When I drive I usually listen to music. Since we’ve been over here we haven’t turned the radio on or tried to Bluetooth anything from my iPad in case it drowns out Nigella the satnav lady. As it is, all we seem to hear from her is “recalculating”. The next bit – “you idiot”- is silent. So if there’s no music coming at me I listen to my own, in my head. I like to go through songs I have learnt or am trying to learn to keep them fresh in my memory. The number of songs I know would keep my mind occupied round an average sized roundabout so it’s important I can nail them.
So most of the time I’m singing the words in my head and calling the chords, as in A minor On a dark desert highway, E seven, cool wind in my hair, G, warm smell of colitas, D, rising up through the air, and so on.
But something happened a few days ago, somewhere between Southport and Glasgow. A button was pushed like on those old car radios and my subconscious said, “hey, what happened to Hotel California and why are we singing “But ah wud wok fave hundrred miyles nd ah wud wok fave hundrred more, just t be the mon who woks a thoosand miyles, t fawl doon at her door”. You have to read that with a Scottish accent which is how I got through Trainspotting and some of the other Irvine Welsh books. I don’t proclaim that my phonetic Scottish is up to his standard however.
So as our iPhones automatically adjust the time and weather data wherever we are, it seems my brain automatically knows where I am also and adjusts accordingly. This is an interesting concept because in the younger days of my chosen profession – marketing – I have entertained and been entertained to within an inch of my life and always managed to return to the designated safe haven. Not always with my credit card in the best of shape it has to be said but with life and limb (liver excluded – yes, I know it’s not a limb) intact.
Which brings us to the Isle of Skye off the Scottish coast. It is a land of spectacular scenery and sparse population in keeping with the rest of the Highlands we’ve seen. The child bride and I are staying in a place called Colbost and went out to dinner tonight to a restaurant in a place called Edinbane – the Edinbane Inn. It’s a pub sort of place but it’s also a hotel. Not a pub with rooms to let but a hotel with a bar and restaurant. I make this distinction for a very simple reason – there are no real pubs in the Highlands of Scotland.
In remote Ireland you’re tripping over them but here there aren’t any although apparently there could be one in Stein, not far from here. I’ll never know. But even if there’s one, what are they thinking? And I’m afraid a liberal sprinkling of scotch distilleries is scant compensation.
But I digress because we had previously changed the subject to credit cards. When I tried to pay the bill tonight I discovered my credit card was missing. I thought I’d lost my passport in Istanbul once and the blind panic is somewhat similar. But I hadn’t. I’d mistakenly put it into a different wallet compartment, deeper than the usual one so I couldn’t see it. Anyway, all’s well that ends well. We are in the lounge of our B&B drinking wine, the CB is plotting tomorrow’s activities and I’m just about to finish writing this. Done.