals."

"Bah!"

I stomped off and pressed the intercom button.

"Yes?!"

"Gggzahhs!!" came a chorus of small, garbled voices.

"Sorry?"

"Gzzgghs!"

"WHAT?" I shouted over the screech of static.

"Gzzziah!"

I wasn't going to ask a third time and admit I'd been defeated by another bizarre strain of the Scots accent. So I pressed the Open Door button and let the voices in, hoping if they were axe murderers they'd just bypass our flat and pick on someone upstairs. But they didn't, I could see their outlines through the frosted glass of our front door.

It was three little costumed kids. A girl with ginger curls springing out from a black witches hat, a boy with a ghost mask, and another wee boy who just seemed to be along for the ride. They all took a shaky breath then started chanting some sort of incomprehensible song with the bored, rushed tones of someone who has performed said song many times before.

Then they stopped and looked up at me expectantly.

I gawked back with great confusion. Were they trying to sell me something? Was it a walk-a-thon? Did they have raffle tickets? "Ummm..."

"Trick or treat!" said the masked one.

"Trick or treat?"

"Aye!"

I frowned. "It's a bit early for Halloween isn't it?"

"It's only four days away,"

"Well it's more like five..."

They kept staring.

"Well, crikey," I said. "You've caught me unprepared! I'm really sorry... I don't have anything to give you."

"Oh." The little one pulled his mask down, his bottom lip coming with it. "That's alright."

They slinked back outside into the rain.

"Well you wouldn't believe that," I announced to Gareth. "It was kids! Trick or treating! Four days before halloween! I didn't have anything to give them. How was I to know they were going to spring that on me? They just mumbled some shit at the intercom!"

"Did they say they were guisers?"

"Guisers?"

"Yeah, guisers."

"Guisers. Rings a bell. The word did start with a G. But I couldn't understand..."

"They were guisers! Trick or treaters. They were guising!"

"That's not a real word!"

"It is."

"So that's why they were singing?"

"Yes."

"But! But! I didn't even know you went Trick or Treating in Scotland!" I spluttered. "I thought only Americans did that on telly! Nobody told me!"

"Well, we do! We go guising!"

"Oh. So in effect, those kids actually did state their purpose at the door."

"Yep..."

"And I let them into the building... so they'd have thought, woohoo, we're going to get candy!"

"Yep."

"And I stood there and let them sing their little pleading-for-candy song, and then I said, HA HA HA THERE IS NO CANDY!"

"Yep!"

"Oh my god! They must think I am the most evil bitch in the world!"

"Yep!"

"Nooooooooo! Nooooooooo!" I curled up into a ball and howled while Gareth laughed.

"Shut up!" I thumped his head with a cushion. "This is all your fault! I TOLD you that you should have answered the door! YOU would have known what a guiser was! Now there's three little kids out there hating my guts!"

"Why don't you just run after them and give them something?" Gareth joked.

"But I don't have anything!"

"What about your Finland stash?"

I gasped. Gareth recently went to Finland for work and returned with a generous selection of Finnish chocolates. I became obsessed with Fazer brand chocolate after visiting Helsinki last year. It's not posh like 70% Valrhona with rare Venezuelan cocoa beans handpicked by monkeys, but for commerical everyday chocolate its craps all over your Galaxy or Hershey bars. I keep the stockpile in the back of a cupboard and carefully ration it, sometimes just getting it out to look at the pretty wrappers with all those crazy Finnish vowels. Precious Finnish chocolates. All for me. Not for grotty little children.

But the guilt was overwhelming. I sprang up from the couch. "We have to go out there find them."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes!"

"They'll be long gone now!"

"They can't have gone far. They're only on little legs!"

"They're probably at home, greeting* on their mother's shoulder as she tries to convince them that not all people are as cruel as that mean old lady up the road."

"Just get your coat!"

It was quiet outside. I scanned the empty streets for pointy hats, feeling the weight of guilt and 200 grams of Geisha bars in my pocket.

Then we heard a faint knocking in the distance.

"Follow that knock!"

I found them huddled in a little alley, gazing plaintively at someone's unanswered door.

"Hey," I shrieked. "Little kids!"

They slowly turned and regarded me with their saucer eyes.

"Are you the little kids who knocked on my door just before?"

"Yes."

"Well! You have to let me explain!" I gushed, "You see, I'm Australian! I didn't even KNOW that you did Halloween over here, I thought it was just the Americans, so you totally caught me off guard, you know what I mean?"

They continued their bewildered stare.

"So I had to track you down and explain that I'm not evil, just ignorant, and here's some chocolate for you!" I shoved the bars at the Ginger Witch. "I'm really sorry, it's all I had.**"

"Thank you," they chorused.

"Woohoo!"

* greeting - it's Scottish for crying.

** Not strictly true, but I was hardly going to surrender my entire stash. Who knows how long it will be until I or someone I know is in Finland again, or one of the Baltic States where Finnish chocolate is also sold. I bet they didn't even appreciate the delicate hazelnutty praline goodness of the Geisha bar; they were probably cursing That Weirdo Australian and wishing they'd got some mini Mars Bars. Och well.

I got my eyebrows waxed yesterday. Since they're quite light in colour I tend to neglect them until one morning I'll peer close in the mirror and notice they've gone feral beyond the reaches of plucking. Anyway, yesterday I was attended to by a perky lass named Lynette, and I knew instinctively I shouldn't trust someone so perky. Now my eyebrows are ridiculously thin and arched like a cartoon villian. I turned to my husband for reassurance.

SHAUNA:  Do my eyebrows look funny to you?

GARETH:  Whoa!

S:  I knew it! She butchered me!

G:  You look like the Mercedes!

S:  What?

G:  Jeremey Clarkson said on Top Gear that the headlights of the new Mercedes look like a woman whose had a banana shoved up her arse.

S:  Just GREAT! I look permanently surprised!

G:  Don't worry. People will just see you walking round and think you're REALLY AMAZED by Australia!

The Skanks arrived at noon! They came from far and wide. Tracksuited blokes and babes with orange tans and skunk-striped hair tumbled out of Vauxhall Novas in a flurry of exhaust and thumping bass. They were armed with cigarettes, crisps and bottles of Buckfast. There were disposable BBQs blazing and selection of techno on the stereo. This was looking like a major Skank Gathering. At four o'clock when the carpark was completely full and they started playing the Crazy Frog song without a trace of irony, we knew it was time to evacuate.

Our getaway car was an aging Alfa Romeo that a friend has loaned us for a few months. "It has character," he said. Have you ever driven an Alfa? It is quite an experience. I say this purely from a passenger point of view as I am too afraid to get behind the wheel. I just let myself be shuttled around the countryside like a princess. Actually I do serve one purpose - I am Chief Door Unlocker. The Alfa has central locking but it only works from the passenger side, and only occassionally opens all four doors. And then you can only lock it back up again if the vehicle is in the right mood. If not, you have stand there in the supermarket carpark opening and shutting each door in a complex sequence until it decides to work, bang clash bang crash like a kindergarten percussion band. Also, the fuel gauge veers wildly from E to F depending on hills, it gulps down oil and the right-hand indicator only works if you hit a speed hump. But it whisked us away from the Skank Party so we weren't complaining.

One the greatest things about a small country like Scotland is that you don't need to go far for a complete change of scenery. In parts of Australia you could drive for a week screaming, "Are we there yet?" and you still wouldn't be. But over here if you don't like a particular village, then just drive ten minutes and you'll be in another. Sure, it may look a lot like the last one - each stocked with a fish and chip shop, small supermarket and Chinese takeaway - but at least it's different. Unless you go way up north you're rarely so far away from civilisation that you need to crouch between open car doors at the side of the road if you're needing the loo.

We wound up in Aberfeldy around 8pm and looked for a room. There's some brilliant B&Bs in Scotland, run by sweet old ladies who bake scones and turn down the sheets. But the real gems are those staffed by the indifferent and unwelcoming. Everything is too much trouble, and it is made clear that your very presence is horribly inconvenient. When we were in the States earlier this year we lapped up the dazzling customer service, but it was somehow cosy and reassurring to return to Scottish small town surliness.

"We were wondering if you had any rooms available for tonight?"

The hotel lady pursed her lips. "Well! I don't know. I suppose I could go and look. But I think you'll find we're quite busy tonight."

She stalked away and returned ten minutes later, "There's one room left if you want it. Don't turn the shower on, because it doesn't work. Breakfast is between 9 and 9.30 and that's it. If you're going to stay out late you'll have to leave me your key."

I wasn't quite sure how you could stay out late in Aberfeldy. We went out to find some dinner and of course the only thing open was the chippie. This is another aspect of travelling round the Scottish countryside that I love. All you ever eat is fish suppers. Every time we go away for a weekend I declare, "This time we are NOT going to eat another stinking fish supper for dinner!". But sure enough we end up stabbing away at a pile of shrivelled chips and limp, greasy fish with those tiny wooden forks, loving it and regretting it all at the same time.

The next day we ate our breakfast in the allotted timeslot then drove around the countryside til we ended up back home, avoiding right turns as the Alfa was acting up again.

We had a great day out in Glasgow with Rory & Jane in chilly Spring sunshine. I've lived in Scotland over two years but today was my proper visit to Weegieland; the other trips were just stumbling in the dark to concerts. A highlight was the Scotland Street School Museum, a beautiful building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. There's old classrooms and inkwells and pinafores and chalkboards textbooks and best of all a biscuit tin full of Cuisenaire rods! I plunged my hand right into the pile, the lovely wooden clinky clink noise they made reminded me of how much I hated stinking maths.

There's also some hopscotch thingies in the corridors. We hopped around for ages trying to remember the rules. It was much more of a cardio workout than I recalled.

The Mothership sent a text re the last entry:

Has Tesco ever offered you such a story? I think not!

She’s right you know. I struggle for material without her around. All that travelling abroad and wedding palaver were just desperate, elaborate stunts to get new stories!

I actually have a stinking huge backlog of things to tell you, but right now I am busy writing Very Terse Letters to the Home Office. I feel like a non-citizen right now. My Working Holiday visa has expired, the Home Office has my passport and all I can do is wait around til the Government decides if our lurve is for real or if I'm just Mrs Fraudy McFraud scheming to stay in Scotland because the weather is just that fabulous!

