Rabbie Burns slept here

Scotland was great. Haggis, , pigeon, tablet (that's fudge to you), Kinder Eggs (illegal in the States and all the tastier for that), pudding that wasn't pudding (including blood). Kilts for hire. I bought a Sherlock Holmes hat but please refer to it by its other name, which is a Deerstalker, so I didn't feel quite so nerdy. My people hunting hat. When we there some asshole doctors tried to be terrorists but were, thank god, surprisingly incompetent. "BBC Grovels to Queen," was the other big headline, 'cause the BBC lied about her Highness, saying she stormed out of a photo shoot with Annie Lennox. Or someone. The BBC was in trouble already for having folks (blokes!) at home pay to phone in to vote on which dish the host chef should prepare. The scandal isn't that it's the stupidest idea for a TV show ever but rather that while that chef was supposedly waiting to see which dish the voters would vote for he was also DJ'ing live on the radio. Scam! Edinburgh is an amazing city. They have a poetry library and a writers museum. The writers museum was featuring an exhibition about Ian Rankin, author of twenty odd Inspector Rebus novels, all set in Edinburgh. James Elroy describes Rankin's stuff as "tartan noir." I'm almost done with the second book in the series. Blade thinks Ian Rankin needs a new author photograph 'cause he always uses the same dumb one in which hi right hand is touching his left shoulder. We toured the Highland Park distillery and saw a cask that Ian Rankin had autographed--I guess it's a big honor to have your own barrel of whisky 'cause they all taste different to the connoisseur (side note: We watched "Sideways" on DVD last night, then again with the commentary--that shit's funny! So sad Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor did "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry"). We also ate a lot of sticky toffee pudding which is also not pudding. Saw Angelo and Shareen in London and that was a good time. Got to meet Mel and eat lunch with him which was fun. Mel's great uncle was the founder of MI5. Melatonin means no one should ever ever have jet lag. The dollar was the worst against the pound since Reagan, but at least it made conversion easy--two to one. The picts were a mysterious people as were the Neolithic builders of the Ring of Brognar and Maes Howe and the Brock of Stromness (all on Orkney)--amazing, a real highlight of the trip. Posh and Becks suck. They were all over the news. We watched a lame show called The Richard and Judy Show wherein Richard and Judy are relentless in their questioning of a Breatharian. When we showed up at the guest house on Orkney Frank couldn't find the owners--a visiting fireman had to walk back into the house and find the slacker son. A visiting fireman? Ginny ordered kippers for breakfast and I had one. Once I almost ordered "the skink" but Blade stopped me and thank god 'cause it's called Cullen Skink and Cullen isn't an adjective for a type of skink. There's no other skink. The real question: How does one ever thank one's in-laws for a trip like this? That's a rhetorical question. Anyway, it was damn fine time... Now I'm sleepy...