I'm in Fife

But don't worry, I shall be escaping to Aberdeenshire tomorrow.

Those of you who were worried at my no-show yesterday, panic not. All this week I shall be on reduced internet access, so blogging will be piecemeal and erratic. What? I hear you cry, but your blogging is piecemeal and erratic at the best of times.

Well then, this must be the best of times.

So where have I been? Well on Saturday, I had lunch with Truffaut, who used to comment here in the early days, but has since found better ways to waste her time. Truffaut was my flatmate many, many years ago in Aberdeen, and I've not seen her since then. She stumbled across poor Sir Benfro not long after I began recounting his adventures, and began cyber-stalking me. Using a little sleuth work, I managed to work out who she really was, then find a working email address for her, at which point I discovered she was living in Swansea, not more than a two hour drive away.

It's taken me a year to get around to making that trip, and I needed the spur of another of my old University flatmates, whom I shall call Eisenstein for the purposes of anonymity, to come down to visit. This made it worth my while making the journey - two birds and one stone so to speak.

Now here's the weird thing. Sixteen years have passed since last I saw Truffaut and Eisenstein, and I'm damned if I could see how they had changed in all that time. Eisenstein had the decency to say the same about me, though I know for a fact I weigh a good deal more now than I did back then.

Anyway, we went to a nice restaurant in Mumbles, had a good lunch and talked about the old times. All very civilised and nice. Then I drove down to Winchester (or parts just South thereof) and stayed with my uncle and aunt for the night. By a strange piece of spatio-temporal engineering, my older brother, his wife and three children had chosen that weekend to descend uncle- and aunt-wards too, so I did a bit more catching up. My brother and I both went to school in Winchester, and some weekends, if we'd been especially good, my uncle and aunt would take us out of school, feed us and entertain us for the day. Roll forward a couple of decades, and it all felt eerily similar (at least, after the children had gone to bed.) Thus was more reminiscing done.

Sunday was taken up with the Alfa Romeo Owner's Club Spring Outing at Middle Wallop, which wasn't perhaps as exciting as I had expected, but was an excuse to take a few photographs of nice cars, meet a few mad people and get soaking wet in the rain. I may well blog more on that subject later, but since I am away from my usual resources, you'll have to make do with this for now.

I didn't get back from Hampshire until quite late last night, hence the lack of bloggage. Today has been spent mostly in driving north to Fife, which is as dull a subject as it sounds. Tomorrow, however, I shall be heading to Aberdeen and a certain Bearded Writist's second book launch. Chances are I won't be able to post anything tomorrow, but if you've been very good, I may be able to tell you all about the wondrous occasion when next I have access to the interweb. There may even be pictures.

Until then, you'll just have to talk amongst yourselves.