I got a letter yesterday asking me to "please explain the highlighted deposits in [my] bank account". I'd be quite happy to explain the highlighted deposits to you Home Office buffoons, except you did not highlight any deposits! You did not enclose my bank statements with your letter! I poked and prodded every corner of that bloody envelope, I put it under a microscope then through an x-ray machine then held it up to the light in case you wrote it in lemon juice but there was nothing! NOTHING!

So now I have to write to you then after another freaking month or two perhapsd you'll write back to me then I'll write back to you then you'll write back to me and we'll play bureaucratic ping pong til I give up and run screaming back to Australia. Except I can't do that because you've got my bloody passport. Oh happy day.

When you live with six other people there is bound to be some unpleasantness in the bathrooms -- the multi-coloured magical pube carpet that forms if one is not vigilant about sweeping; the girl downstairs that doesn't wait around if her handiwork needs a second flush.

Earlier this year civil war broke out when a flatmate insisted on blowing her nose while in the shower. Every morning at 6.45 on the dot I'd be awoken by the godawful sound of crusty things being prised loose from nostril walls then propelled into the public domain by a torrent o' snot, no doubt hitting the tiles and annointing the shower curtains. It was so loud you could hear it downstairs in laundry with the washing machine on.

My sister is a woman of action, and following the Multiple Occupancy Code of Practice, she took the appropriate form of action: she wrote a note.

In an ideal world, seven people living together would communicate. Perhaps there'd be a monthly meeting in which to air petty grievances before they escalated. But no, if you're not happy with the state of the kitchen, you bang a lot of pots and pans around at midnight and slam some doors then dash off a quick letter. There's been notes about the back door being left open, the bin not being emptied, and Ancient Relics of the Refrigerator.

I have noticed that the following items have been in the fridge for some time and are taking up valuable space. One tub of Utterly Butterly, one jar kalamata olives (half empty), three Laughing Cow cheese triangles, one bottle of Corona beer... [and so on for twelve paragraphs] You have until September 18 to identify these items as your own by simply initialling on the list below.

September 18 arrived and noone had laid claim to the mould-encrusted delights. Instead of chucking out the offending items, the UN Chief Weapons Inspector edited her note: I have extended the deadline for one (1) week but if I see no evidence of ownership I will take further action.

Rhi and I resisted the urge to write SWEET FLAMING CHRIST ON A BIKE, JUST THROW IT ALL OUT, YOU DICKHEAD! Instead, we removed the stuff ourselves, pointedly banged some pots and pans about whilst yelling, "SWEET FLAMING CHRIST ON A BIKE, WITNESS HOW EASY IT IS TO THROW IT ALL OUT, YOU DICKHEAD!"

Then I nicked the bottle of Corona.

Anyway, Rhi's note on the bathroom door was a masterpiece. She wasn't about to publically shame the culprit, she gave them opportunity to quietly cease their disgusting behaviour. But in response we found the note shredded in the bottom of the bin and (perhaps not uncoincidentally) they moved out a couple of weeks later. Being a lover of quality souvenirs, I retrieved the document and on cold rainy days it amuses me no end to reassemble it over and over like a jigsaw.

The replacement flatmate does not blow her nose in the shower, however often communicates in strange hi-pitched mumbles. This mimics the tone of real speech but sounds like the incomprehensible babble of those claymation shows on the ABC in the 1980s. You know, balls of plasticine that roll around and their eyes fall out and stuff.

Thus conversations with the flatmate, let's call her Morph, go like this:

SHAUNA:  Good morning!
MORPH:  Gmmf Mrrifmrrf!

So very early this morning my thimble-sized bladder was calling out for relief, as it does of a morning, so I shuffled sleepily into the bathroom. I knew what I had to do and there was enough sunrise leaking through the frosted glass door not to need the light on -- I have inherited The Mothership's loathing of wasted electricity. Once finished and flushed I was about to totter back to the cot when I noticed there seemed to be something in the toilet.

I reluctantly switched the light on and peered into the bowl. Wedged on the bottom, all limp and pink and lifeless, was a BRA.

I ran screaming back to my room.

SHAUNA:  I just peed on a bra!
GARETH:  You kinky bitch!

After discussing the breasts of my assorted flatmates, we concluded that due to the daintiness of the garment that it must belong to Morph. Anyone else's and the plumbing would have choked on the hefty underwires.

How and why the bra got there remains a mystery. At first I thought as the pee-er that it was my responsibility to fish it out, but Gareth convinced me that if you're stupid enough to use a toilet as an underwear drawer then you take certain risks.

Hours later as I lay awake groaning, "I peed on a bra!" and mentally composing a politely worded note, I heard some scuffling and splashing in the bathroom and next time I checked it was gone.

They say it is bad luck if a black cat crosses your path. They also say good things happen in threes. So what does it mean if three black cats cross your path?

This happened to me today. I am just sitting here, waiting for the piano to drop on my head.

As with the last year the change of season has left me bewildered and slothlike, but I will finish one of my stinking unfinished entries soon, regardless of the level of stink.

Do you ever wish you were a bear? Hibernation really appeals.

The two worst things about living in Britain are The Darkness and the darkness.

It was pitch black when I hopped out of the cot this morning. Another two weeks and daylight saving will end. The will to live will be lost and I'll resume being a grumpy bastard and peeing in the wrong loo.

It chucked down en route to the bus stop yesterday. Edinburgh rain always manages to find the most annoying angle of attack, it feels like needles being shoved into your eyes and nose. The girl in front with the Oompa Loompa orange complexion was wearing sandals. I have been here 18 months and sooner or later I will snap and scream at one of these human honey-glazed hams "AND JUST WHERE DO YOU EXPECT US TO BELIEVE YOU GOT THAT TAN, DICKHEAD? CERTAINLY NOT THIS COUNTRY!"

It is much more practical to be the deathly shade of white that I have cleverly cultivated. When you're walking to work in the dark it's highly reflective, thus slightly reduces your chances of being mowed down by a Lothian Bus.

Och well. The darkness is a small price to pay to live in a town where you can buy televisions and darts in the same shop.

There's some new developments in the Mysterious Trampoline/ Disappearing Dog Debacle of 2003.

Sometime towards the arse end of winter, the trampoline disintegrated under the weight of shagging students and the steady stream of toddlers dive-bombing off the wall. It vanished from the yard soon after that. Then suddenly, right in the middle of summer, Rothwell reappeared.

"Rothwell!" I cried, "Where have you been?"

"That is none of your concern. I have come for the bacon. And the name is Chip, remember?"

Please share your theories on this unsettling Dog/Trampoline business. I fear it is something as boring as Rothwell's owners keeping him inside over the winter, but it pains me to think it could be something so mundane and logical. All I know is that I have never seen the dog and the trampoline at the same time. Think about it.

Poncho.

Pon. Cho.

Now there's a funny word.

When we arrived in Riga I was suffering from flu and culture shock, a deadly combination that turns one into a shivering, mumbling twit. I was curled up on the hostel bed moaning into my pillow, Why can't we go somewhere normal? Why can't we go somewhere easy? Why not a package holiday to the Costa del Sol?

Then I heard the voice of JFK, going on about the moon and how he had to go there not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Then I thought how my fever must really be out of control if I could dare be so simultaneously wimpy and precious to compare a Latvian jaunt to the lunar frontier.

But these days I've learned to expect that initial 24 Hour Freakout when you land in a strange country, and the only cure for me seems to be to buy a really trashy magazine. Preferably an American one with a lot of advertising and fashion that I could never afford. So this elaborate backstory was just to explain how I came to be reading US Marie Claire and consequently discover that the Poncho is HOT this fall.

Why would you want to wear a poncho? Why not just wear that mat you stick under the Christmas tree? The magazine even dared to say the poncho was suitable for all body shapes, flattering curves and disguising hefty hips. Well, sure it does. Just like a Barbie doll with a crocheted skirt effectively disguises a toilet roll.

I'm amazed how quickly the latest trends filter from the catwalk to the high street to every slapper in town. At the airport last week while Rhi umm-ed and ahh-ed over duty free perfume, I observed at least a dozen different be-ponched ladies swanning past. When we arrived home, the ponchos were waiting, propped up in Princes Street shop windows like scarecrows.

Today I saw the ultimate. When the teenage lassies of Scotland roam in packs, they often choose the standard uniform of two-tone hair (dark bottom layers, bleached blonde slabs on top, aggressively ironed), cigarette, withering kohl-rimmed stare, and the mini-est of mini-skirts (or tartan Slut Kilt if they're feeling patriotic) with no regard for arctic temperatures. But this season they've added the ubiquitous poncho. I watched a quartet standing in a row outside McDonalds, gnashing their chewing gum and checking for text messages. Their ponchos swirled and snapped in the autumn wind; they looked like a flock of polyphonic ravens.

The poncho season has barely started. The poncho population is set to explode. More and more ponchos will wing their way these kiddies. Can you imagine the aerial view of Princes Street on Saturday mornings? Row upon row of flapping flopping crochet, like Edinburgh has been taken over by an evil army of Avril Lavigne/Eastwood clones.

Can this intercontinental relationship really ever work? A recent encounter:

THE AUSSIE:  So I'm really missing Weet-Bix with brown sugar...

THE SCOTSMAN:  Weet-Bix? Weet-Bix!?!

A:  Yeah, you heard me. Weet-Bix!

S:  It's WeetAbix!

A:  Not where I'm from, buddy.

S:  That's just pish! It sounds wrong!

A:  It does not. It's streamlined.

S:  You Aussies are just too lazy to say the A. Just like you say "arvo" coz you cannae be arsed with "afternoon"!

A:  Nooo! We say WEET-BIX coz we're sleek and efficient with no time for superfluous vowels -- we have to get on with the business of wrestling crocodiles and being a sporting powerhouse. While ever you're mucking about with your Weetabix, we shall remain the superior nation!

S:  Weetabix! Weetabix!

"Christ it's hot."

Two crumbly old blokes on the bus were complaining about the weather. It was a sultry 18 degrees and they bemoaned their lack of ventilated footwear.

"Only yesterday we were moaning about the rain and the landslides."

"Ha!" I love when old men laugh in short, wheezy bursts. "HA! HA!"

And there's one reason I adore Scotland. People constantly whinge about things, but they can laugh about the fact they're whinging.

They went on to complain about tardy buses, football, the Olympics, and how one of them's bathroom has been prone to flooding since the war. He didn't specify which one.

Then they started asking after mutual accquaintances. This involved one of the more baffling phrases of the Scots language. When I first arrived off the boat I noticed some people referring to Ken a lot. "Ken what I mean?" they'd say. Who the fuck was Ken and why did everyone in Edinburgh know him? Thank goodness for the Scots Dictionary.

To ken is to know. The word is in frequent everyday use everywhere in Scotland, with the exception of the Glasgow area.

"D'ye ken Mary?"
"Aye."
"Her bathroom leaks too. D'ye ken Ken?"
"Which Ken?"
"Eh?"
"Well I dinnae ken which Ken."
"Ken fae Leith."
"Oh aye. I ken Ken."
"D'ye ken Filthy Fred?"

I'm regretting not going a few stops further to find out who Filthy Fred was.

Cross-posted to Lost In Transit.

You're no longer a stranger in a strange land when the local numbers start to feel natural.

When it makes sense that postcodes consist of numbers and letters, not four digits.

When you've forgotten your Tax File Number but can rattle off your National Insurance by heart.

When your fingers stray to 077-something something when dialling a mobile, not 04-something something.

When you wouldn't dream of dialling 000 in an emergency.. call 999, the chip pan is on fire!

Freephone is 0800, coz 1800 just sounds stupid now.

And if you wanted a dirty phone call you'd call me NOW on 0909, not 00555... big boy.

The best way to combat Post Holiday Blues is to follow up immediately with another holiday. Saturday morning we decided it would be fun to drive to John o' Groats -- the very top of Scotland, the last bit of mainland UK before you either fall into the sea and die or swim to Orkney. So we hired a Ford Focus or similar and headed north .

We consisted of myself and Gareth, who you may remember as the noble soul who dragged my unconscious form out of the Radiohead mosh pit last November. We covered six hundred miles on this trip, and I'm ashamed to say I was perched in the passenger seat the whole time. I've had Issues with with Scottish roads ever since the Mothership's traumatic visit. I was a rubbish driver to begin with, but my nerves were shredded after a week of dodging sheep on single track island roads with Mum in the back seat hissing Shaaauuunnnaaa!, her foot stabbing at phantom brakes.

It seemed a feasible plan on paper, to the top and back in a day and a half. But the A9 was choked with roadworks and elderly Germans in caravans, causing much crankiness and scoffing of chocolate digestives. When we finally inched past Inverness, the road was blurred by great slabs of rain. But we pressed on -- if you waited for good weather in Scotland, you'd never go anywhere.

We stopped in the lovely wee town of Dornach for a 4 o'clock lunch. An old man wobbled up and down the street, shouting something about helicopters. He approached us with his can of Strongbow and declared with a burp, "Love is all around".

Entertainment was all around, too...

The rain cleared further up the coast. The sea looked still and silky grey, blending perfectly with the sky. Oil rigs hunched along the horizon like spiders. We finally reached John o' Groats at 8 o'clock.

As Rory says, John o' Groats is John o' Great. But once you've posed for photos at the cheesy sign , there really is bugger all to do, especially when John o' Groats Novelty House is closed.

So we decided to find the actual, official most northern spot in the UK. According to the map Dunnet Head jutted out further than John o' Groats. We could make out a sign in the distance, a D and a Head, so we headed up the road.

It was a gorgeous albeit windswept spot. We gazed out to nothing, congratulating ourselves for reaching The Very Top of Scotland. Woohoo! What a day! And we still had four digestives left!

We wandered past sheep with ridiculous rabbit-long ears until we reached cliffs that teemed with seabirds. Thousands were tucked away into the crevices, dainty puffins dwarfed by fat gulls. Further along we saw what reminded me of the Twelve Apostles in Australia, just not as many. And not drowned in sunlight. We decided to call them The Three Neds.

And then the rain cranked up again. We got drenched, icy jeans clinging unpleasantly to skin, muddy water swishing inside our shoes. Then Gareth's leg disappeared down a putrid hole that almost claimed his shoe. We trudged back to the car and fired up the heating. The air swelled with the scent of peat and gently baking sheep shit. But who bloody cared? We saw puffins! We saw seals diving for their dinner! We were at the very top of Scotland!

Except we weren't at the very top of Scotland at all. As we peered at the map to locate our hotel, we realised we were at Duncansby Head, not Dunnet. And The Three Neds were better known to the world as The Stacks of Duncansby. The Very Top of Scotland was actually ten miles down the road in the opposite direction.

Last week the Dalai Lama made his third visit to Scotland.

Overheard on the bus by the friend of a friend:

OLD LADY 1: I heard there's some sort of cult coming to the toun.

OLD LADY 2: What cult?

OLD LADY 1: The Dalamas.

And there's an old fella in a supermarket on the Isle of Skye.

Sunday smacked of summer. Perhaps it reached twenty degrees! All the Scots in the Meadows rejoiced. Shoes came off, so did some shirts. The air filled up with footballs and frisbees and the sound of Tennent's cans cracking open.

We wandered past them to join the tourists hoardes on the Royal Mile. The bagpipers were out of hibernation, dotted at two-block intervals so no one could escape that Caledonia sound. There were plenty of spare pipers too, all bored and twitchy like footballers on a reserve bench. They leaned against ancient buildings, smoking cigarettes and adjusting their hats in the windows.

I want to know how this piping business works. Is there a Bagpipe Buskers' Union with a daily roster? Or are they independent operators who fight each other for the best spots? I like to think it's the latter, and there's bloody turf wars with much discordant groaning and droning as pipes are shoved where pipes don't fit.

Sunday was our last full day with The Mothership so we'd planned the Ultimate Scottish Experience. It's only the Ultimate if like your Experiences full of cheese and cliche. We do. We took her to the Geoffrey Tailor Tartan Weaving Mill and paid £25 to be strapped into horrible highland costumes and have our photo taken in front of a fake highland stream.

Mum and Rhiannon looked rather sweet in their matching regal tartan frocks and jaunty feathered caps. Somehow I ended up in a brown sack with a floppy felt hat with a flower dangling off it.

"I don't look like part of this family at all!" I complained to the photographer, who was also Australian, like 75% of Royal Mile employees. "Am I meant to be a peasant? Have I come roond to milk the coos?"

"Just take that big sword and stand beside the lady with your hand on her shoulder and SMILE!"

The shoot lasted all of two minutes. We squintied under the lights while American tourists watched us and went "Awww!". Then Rhi and I switched poses and sat in front of Mum. The photographer scattered cotton reels on our billowing skirts and we pretended to weave some kilts for our wild Scottish blokes out there in the hills.

Our prints came presented in brown cardboard folders, just like PixiFoto. We admired the way the brilliant lighting erased our blemishes, but I couldn't help whinging again that I looked like the bastard child in my Peasant Girl getup. My resemblance to Mum and Rhi is shaky at the best of times but now I looked like the spawn of Clan McAdulterer. And what was going on with my chest? I was so tightly laced into my costume that the girls were squished into a giant rectangular mass.

"What's the deal with the Boob Loaf?" I asked the bekilted sales assistant, "Is my chest that horribly huge?"

She peered for a moment, "Don't worry dear, the dress causes some distortion. They're not that bad."

"And you are not a bastard child," added The Mothership.

We cooked up haggis, neeps and tatties that night to round off the Ultimate Scottish Experience. Which came after a trip to Monster Mash for lunch - who can turn down a giant plate of mash and a tasty sausage for under a fiver? After all the shitty weather we'd had during the week, trust us to schedule our Carbo Loading Day during a heatwave.

A big chunk of our Easter Monday was spent in a queue in Anstruther. This little village on the Fife coast is home to what is often called Scotland's finest fish and chip shop. The queue stretched halfway down the street. Prince William is said to be a big fan of the place, so if was good enough for him then we were quite content to line up for greasy goodness.

The sun elbowed out from behind the clouds and I peered at my forearms, noting that after a year I'd become just as pale as the locals. Dogs eyed the queue, wide-eyed and slobbery with the scent of sea and saturated fat. Elderly couples shuffled along the cobblestones, tongues flapping slowly at their ice cream cones. A red-haired kid tugged at her mother's arm and tattled on her sister, "She called me a stupid big bum!".

After half an hour we made it inside the door of the shop, only to be greeted by an even longer queue. But we didn't mind because we spotted a notice board full of newspaper articles. Tom Hanks had visited the shop just last week! His daughter attends nearby University of St Andrews, and evidently they'd had a day out and the local press went crazy. The headlines were priceless - 'Serving Private Ryan' and 'Fife is like a box of chocolates'.

By the time we got to the counter I was ready to break the glass and grab my own goddamn fish supper. But I thought of Tom in Cast Away when he was stranded on the island with that volleyball. He knew how to be patient. So I watched spotty boys peel potatoes and old guys scoop haddock so tenderly from the deep fryer.

Not so patient was the constant rotation of middle-aged bald guys out the front of the shop. They scratched their heads, tapped at the glass, frowned at watches, smushed their beer bellies against the window as they tried to locate their spouses in the queue. What the bloody hell did they think that would achieve? Did they really think making that vein pop out on their ruby foreheads would make the little missus fetch their sausage supper and Irn-Bru any quicker? No, so go and sit down, you lazy fuck.

At four o'clock we skipped triumphantly cross the street with our white paper bag. I wanted to yell, "Enjoy the queue, SUCKERS!". But instead I remembered the dignity Apollo 13 Tom showed in the face of adversity and sat down quietly to eat.

It was heavenly. Light crispy batter, fresh crunchy chips wolfed down with a steaming cup of tea. There was just enough time to lick the celebrity-endorsed salt from our fingers before it started to rain. A perfect day out in Scotland.

Sunday in the auld grey toun of Dunfermline.

A year ago today, Rhiannon and I were sitting in the McDonalds on St Andrews Square. Backpacks at our feet, we shuffled our fries around on the tray and tried to pretend we weren't terrified.

"The Big Mac is much smaller in the UK."

"I guess everyone will be less fat than back home."

"Indeedy."

The next day we each purchased a mobile phone. I added Rhi's number to the Phone Book. She added mine to hers. And that was it. My gut rumbled with panic. Would I ever know anyone in this country and get their numbers in my phone? What if it's just us two for the next two years? What if we don't find a job? What if we can't find somewhere to live? What if I have to slink back to Oz and live with The Mothership?

These days my phone has a modest collection of numbers. I found a home, and not one but two jobs. Now I am cosy in Edinburgh and don't need McDonalds for a dose of (albeit evil) familiarity. We're doing alright. Bazillions of Antipodeans head to the UK every year, so it's not like we're doing anything new -- but I still can't believe we that we actually did it.

I used to be so scared of things. There's so much I didn't do, opportunities I ignored, out of fear of looking stupid or being uncomfortable. I'd spend my day in a panic, nauseous at having to phone a client at work, or to walk into a shop and tell them my shoes were broken.

If you've spent any length of time being afraid or depressed or maybe even just plain blah, plonking your arse on the other side of the planet is a rockin thing to do. There's no bigger rush than doing something you never thought you were capable of doing. The more you push yourself the more you want to squeeze every drop out of your day. The people you wind up meeting, the wacky things you get to do -- it's all so bloody addictive and makes you want to hump the planet in ecstasy for being such a fun and scary place to be.

I hate to be such a navel-gazing wanker, but after a year away I wanted to say something. If you're embarassed for me, here's some dodgy photos of our adventures thus far, including the Highlands, the Fringe Festival, Frankfurt, Reykjavik, Paris and... North Berwick.

There's been some rainy mornings, where dog turds dissolve on the footpath and the traffic lights cast red green puddles on the street. All the mums and dads put plastic covers over the prams, so their babies look like those cellophane-wrapped baskets you win in raffles. Perhaps some day you'll stop outside a supermarket and buy a ticket from a blue-haired lady, "So what's the prize?". First prize Avon hamper, second prize meat tray, third prize six-month old Baby Chloe.

I finally scanned my photos from last year's T in the Park and can't stop gawking at the abundance of blue sky. Go forth and behold the wonder of drunken frisky Scots, Flaming Lips and the vague grainy likeness of Michael Stipe!

What better way to spend a damp and chilly winter morning than to climb up a great big rock? Monkey, Mattay, Rhi and I were feeling unusually energetic and decided to tackle Arthur's Seat.

We puffed and grumbled along, the combination of recent rain and New Year tourists left the path slippery. But the view at the top made it all worthwhile. You get a true 360' picture of Edinburgh, right out to the Forth Bridges, the snow-sprinkled Pentlands, and those other hills I can't remember the name of.

But my mind wandered as we began our descent. An hour of jaunty exercise surely had to be counter-balanced by some serious carbo-loading? I was thinking Monster Mash, home of the giant sausages and towering piles of buttery potatoes. I was reviewing the menu in my mind when suddenly my feet deserted me.

It was a mad jumble of limbs and beanie and backpack. Then I plopped to earth, blinking in shock, with a madly cackling Rhiannon standing over me.

"Oh shit! Oh yes! Oh... are you alright?"

"I'm fiiiiine!" I felt mud oozing down the back of my leg.

To their credit, Mattay and Monkey struggled to keep a straight face. But Rhiannon was merciless, recounting the fall in glorious detail as we continued down.

As she wiped tears from her eye I finally admitted that it had been rather amusing. I dug out my phone, shuffling down the hill as I tapped out a text message:

Guess what? I just fell over on

Whoosh!

This time I manage to land with my entire body weight centered on my right buttock. The thunk was good and wet and loud.

My darling sister clutched her stomach and dropped to her knees as she laughed silently. Even Monkey and Mattay, the most gracious houseguests in history, couldn't help themselves this time.

"You were texting to say you'd fallen, weren't you? That's too delicious!" Rhiannon crowed, "Oh, are you okay?"

"Yes. Yes. Shut up." My phone lay muddy and spent on a tuft of grass a few feet away.

And just for good measure, I fell a third time ten minutes later, this time cocking my right leg at a bizarre Karate Kid angle.

"How about this, kids," Rhi addressed our guests, "Why don't we stop right now and sit on Shauna's lap and just tobboggan our way to the bottom?"

Later that evening, as I curled my battered body for sleep, my sister sang softly from her bed, "Slip slidin' away... slip slidin' awaaaay..."

We'd sent an ambulance round to a wee old lady who had fallen. I called back later to see how she was faring.

"I'm fine now hen," she said with a crumbly giggle. "What happened was, I fell into my Christmas tree."

"Crikey!"

"There's needles and tinsel everywhere. Will you come over and help me put it back up?"

The back shift always goes on forever. It gets dark so early, so I sit there hoping they will go to bed or at least stay very still. But they don't, so Saturday night I was bellowing Are you okay Mr McWrinkly over the roar of the Pop Idol final on their televisions.

And then it started to snow. Slowly slowly it wafted down, not looking like much at first. A few hours later I took a break from rescuing geezers and stared out the window in amazement. It was as though a crack team of CWA ladies had been out, coating the world in marzipan. It looked surreal, almost fake. I couldn't stop babbling, Dude, it's my first snow! My Canadian colleague told me that I should try living in Calgary if I wanted proper snow. But this was my first time, and even as she shoved a snowball down my shirt I couldn't stop grinning.

Right up to that point I'd believed I was still living in Australia, just in some remote pocket where people talked funny and ate a lot of lard. After my shift I got the bus back into town, along the same road we'd come in from the airport nine months ago. Only now, gawking at snow-coated cars, did it finally sink in that I was in Scotland.

A familiar face got on at the Edinburgh Zoo stop. Memories of Paris flooded back -- I could never forget those watery, bulging eyes; those freakish spectacles! It was Afghan Hound Woman! I couldn't believe it. What was she doing out at 11 o'clock on a snowy night? She clung to her handbag, looking as terrified of the world as ever. Her wobbly eyes were glued to a bunch of scruffy kids clattering down the stairs, punching each other and yelling, Look at the fuckin' snoooow!

It took me half an hour to get home from Haymarket, shuffling through the sludge. My shoes were drenched, my legs were frozen. I smiled at people going by as they stabbed at greasy chips in polystyrene boxes.

I stopped on the canal bridge with the shivering ducks and stomped around a bit. It was like a thousand Lemonade IcyPoles crunching underfoot. It had stopped snowing and now the sky was soggy and pale.

And it felt so fanbloodytastic to be there, under the watery streetlight. To have reached a point of familiarity in this town where you know someone on a bus, yet there's still enough unfamiliar left that a new day can knock you off your feet.

Cross-posted to Lost In Transit.

It was dark when I walked to the bus stop this morning. The full moon was still squatting in the sky as beanie-d people scraped ice from their windscreens. Later on at work, we put up the Christmas decorations. I stood on top of the bosses desk with an armful of tinsel, gawking out the window in a "Holy Northern Hemisphere, Batman" moment. I'd never seen fog like this. It was so thick it seemed fake, like a smoke machine shrouding an 80s metal band.

Everyone's saying how Christmasy it feels. My colleagues whistle carols as they stagger in with their lunchtime shopping bags. Down in Princes Street, there's German Christmas markets, an ice-skating rink and a giant ferris wheel.

Yet I'm struggling to adjust my thermostat. Christmas to me is the blast of December heat when you leave an air-conditioned shop. It's invitations to barbeques and sitting in outdoor cafes getting plastered. It's fretting about how white your calves are. It's mangoes and pavlova and prawns and the smell of chlorine. It's the faint dread in your stomach, knowing you're in for a day of petty family squabbles, bawdy jokes and the annual enquiries about your piddling career and lack of love interest.

But now here's my sister and I, thousands of miles away from all that. There's an occassional twinge of homesickness and longing for sunshine, but we're secretly chuffed to be excused from the usual festive routine. We won't be driving round the countryside, my right arm turning pink, listening to our Xmas 2004 Begrudging Family Tour mix CD. We won't be swearing coz we can't find a petrol station, we won't be watching cousins fake gratitude at gifts, we won't be eating salad. Best of all, no one's going to be asking us when are we going to meet nice boys.

Our Christmas will probably mean slopping around the house in our tracksuit pants, hoping it will snow. We'll cook roast lamb and potatoes and indulgent desserts and scoff the whole thing ourselves. We'll sink a few bottles of Aussie red and drink to the strange scary sweetness of freeeeeeeeedom.

I just can't get the words out today. I want to be back in Iceland with all that space and nothingness, where the mind emptied then filled right up again with energy and ideas and ridiculous levels of excitement.

So there I was, sitting on a toilet at Edinburgh University, pants around the ankles and feeling rather confused.

Everyone warned me about the Scottish climate. They told me to pack thermal underwear and waterproofs and that I'd leave work in the dark and that it would rain and I'd feel shit.

Yeah yeah, I said when I bought my plane ticket. Yeah yeah, I said when we arrived to a bright and crispy April. I yeah-yeahed my way through the following seven months of delicious summery mildness.

Then last month we wound the clocks back and I went a little batty. I never expected it to get so dark so early so quickly.

The morning commute really baffled me at first. My brain kept thinking I was eight years old and going on school trip. When else had I ever been on a crowded early morning bus, headlights leaking all over the street, the aisles all fat with scarves and coats and hats and germs? On my way to the Snowy Mountains, that's when. Why did my fellow passengers look so blank and indifferent? Come on people! School trip! Tobogganing! Paltry snowmen! Hydroelectricity! Can't you get a little excited?

It took so long for my mind and body to connect and realise they were no longer in the Southern Hemipshere. On the Night of the Toilet, I wandered through The Meadows in a daze. Student couples cluttered up every surface. They huddled on benches, leaned against trees, hung upside-down from the branches, joined mitten to mitten with their tongue-piercings clashing. Evidently they figured out it was cheaper to get busy with someone than to buy another layer of clothing.

I'd signed up for a class at the university to make some friends and force myself to write. The first two weeks involved me in the back row with one hand shielding my forehead, pretending to write but actually snoozing. But the third week I was determined to focus, despite having had a shit of a day. It had rained that afternoon and I'd walked right through a huge puddle. An old man had sat beside me on the bus, reading a Spanish phrasebook and interrupting my brooding. As if the 4.30 darkness wasn't odd enough, the rain was like nothing I'd ever seen. It lashed at the windows and I couldn't see anything outside but a mishmash of car lights. The old guy kept muttering Gracias, gracias, gracias in time with the windscreen wipers. The way he pronounced it was grassy arse. Everything felt so surreal and claustrophobic, I wanted to scream.

So I headed into the loos to collect my thoughts before class. I didn't have any business to take care of, but you can get some solitude and it's so much easier to think with your dacks down.

I examined the student graffiti and tried to relax. It was hard to do because this bathroom was rank. The smell was sharp and grotty like nothing I'd smelled before.

I thought about how I liked it when people smiled and patted me on the head when I started moaning about the changing weather. It's so much better than the insane cackling and, "This is NOTHING! NOTHING! Just you wait!". Why can't people let me be bewildered and overwhelmed for awhile? It's a bit of an adjustment from sunlight on tap.

It occurred to me that the graffiti was a lot saucier than any university toilet I'd perched onbefore. There were the usual knock-knock jokes, a poster for the Trampoline Club, but then there was an awful lot of talk about penises.

And drawings of penises. Lots of those. In various stages of alertness.

Oh boy, I thought. I really admire these Scottish chicks. They know exactly what they want and they're not afraid to draw it in exquisite detail. I wish I could be so bold.

Then I noticed under one particularly spectacular member there was a phone number.

And beneath another was an open invitation to meet in this very cubicle on Thursday night for some unprintable action.

Holy crap.

I was in the Men's toilet.

!

I remembered thinking when I walked in, "Dude, those sinks are sure low to the ground. That's really handy for wheelchair access."

I yoinked up my pants and reached for the door handle, but then froze. I had to wait until the coast was clear. My lecture room was right across the hall, and these people already thought I was a twit for sleeping through the first two classes. I tried not to breathe as I listened to liquid hitting porcelain, zippers going up and down.

Finally I crept to the door and peered outside. The hall was empty. Grassy arse, lord.

I dashed into the lecture room and slipped into the back row, but then had to dash back out as I'd forgotten to wash my hands.

That was a few weeks ago now. Edinburgh gets dark so quickly but it looks beautiful in a whole new way. I continue to sleepwalk my way through the day, but I always save enough energy to look for the little stick figure with the triangle dress before entering a bathroom.

Something strange happened in the back yard. One day there was Rothwell, the melancholy dog. Then the next day he was gone, and a giant trampoline was in his place.

I had Rothwell pegged as a soulful character. He was dark, shiny and mysterious. Misunderstood by his owners, he chose to wander to our side of the yard and sit next to me on the back step. It was as if he knew I was a little lonely in this strange land and craved someone to talk to. He would rest his snout on my shoulder while I told him all my secrets and scratched behind his ears.

But he turned out to be such a fakety fakeass. He knew a sucker when he saw one and really worked those glossy brown eyes. Before long he had me saving scraps of bacon and stray crusts. He'd appear at the door and wasn't interested in talking anymore, he'd just sit and stare at us cooking dinner until I cracked.

Then one day we found out his name wasn't even Rothwell. That was just his owners' name on the tag. Lazing in bed on a Sunday morning, I heard a singsong voice, "Here Chip! C'mere boy! Here Chippy Chip!"

I leaned out the window to see a small child, and Rothwell with a tennis ball in his mouth. He looked up guiltily.

"Your name is CHIP?" I spluttered, silently.

"Maybe."

"Dude, that is the dumbest name ever. I thought you were called Rothwell."

"Well, just coz it's on the tag doesn't mean it's my name. You thought I was called I AM MICROCHIPPED at first, remember?"

"What about all those times we said, 'Tally ho, Rothwell old chap!' and you wagged your tail in what appeared to be recognition?"

"I wag my tail for a lot of reasons."

Before I had the chance to be resentful and refuse him bacon, he just vanished. A few days later I peered outside, expecting to see him snoozing in the watery sunlight, but instead there was only a gigantic trampoline.

It was black, round and professional-looking. Not like the rusty deathtrap I knew from my childhood. What the hell was going on? Who put that thing there? Where did Rothwell go?

No one in our flat knew who it belonged to, nor had they noticed anyone erecting such a giant piece of equipment in the yard. And no one talked about how the dog disappeared at the exact same time. There was only one reasonable explanation: Our neighbour was Rick Moranis and this was Honey I Turned The Dog Into A Trampoline.

The trampoline has turned out to be way more interesting than "Chip" ever was. And way more popular. No one ever sneaked into a garden in the middle of the night to jump up and down on a dog. Around midnight, students start creeping down from the surrounding flats. The trampoline is hip hop happenin', like Harold's coffee shop on Neighbours or the Peach Pit on 90210. All the cool kids are hanging out there.

What they don't realise is how otherwise quiet the garden is. There's no noise from the street, and rarely a breeze, so their strange noises and chatter ping off the stone walls and right through my window. You can hear the springs creaking and the Bacardi Breezers sloshing in their bellies. It's like having my own private soap opera. I just lay there in bed waiting for something to happen.

It starts with the sound of feet slooshing across wet grass and giggles of anticipation, then ooof and boing as they struggle to climb aboard. Then there's bouncing, lots of laughing and swearing and, "Hey, hey, hey, did you ever do this when you were a kid?". Then more laughing and swearing as they discover they cannot do this anymore.

The most strange and entertaining thing is how the trampoline has the power to turn minds back a decade. It's gossipy and manic like a primary school playground, with added drink and darkness. The conversations are short and breathless. School sucks. Boys are evil. My mum's a dragon.

"Laura is so not invited to my 21st party," said a girl the other night to her friend. Bounce bounce bounce.

"Laura. Nobody likes Laura." Bounce bounce.

"She thinks we all like her. But I mean, look at her hair."

One night, when it was still warm, I was drifting in and out of sleep. The moon was full and guy and girl talked and talked and talked. Shy giggles from her, a horrible nerdy huhhuhhuhhuh laugh from him. An hour later I woke again and heard him finally say, "So, I think you're really nice," and she said "You too". Then trampoline springs creaked and static crackled in her hair.

And that is when I hid under my pillow. I like my soap operas with a PG rating.

(Still no idea where Rothwell went.)

So once you've eaten haggis and peeked longingly under kilts, what Scottish thing can you do next?

It's time to curl.

The sport of curling is a big deal here -- Scotland won a gold medal at the last Olympics. So we wanted in on the broomstick action. Rory's wife Jane, the maestro of event management, rounded up a dozen curious folk and booked us both rink and coach.

I think I expected a wee frozen pond in the middle of a field. Instead there was a clubhouse with a wood-paneled porno set ambience, beer on tap and curling memorabilia smirking at us from behind glass.

Oh man, I thought with a shiver, this is gonna be like those movies where the zany city people stumble into the outback Australian pub, and the weatherbeaten locals look up from their beers and say, What the fuck are you doing 'ere?

But they just ignored us. We all noted the massive window overlooking the rink, through which the regulars would be able to witness our spectacular debut. Then one of the guys reported they'd overheard the coach telling his cronies, "Got some amateurs coming in today. Should be good for a laugh."

The coach was a prime specimen of maleness, tall and thick with an alluring shrub of chest hair bursting out of his polo shirt. He rattled off a list of Rules Not To Be Broken. He was terrifying.

He told us to go put on our clean shoes. We trotted obediently to the change rooms, getting pumped by giving ourselves mighty curling alter-egos like The Broominator, Curl Gurl, and Broom With A View.

It was crispy out there on the ice. We lined up along the edge like baby ducks, tentatively dipping our feet over the edge.

"Curling is the best cardiovascular workout you can get," he began, "The University of Edinburgh have done studies to prove it."

We huddled on either side of him in two neat little rows. He explained how the game worked, something about circles and curls and lines and sweeping and team captains. My brain whimpered and I only heard, "Blah blah blah blah!".

Finally it was time for him to show us his prowess. The stone sailed neatly along the ice. He put his hands on his hips and gave a satisfied smile, "Yes. That was a good shot.

"Right, you each have a go, one at a time."

Holy shit. I had been here before. That patronising voice. My lack of comprehension. The public showcase of uncoordination. In front of boys, too. Eww. Yes, it was that sickening feeling just like high school P.E. class, only now my breasts were better developed.

So what you have to do is lean on your broom a little, lunge off from this starting block thingy, and push the stone down the ice towards the big circles. Sounds easy enough. But according to coach, we were shite. "Too hard!", "Too soft!", he said in bored tones. That was when he wasn't scoffing at the lesson going on next door.

"See those people over there?"

"Yes sir."

"That's no way to teach someone to curl," he shook his head and the manly chest hair nodded in agreement. "No way at all."

We moved onto sweeping.

"You have to sweep HARD. You can press right down on these brooms. You won't break 'em. Even I can't break 'em."

We all nodded and scrcch-scrcched at the ice. I used to be a dab hand at sweeping the floors at KFC. But sweeping on ice, sideways, while running after a speeding stone was quite a different prospect.

By the time we split up into teams I was really packing it. All around us, seasoned curlers were rushing up and down the ice, sweep sweepity sweep, grunting, shouting, sliding halfway down the rink on one knee like Torvill or bloody Dean, their toupees flapping gently. But I could not get the fucking stone to move, my instinct was to try and lift it and throw it, and seeing since it weighed 44 pounds, all I was doing was slowly disengaging my arm from its socket.

"See, I bet you saw curling on TV and thought it looked easy!" came the helpful tip from the coach.

Soon enough he buggered off, probably to go break large trees over his knee for fun. We started figuring out this great sport for ourselves. Some of the group were naturals, I'm always in awe of people who just get the hang of things right away. Some of us took a little longer. Before long it was great fun and strangely addictive. I could have wept for joy when mind and body finally connected and I pushed the stone then remembered to let go, only to have it knocked out of play a minute later (damn Scots. The sport is in their blood).

We played a few ends and the Yellow Team consistently defeated the Red Team, darnit. Two hours of sweeping and stone-pushing and chit chat flew by. Soon our time was up and the coach reappeared with a water dispenser on his back to spray the ice, strutting around and waving his hose.

"What a man," I sighed.

"He is just like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing," said Rhi, "The big blokey bloke about town who knows all the moves."

"If only your name was Baby, you could meet him at midnight for some horizontal sweeping."

We finished in spectacular style, with one member of the group crashing to the ice just as all the club members were back inside and watching from the mega window. Ohhh it looked painful. I feared for his spine and felt guilty for thinking, "Wow, I'm so glad it wasn't me!" Last I checked he was recovering nicely.

There's no escape from old people. I spent a lot of my weekend on the phone to them. They call in for all sorts of reasons. They fall over or get ill or burn their steak or worse still, they die on us. It's an intense sort of job.

"My purse fell down the toilet," announced one lady today.

"Oh dear. What happened?"

"It was in my pocket, and I bent over, and it fell out of my pocket, plop. I feel so stupid."

"You shouldn't feel stupid... it's easy enough done!"

"One press of the button and it was gone."

"Oh dear."

For the next fifteen minutes she outlined this very complex tale. Between the accent and her rising level of distress, it was hard to figure out what was going on. Soon enough I realised that it had been sorted for her, now she just needed to vent a little.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Would it do any good to call a plumber?"

"Well, it's been 24 hours, I'm not sure what they could do..."

"Oh hen. I'm so sorry to be taking up your time, I'm so sorry."

"Not at all! You can talk to us any time you like!"

"It's just been a bad day, hen. A bad day."

After my shift, it seemed I was the only one on the bus without a snowy white perm. The main topic of conversation, as always, was the buses. How late the buses are, how early the buses are, how they go too fast, how they brake too sharply, with bonus commentary on every bus that passes.

"I waited 15 minutes for the 1."

"Well I stepped out the door 5 minutes before the 1 was due and it whizzed right past me."

"Oh look, there's another 1 now in the other direction."

"Aye. And there's a 2 coming roond the roondabout."

"Hold on, looks like another 2 behind it."

"Two 2's in a row, that's not right."

"You're right. Now there's a 22. Where's the 22 off to?"

"I don't get the 22. I like the 1 or the 2."

"Aye. Me too."

A brown perm with a tweed coat sat down beside me, just as we went past a pub. There were a dozen skinny lads lurking round the door, one of them sprawled on the pavement with his face covered in blood.

"Oooh what's going on there?" she asked me, without waiting for an answer. "You know they try and try to make this city more beautiful, but the likes of them just love to ruin it."

There was a chorus of creaky ayes around the bus.

Finally it was my stop. I was leaning against the pole, trying to stay awake, when I noticed an old man watching at me with a goofy grin. I raised an eyebrow.

"Smile, hen! Even though yer heart is breaking."

I laughed, hopped off the bus and took my breaking heart home, where I could finally talk to someone under seventy.

-- If you sniggeringly call a housemate 'Bruce' behind her back because she listens to Mr Springsteen all the fucking time, avoid forgetting her real name and accidentally calling her 'Bruce' to her face. The ensuing silence will kill you.

-- During the Official Inquiry into Mysterious Short & Crinkly Hairs in Shower, it is okay to walk off to the pub with the excuse, "Well don't look at me, I'm a redhead."

-- If you discover a housemate has been using your laundry powder, it is perfectly reasonable to add bleach to her bottle of fabric softener.

Cross-posted to Lost In Transit

There were two grumpy Aussie guys sitting behind me on the bus yesterday, the new arrival and the weary veteran.

"What's the deal with the weather over here mate?"

"It's shit. And soon it will be dark. Shit and dark."

"What does everyone do then? Watch telly? Go down the pub?"

"What else can you do when it's shit and dark?"

"Aww man. I'm gunna miss the summer. I was only thinking today I haven't had decent bit of fruit since I got here."

"That's because they can't grow anything here because it's shit and dark."

"Yeah. We are lucky to be from Australia."

"Yeah. Wish I could get my visa extended, but."

Six months in Scotland already! Unbelievable. Six months ago I didn't know there was such a thing as a Chocolate Hob Nob.

I wrote the following late one night, the first week we arrived in Edinburgh. The entry just curled up in a musty corner of the hard drive and hid over the summer. It's a completely unedited sprawling mess, but I decided to post it anyway, just to preserve that wild panicky overwhelmed holy shit energy of the time.

...

Recently I was wandering through a website called Should Exist, where people can submit their ideas for inventions that don't exist but really should. As a naive traveller, I've figured out a couple of inventions that don't exist but I bloody wish they did.

UNIVERSAL CHANGE ARRANGER
After four different flights to get here with long stretchy stopovers, my wallet was choked with four different currencies. Jet lag and chronic clumsiness turned me into a wreck every time I had to buy something. Every time a shopkeeper would bark "5 euro!" or "six dollar!" I would look down at my wallet and feel my stomach drop. All the foreign shapes and colours would blur into one big metally mess, leading me to bleat, "Sorry!" and trembly-hand over the wrong thing every time.

What I propose is some sort of Smart Wallet, so when the shopkeeper says "50 roubles!" or "30 bazillion yen!", the wallet would understand and the correct amount of money would rise up into your hand, perhaps presented on a nice silver platter and a note that says, There you go, dickhead. All you the weary traveller would have to do it hand it over. No more embarassing fumbling of coins! No more, "I'm new in town and still trying to get used to your weirdo money."

AUTOMATIC COAT RETRACTOR™
How many bloody coats does one NEED in this country? It's supposedly spring in Scotland, but you couldn't survive without a coat. so a typical afternoon wandering in and out of shops in princes street means having to take your coat off once you leave the breeze outside and get blasted by the overheated shops. so i am forever tangled up in my coat, swearing and fidgeting, trying to wrestle handbag straps and shopping bags and baskets and sunglasses. and then when you leave you have go through all that in reverse.

If only your coat could somehow be built-in to the human body. Attached to your back and with a press of a button, it would peel away from your body and disappear like retracting a seat belt. oh how tidy this would be! Press it again and ZAP! It shoots out and curls around your body again and off you go. Being in Edinburgh, I'd also go for the optional umbrella attachment, in which a brolly pops up from the top of my head and unfurls at the first sign of rain.

CONFIDENCE BOOSTER 2000
Last week living in the youth hostel, i was intrigued by those seasoned backpacker types. these are the ones who are cocky and chat up all the skanky blonde barmaids over a cheap gin. they've walked barefoot though the himalayas, blindfolded. and backwards. they Did Europe on 3 pence a day. They've slept with six Russian women at the same time. they have artful stubble and smell like molten gym socks.

at first i thought they were looking down at me but really they weren't looking at all. they sit on the stairs in the hostel and block your way and carry on their conversations without so much a glance. i feel so awkward and meek, so far from home... i'm scared of their confidence... it's like they're just pissing all over a map of the world.

there needs to be an invention for those days when you're wondering why you left somewhere where everyone thought your jokes were funny, all the familiar places and faces and furniture are gone. nobody knows anything about you, there's no history, all you have is that first impression. there needs to be an invention, a nasty hurty injection, a pill you can swallow, one that feels like home, like comfort, that lets you know you'll be okay sport, that this mood will pass and it's okay to be shitscared and you'll feel better in the morning.

MIDNIGHT THOUGHT DECODER
Very late at night is the only time when things make sense. It happens in that sneaky sliver of time between awake and asleep.. a blend of perfect clarity and fuzziness. In that moment all these new experiences that seemed overwhelming in daylight suddenly make sense. they arrange themselves into into nicely structured stories. The mind churns out punchlines that zing, dialogue that crackles. But the body is so very tired, fading, the eyelids feel like lead. Sleep always wins the struggle, so those ideas fade from your memory like a new photo hitting the light.

There needs to be some sort of machine, it could plug into your ear and ransack the brain, a machine that transcribes those perfect words and stores them safely while you sleep. Then in the morning you could wake up, rub your eyes, say oh my, that was a strange dream about me and Ed from Radiohead, roll over, and there would be a little jar beside your bed labelled MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS. All those words you have no recollection of thinking would be there waiting for you, as trusty and tasty as homemade jam, all ready for spreading on blogs or emails back home.

They sat around a table full of muffins and a bizarre Rice Krispie/toffee concoction, cackling and talking about Coronation Street. Once again I was the new kid, quietly and politely sipping tea even though I don't drink tea, but I couldn't just sit there looking like a pussy who doesn't drink tea.

One of them plonked down beside me and peered at me all too closely. The hue of her thick sunbed-toasted face reminded me of the cows on our farm, with deep wriggly crevices like soil erosion. She had cropped bleached hair and her eyes were almost black. She reminded me of someone who would bash you up in the canteen line at school if you didn't surrender your lunch money.

"Have I met you?"

"No! I'm Shauna."

"You're SHOR-NA!" She smirked. "Are you from where I think you're from?"

"I'm from Australia."

"AH-STRAY-LI-UH! Whereabouts in AH-STRAY-LI-UH?"

"I'm from Canberra."

"KEHHHHN-BRUH! Why don't you live in Sydney?"

"Um."

"Ha! How long are you working here for?"

"Just this week. I'm temping."

"Just this WOIK. You're TEMPEN."

"Yes. Yes I am."

"Well I gotta go. NOICE TO MEET YA MATE!"

A few hours later I was waiting for the bus when a young man with equally dark eyes shuffled up beside me. He smiled and mumbled something in a thick Scots accent.

I smiled helplessly. "Sorry?"

"Nniiidddeee?"

"I'm really sorry..."

He rolled his eyes. "Nniiidddeee?"

"You need change? For the bus? I don't have any, honest. I just use my bus pass thingy you see..."

"Noooo! I said, nnniiddeee?"

Did he want to kill me? There was noone else around. I shrugged meekly.

"Nniiidddeee?"

"OH! Nice day? Yes! Yes I did have a nice day. Thanks for asking! God I am so sorry, I --"

"Noo. Noo. I am so sorry."

He rolled his eyes again and disappeared before I could explain about being Australian and particularly stupid.

The next day at work I wandered down the hall to the kitchen when I heard those mocking tones behind me.

"Well well well. It's SHOR-NA from KEHHHHN-BRUH!"

It was a kilt lovers paradise at the Braemar Gathering last weekend. There was action galore - running races, tug-of-war, highland dancing. But best of all were the big boys. They were all at least seven feet tall, great beefy sides of flesh with names like Thor, Killer or Hamish McHammer. They threw huge stones, tossed cabers and hurled heavy objects over high bars.

At times I feared for their lives. With nothing but a kilt for protection, these boys were swinging heavy blobs of metal back and forth between their legs, working up the momentum to fling it over the high bar. Watch out for your danglies, boys! I wanted to scream, Or the highland tradition stops with you!

The caber toss is equally freaky. According to my googling, the caber is about 17 feet long and weighs around 150 pounds. And these blokes just pop 'em on their shoulders and toddle along before throwing them into their air.

I can't imagine anything more difficult, but after a few hours of watching the sport you start to take on that armchair expertise. When one hefty fella messed up, the crowded groaned in frustration. "He waited too long!" I declared, finishing my third sandwich with a little belch. "He should have let go much earlier! Jeez."

All of this excitement took place beneath a perfect sky with lush heathery hills all around. Seeing the Highlands in September makes you fall in love with this beautiful country all over again, you could just hump the hills in delight. At the Gathering, the stands swarmed with kilted folk, whining kiddies and grotty backpackers. Next to me a crumbly Englishman in a tweed jacket nudged his wife and muttered, "Heh heh heh," every time someone fell over.

There were also a strong Down Under contingent, as we discovered during the Two Mile race. On the final lap, a scrawny man with a mullet came powering up on the outside. The announcer howled, "It's the wildcard entry Daniel McBlah all the way from Melbourne Australia, he's moving ahead of the pack!" Heads popped up from random points around the stands, whooping in unison, "GO YOU AUSSIEEEEE!". I'm sure back home they would have shunned this man for his lack of arse and questionable hairstyle, but today at Braemar he was a national treasure!

Speaking of apparent national treasures, The Queen shows up at the Gathering every year. By 3PM we were roasted and grumbling, but determined to wait. Seeing Her Majesty was the one thing the sentimental wrinklies in our family wanted us to do while we we're over here. One horribly digital-zoomed lemon-suited blob later, I had done my duty.

I was not amused by how Not Amused she was by the proceedings. Crikey, Lizzie. How can you not even muster polite applause when a hulky dude tosses a tree? I can understand the drone of yet another pipe band sending one to sleep, but come on! How can one not appreciate all that kilt candy?

Admittedly, the candy was of varied quality.

The escalator groaned as I ascended, red-faced and sweaty. Only elite athletes like myself spend two hours at the gym then take the escalator afterwards. Once at the top, I spied all sorts of action at the nearby cinema. It's one of the venues for the Edinburgh International Film Festival. There were shiny cars, people with cameras and... a red carpet!

Oooh, excitement. And I'd heard Ewan McGrrrrregor was in town for the premiere of his saucy new film. Just my luck, I'd bump into the lusty lad while wearing baggy pants and a hint of that morning's Weetabix on my t-shirt.

Thankfully he wasn't among the crowd. But you never know who you could bump into this time of year. This town is buzzzzzzzzing! There's also the Fringe Festival, the Book Festival, the International Festival, the Edinburgh Tattoo... there's no Ewan but there's a dude juggling chainsaws, too many bloody pipers, bad street theatre, busloads of wrinklies shuffling up to the Castle. Every available surface is slathered by wacky posters of wacky comedians with wacky faces. Every night there's fireworks and cannon's firing, the blast sends your lungs rattling in your ribcage. Afterwards there's a flurry of noise, dogs howling, birds sqwarking and spluttering.

Last Sunday there were all sorts of free performances on The Meadows. It was a gorgeous summer day. When it warms up here it's like a dream summer, it doesn't sap your strength like in Australia, it's more slow and languid and... nice. It makes me want ice cream. At one point there was a salsa band and all sorts of people were getting up to dance. I couldn't take my eyes off this exotic looking girl and her geeky dance partner. She really looked the part, all dark and long haired and snaky hipped. When she dragged him up I thought, Hehe, he is gonna suck. Why are they together?. But he didn't suck. He just transformed when the music sparked up, moving so gracefully and sexily like he had caramel flowing through his veins, oooh they looked so good together.

It would be so cool to have a hidden talent like that. I would be at peace with being a dork if I could do something. Do you ever dream of just waking up one day, opening your trap and suddenly you could sing? Or when dinner parties were dull, you could pipe up and say, Don't worry folks! I can can-can! Or maybe you knew how to juggle some cutlery. Or you could pick up a guitar and pluck it into life.

All these crazy people in town right now, maybe some of them are accountants or bus drivers normally, most people don't know that they have this thing that they can do. People think they're Mr Ordinary walking down the street, but little do they know, he can burst into an entertainment machine at any moment.

"This town stinks," I declared, after only having been in it for twenty-four hours.

(And when I said stinks, I said it in that nasty tone with the curled upper lip, which is in fact The Mothership's patented way of saying the word. During the turbulent teens, when I was such a fucking badass, she would often tell me, "Your attitude stinks!". Usually I'd done something criminal, like buying a CD instead of saving for The Future, or complained about the dishes, or refused to herd a flock of sheep. "Your attitude stinks!" she'd say.)

Anyway, there I was in Princes Street with hands on indignant hips, my sister nodding in agreement that Edinburgh stinks!

But you must understand the context. I didn't mean it stank as in it was a horrible town. Oh no, I had fallen in love already. There was the castle, the pubs, and a sighting of a dozen kilted blokes enroute to the rugby. I just meant it quite literally was a bit whiffy. There was some bizarre scent in the air, kind of savoury, kind of moist, kind of unpleasant...

"It's dog food." Rhi said suddenly. "It smells like dog food."

"YES! Tinned dog food."

"I'd say specifically it was Chum or PAL Puppy Food."

"Freshly opened."

It made sense. The dogs of Edinburgh were comparatively cheerier than dogs from other lands. There was a certain jaunty angle to their wagging tails, a joyous ohboy ohboy expression as they sauntered down the streets and examined each other's arses. If you were a dog and the whole world smelled like the lid had been ripped off a giant can of dog food, wouldn't you be happy?

But there was no evidence that this was the source of the smell. And to add to the mystery, the smell seemed to worsen when we moved into our flat the following week.

"So how do you like Edinburgh?" fellow employees or random strangers would ask us.

"Oh we love it, but it smells funny," we'd reply.

"What?!"

"Yeah it does. Like dog food. Especially near our house!"

Yet we wondered why we weren't making new friends.

Weeks passed and we got used to the smell, but it still puzzled me. I even consulted with the quiet black labrador next door.

It wandered over quietly one night when I was sitting on the back step. It gently placed its right paw in the crook of my arm and snuffled its wet nose in my ear. It was a very quiet and still dog. Its name was  I AM MICROCHIPPED, according to the tag around its neck.

"Hey Dog," I said, "Don't you think Edinburgh smells like dog food? You know when you just open the tin and the smell hits you? All the goodness of horse chunks, chicken gizzards, monkey buttocks and gravy? Is that why you guys are so happy?"

"Who says we're happy?" said the Dog.

Finally we noticed we were living a block away from a large brewery. All those hops and yeast and good times belching from the chimney stacks would definitely account for that heady aroma. Plus, there's a slim chance it's actually an elaborate front for a Chum factory.

There were three little rabbits on the nature strip on the way to the bus stop. They nibbled the grass, adorably arranged in ascending size order. I was mentally coating them in chocolate and coloured foil when it occurred to me, that would make a cool photo.

So I dug out the camera. One bunny heard the zoom zooming and zoomed off into the bushes. Bugger. I crept forward and press the shutter. B2 nicked off. The third remained, the tiniest and most wriggly-nosed. But just as I knelt down and got the shot looking pretty, he accelerated. There were grass stains on my knees and the bus sailed past without me.

The next day I was walking through The Meadows. It was a sexy summer day; sunlight squeezed through the trees, lady joggers jogged by with breasts that did not move. In a clearing there was dozens of pigeons gurgling to each other. Along came a dalmatian, long-legged and goofy, bounding between the birds in that goofy dalmatian way. The pigeons just ignored him.

Naturally the caption came to mind first, "Dog Among The Pigeons". Ah ha ha, you're so funny, you, I said to me. Finally I remembered that I hadn't taken the bloody picture yet. But by the time I wrestled with my backpack and got the camera fired up, the dog streaked away in pursuit of a poodle.

Then a little kid barrelled into the frame and sent the pigeons reeling. He was blonde and annoying and had spotted a squirrel. The squirrel spotted the kid. The kid prowled around the base of the tree, grubby fists outstretched. The squirrel scrambled, but instead of going straight up the tree, it ran around and around the trunk in a spiral, and the kid followed, around and around. And so began a ridiculous chase that begged to be accompanied by zany music, like Benny Hill. It would have made a great photo, but I turned around and walked away.

Maybe the squirrel jumped on the boy's sandy head, cracked it open with an acorn and gorged on the contents. But knowing me, cursed with the reflexes of a 90-year-old on a porch, I would have missed the shot for sure.

I ate haggis for lunch today! It wasn't so bad. It was actually quite nice for a sheeps innards. Not sure it will happen again though. More soon!

Scottish men. What can I say? I can't get enough of them and they can't get enough of me. Just witness this conversation I had with a client the other day!

It was supposed to be a brief call to make an appointment for someone to visit him, but the flirty old bugger wouldn't stop talking.

His name was Alex and he was eighty-four years old.

OLD DUDE:  So dear, where are you calling me from?

SHAUNA:  I'm in Edinburgh.

OD:  Edinburgh! Have you climbed Arthurs Seat?

S:  Not yet...

OD:  Oh you have to! Have you heard the legend about Arthurs Seat? It says you have to wash your face in the morning dew in June on Arthurs Seat. I did it myself once, when I got out of the army. You should see my complexion.

S:  It's June now, I guess I should get cracking?

OD:  Yes you should! Then you have to send me a photo of your face so I can see if it worked or not.

S:  And what if it doesn't?

OD:  Well I guess I'll use it as a dartboard!

S:  Hey!

OD:  Och, that wasn't very nice was it? Promise I'll be nice to you now.

S:  You'd better be!

OD:  I will. So is it you that's coming to visit me on Thursday?

S:  Oh I'm afraid I won't be, I just work here in the office.

OD:  Got you chained to the desk have they?

S:  Yep!

OD:  Oooooh... now that sounds rather fun...

S:  *giggles*

OD:  But don't worry about it dear. I am sure if you wait awhile, your knight in shining armour will come and free you from your bonds!

S:  I sure hope so!

OD:  Just watch out though, once he does that he'll probably just take you outside and tie you to a lamp post!

S:  *hysterical laughter*

OD:  Ah ha! I made you laugh again! Not bad for an old man of 184, don't you think?

S:  You're doing very well.

OD:  But you know you owe me for all this entertainment!

S:  I do?

OD:  Oh yes. For each laugh I give you, you owe me one cuddle.

S:  Really? I think that's three times you've made me laugh now.

OD:  Oh I've been counting dear, believe me...

S:  I've really enjoyed our chat but I have about 50 more calls to make today...

OD:  You know the others won't be half as interesting as me. They'll just be old and boring!

S:  You'll be hard to top, that's for sure.

OD:  Are you sure you can't come and visit on Thursday?

S:  I'm sure. I'm as crushed as you are!

OD:  But what to do about these owed cuddles?

OD:  *dramatic sigh*

OD:  Oh well. It's been very nice talking to you dear!

"How do we know you're in Scotland?" emailed one cynical WNP visitor this week, "How do we know you're not still in Australia and just being really lazy about updating?"

Indeed, how do we know? I keep forgetting myself, except that I keep saying "wee" all the time and I'm beginning to think lard is one of the five food groups.

There's a heap of photos to post that may serve as proof that I'm not in Oz (or proof of an elaborate hoax). I still haven't got the bastards organised. In the meantime, here's a sample.

A sliver of sexy Scotland, taken somewhere or other as we headed up into the Highlands.

A hairy cow with hair colour eerily similar to my own

A dog in Frankfurt giving me the stinkeye

A dog in North Berwick giving me the stinkeye. He only had one eye. And check out the lady in the back. She is giving the stinkiest eye of all.

Things That You Can Do In Australia That You Just Can't Do In Scotland

#1 - The Outdoor Wardrobe

I have fond memories of being one lazy shit during my university days. Former flatmates would have less fond memories. Washing clothes was always an ordeal. We had a hand-me-down "interactive" Hoover Twin Tub washing machine, which is only one step up from pounding your frocks on a rock down by the stream. Two hours later, I'd wander outside to hang everything up on the line. Spent from all that effort, I'd leave them there for days. Sometimes a week or more.

Each (mid) morning I'd venture outside to peer up at the line through bleary eyes, making my selection. I'd unpeg some jeans, a couple of socks, pluck off some undies, then shuffle back inside. In summer the fabrics would be stiff and crinkly. In winter you'd get a touch of frost. Or a spider.

It would have taken all of 30 seconds to take the whole bloody lot off the line, but that would have been too practical.

Now you just couldn't do that here. There's no outdoor clotheslines. There's no bloody sun. There's rain. Not that I would use a clothesline as a wardrobe anymore, mind you. I've reformed.

Oh sweet, sweet lord. I'm getting a hair cut on Saturday. It's been nine weeks. You have to understand how hard this has been for me. I LIVE for the hairdresser, baby. If you could only see the pseudomullet I am sporting right now, you would run for hills and hide oot with the hairy cows.

The receptionist at the salon squealed when I gave her my name and phone number. "Shauna! Just like the girl on Home and Away!"

Cross-posted to Lost In Transit

It's easy to forget that you're a foreigner. There's so many Aussies over here that you can blend in quite easily. But the other day I was repeatedly reminded that I sound "a wee bit funny, hen" by members of the blue rinse set...

Here in Edinburgh, I'm temping at a place that provides emergency alarms for elderly people. I call it Geriatric Rescue, or the I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up Hotline. The other day I was given a list of 150 wrinklies and told to call them up and arrange appointments for their alarms to be reprogrammed.

SHAUNA: Hello! Is that Mrs McWrinkly?

GEEZER: What? Speak up!

SHAUNA: IS THAT MRS McWRINKLY?

GEEZER: Oh aye hen. I'm deaf. What do you want?

SHAUNA: This Shauna from Blahdy Blah, I'm calling about your alarm.

GEEZER: My what!??

Once we'd taken ten minutes to establish what I was calling for, I'd launch into my spiel. But over and over, they kept interrupting me to ask about the accent. Some highlights:

"I'm not paying for this am I? I've not got a lot of money, you know."

"Sooo, you're Australian then, luvvie? Will you personally be fixing my alarm? I'd like to meet you. Ooh yes."

"But I don't understand. Why are you working for them if you're in Australia? How are you going to help me from over there?"

"Is it like Neighbours over there? It's like Neighbours, isn't it. I watch Neighbours."

I saw the sweetest thing at work today. Inside the cupboard with the teacups, there's a little spreadsheet taped up with all the employees names down one side. Across the columns it says TEA, COFFEE, MILK, SUGAR. And there's ticks and crosses to indicate everyone's preferences. They spend all day making each other cuppas and I always wondered how they all knew what everyone liked. It's bloody adorable.

Row pointed out to me in a comment that because I have a Mac at home, I have to burn my files to the CD without putting them in folders, otherwise the PCs at the net cafe won't be able to read them. I worked this out for myself today, but only AFTER I bought another bloody CD to the internet cafe here tonight. So once again, we have no bananas today. Look again tomorrow! And thank you so very much for being nice to me in spite of my pathetic hissy fit.

I am feeling so incredibly out of whack at the moment.

As for net access at home, I require £200 for a security deposit for a landline, since the phone company doesn't trust me because I'm Australian. Well, they say it's because I don't have any previous UK addresses, but it could be because I talk funny and have very shifty eyes. Anyway, I am saving up for that so stay tuned.

The bacon over here tastes amazing. BACON!

The romantic part of me thought living in a share house in the UK would be a bit like an episode of This Life. I would be doing a lot of shagging, drinking lots of red, perhaps snorting some illicit substances. Or at the very least scampering around in my sexy bathrobe to scoff cake at midnight by the light of the refrigerator, Nigella style.

But it hasn't quite turned out that way. For the start there's my crappy bathrobe. It's very thick and pink. It was a size too big but it was on sale. I look bloody ridiculous in it, especially when combined with my purple slippers with the lilac sequin lovehearts on them, also on sale. I am a vision of frumpiness. I look like the lost Jedi Knight, Porky-Wan Bathrobi.

There are seven chicks living in our house. Luckily there are two bathrooms. But there is one tiny fridge. All the chicks seem to live on cans of soup, yogurt and ready-to-eat lasagna from Sainsburys. There's not a vegetable in sight. But the fridge is crammed tight with condiments. I've never seen such an impressive assembly of relishes and mayonnaise. Then there's the Jams Throughout The Ages, topped with bursts of mould. We have managed to carve out a third of a shelf for our own food, but I think the Glaswegian Chick's radioactive Cheddar Cheese has plans to invade.

It's also quite a challenge getting your washing done with six other rivals for the machine. It's one of those front loading ones. Our washing machine back home would briskly hurl your clothes around until they were reduced to a pulp, but this one gently tosses your undies back and forth like they were made of eggshells. It does a sterling job, but can take up to two hours for a cycle. Quite often I stake out the laundry with a big club in my hand, ready to knock anyone out who tries to jump the queue.

Well not quite. But I am holding three clothes racks hostage in my room. We don't have a dryer, so the racks are a prized commodity. I stole them in the dead of night and I am not going to give them up without a bloody fight. This morning I awoke to the sight of my socks and undies and bras all perched along the racks. They looked rather menacing. I should just try to buy some smalls that aren't black...

No more Hostel Horror Stories. We moved into a house last Wednesday, we've rented a room each. Our days consist of job hunting, wandering around town and just taking it all in.

For the most part I've got my head around these accents. One of the housemates took us out on the town Saturday night, and the more she drank the more incomprehensible her Glasgow accent became. Before long every time she spoke I'd shoot Rhi a bewildered look. She'd shrug back so we'd say, "Ah ha ha ha!" and prayed she was saying something funny.

There's a little supermarket just down the road that has one of those kiddie rides next to the checkouts. You know the kind. There's a plastic spaceship or dinosaur, you stick in 20p in the slot, plop a toddler in, and it lurches back and forth for a few minutes. The kid proceeds to scream in delight and/or terror for the duration.

This particular vehicle is a little red car. And it talks. Every two minutes or so a little recorded voice goes, "Have a ride in me!"

It is an obnoxious voice. It's the voice of a little bastard English schoolboy with knee socks and a freckled nose, the kind who'd kick you in the shins and steal your lunch money in the playground. "'Ave a ride in me!", it goes. Over and over. It fills me with an irrational rage.

I was queuing up with my overpriced vegies the other day when it bleated again, "'Ave a ride in me!"

"How bout a bloody sledgehammer in you?" I hissed.

"Heh heh," said the checkout lady from her perch.

"Doesn't it drive you insane?" I asked her.

"Ooh yes it does," she said. "Just the other day I was saying to it, ooh you fucking piece of shite, I'll kill you, but then the boss came over and says to me, what did you just say and I said I said nothing boss and he said well that's not what I heard and then..."

At this point her speech sped up, the accent thickened and I lost her completely.

After awhile she stopped talking and grinned up at me.

"Ah ha ha ha!" I said weakly.

"Erm. That'll be threeeee fifty," she repeated slowly.

"Oh. Sorry!"

"'Ave a ride in me!" said the car.

Last night we had a lovely Canadian chick in our hostel room, her name was Natalie. She was witty and smart and the three of us clicked instantly. After awhile her American friend showed up, and the four of us headed off to the pub for dinner.

We were hauling our unfit arses up the hill when Natalie said, "I'm really sorry, I've forgotten your names already!"

"I'm Shauna," I said.

"I'm Rhiannon," said Rhiannon, "And I'm afraid I can't remember your names either!"

"I'm Natalie," said Natalie.

"You can call me America," said American Chick.

"Oh right," I blurted. "You can call me Australia 1." Then I pointed to Rhiannon, "And this is Australia 2!".

I was all set to cackle at my own genius when I realised that American chick was not laughing. Hmm.

Over dinner, after a half hour speech on life as a Kappa Sigma (Beta Gamma? Whatever) sorority sister, American Chick treated us to the tale of her trip to Disneyland with her Mom, and how "The Japanese" like, totally ruined the holiday for her.

"The Japanese were everywhere," she explained. "Getting in my way, shoving in front of me in the lines for the rides, all to get their photos, click click, that's all they ever do, click click. I mean, like, they don't even savour the scenery, The Japanese.

"They are the worst tourists ever, and they are so rude and come into my country, which is like the Melting Pot of the World, they're worse than The Mexicans because they have all this money and think they have the right to be rude."

"Well," said I, seeing an opportunity to be a smart arse, "Why didn't you just say to them, Don't forget who won the war, buddy!"

Rhiannon and Natalie burst into giggles, but American Chick just sputtered, "Well yeah, that's right! And then we rebuilt your country too, dammit!"

??!!?!

Our two new companions were off on a Haunted Edinburgh walking tour and asked us to join us. As much as we liked Natalie, we didn't think we could quite stand any more of American Chick's stories, so we called it a night. First we exchanged email addresses.

And that is when it finally dawned on me, Shauna the Slow Arse. American Chick's name was America. My terrible "Australia 1, Australia 2" joke replayed over and over in my head and I looked at Rhi and thought my innards would burst from trying not laugh.

Finally we parted ways, and Rhi and I cackled all the way back down to the hostel.

My first born child will be named Lichtenstein, Rhiannon's will be Buenos Aires.