1. They really do wear kilts and play bagpipes a lot. Though as the day we arrived there were Highland Games afoot, and we spent much of our time in Edinburgh during the festival, it’s possible my perspective was skewed
2. They’ve got their own bank notes, but have neglected to make any coins to go with them, so they have to use ours
3. It doesn’t rain every day
4. Their buses are strange and confusing
5. There are roads where the speed limit is 70, but rather than having the national speed limit sign, it’s actually a 70 in a red circle! Those crazy Scots!
6. This is harder than I thought. Er… less people had Scottish accents than I was expecting
7. You don’t see haggises romping about in every field
8. Tesco isn’t open 24 hours (though that might just be the one near where we were staying)
9. You can buy bags in Edinburgh with sheep on drawn by me
10. It’s at the edge of the artificial reality in which we live

That last one is slightly speculative. I’ll explain my reasoning.

Though our main reason for visiting the country (Scotland, if you haven’t been paying attention) was the Edinburgh Festival, we stayed in the vicinity of a little seaside town some way out from that city, partly because little seaside towns are nice, and partly because it was cheap. The little seaside town in question, North Berwick, has off its coast Bass Rock, an island that looks like it’s made of chalk or some similarly white rock, but actually it’s made of (apparently) trachyte, which isn’t white, except when it’s got tens of thousands of gannets on it, which Bass Rock has at all times. What a lovely thing to go out on a boat and have a good look at, we thought.

And as luck would have it, the Scottish Seabird Centre does such boat trips daily, as well as another family run company. We booked a trip with the former organisation and looked forward to what would no doubt be the highlight of our holiday.

Have you ever seen a science fiction film where someone discovers that their world isn’t the real world, and they try to get out of it, but every time they endeavour to cross its border circumstances contrive to prevent them, in accordance with the wishes of whoever’s in charge of their artificial world? Well it was like that. When we turned up a couple of days later for the trip we’d booked, we were told it had been cancelled, because there wasn’t enough water. I always thought tides were fairly predictable things, but apparently the Scottish Seabird Centre disagree. Never mind, we thought. We’ll rebook for Saturday morning. It’s our last day, and what a splendid end to our holiday that will be.

So we turned up on Saturday morning, and there wasn’t enough water again. Our only remaining hope was the family run company, which had a boat going out later in the day. It had been our plan to do the boat trip and then head home, but we figured it would be no hardship to pass an idle afternoon exploring, do the trip later on, and head home in the evening. But we didn’t want to hang about all day for nothing, so first I made a phone call to make sure the boat would definitely be going.

“Och aye,” I was assured. “Ye dinnae ha’e to book, just turn up at 3:30, nae problem.”

So we spent a pleasant afternoon watching seagulls dive for starfish and get confused when, no matter which way they turned them, they were still wider than their beaks, then returned to North Berwick in time to queue for the boat trip at 3 o’clock. Half an hour early, see - I wasn’t taking any chances.

There was already a massive queue. We didn’t get on.

Clearly, the universe was conspiring to prevent us from taking that trip. The only conclusion is that North Berwick marks the end of this artificial world, and Bass Rock is merely painted on the backdrop. Or possibly some sort of clever hologram.

Which reminds me - are you as outraged as I am by the cover of this month’s Cosmo? “SPECIAL 3D COVER” it proclaims in the corner. But is it a 3D cover? No, not in any sense whatsoever. It’s lenticular is what it is. If you look at it from different angles, you see two different 2D images of a woman in different poses taken from the same spot, there’s nothing 3D about it at all. I shall be very surprised if they sell a single copy - their readers are no fools. I’ll certainly be cancelling my subscription.

Anyway, the boat thing was a disappointing end to our holiday, but apart from that it was ace! The winners of the Edinburgh Festival are the Improlympians, in that they’re the only thing we went to see more than once, though in that respect being improvised does give them an advantage over shows that are the same every day. I was a bit miffed to discover that Christopher Brookmyre, who I worship as a god, was doing a little talk thing at the festival that I would gladly have massacred a small village to see, but he wasn’t doing it until three days after we left. Had I known this in advance I might well have contrived to holiday a week later, but my investigation - for the possibility had crossed my mind, so I did conduct one - went no further than checking the News section on his official website, which made no mention of festival appearances, so I assumed there were none. It seems a more valid conclusion would have been that his official website is a bit rubbish.

Oh well. I’ll just have to go back next year.

And that’s everything there is to know about Scotland.

I’m in Scotland! We’re staying in something that’s either a large shed or a small log cabin in the grounds of an art gallery/workshop in a nice little seaside town about half an hour from Edinburgh. It’s all very lovely, though it seems to be raining at the minute. Rain! In Scotland! Can you imagine such a thing?

So far we’ve mainly been going into Edinburgh and watching shows, for we came for the festival, and mainly free shows, for we are skinflints. But today we’re going to have a look at the university (not Edinburgh University, another one), for there’s a chance Jess might end up doing a masters there, and we’re not likely to be passing again any time soon, so we might as well have a look while we can.

Then this evening we’re going into Edinburgh to see a show.

Oh, and also, I saw a bag in a shop with a drawing on wot I drew! Nothing too exciting about that, except it’s the first time I’ve seen one of my drawings in the wild outside of England, so it’s nice to see my fame spreading across international borders. Soon I will conquer the world!

Meanwhile, years of playing squash have knackered my dad’s knees, keeping fit being very bad for your health. So yesterday he went into hospital to get new bionic knees fitted. The operation was a complete success! At least in terms of fitting the new knees. In terms of not accidentally breaking his leg, it was less of a success than it might have been, because they did. It could be worse - if you’re going to break your leg, it might as well be on an operating table under heavy sedation - the trouble is that when you get new knees fitted, the thing you need to do is give them lots of exercise, whereas when you break your leg, the thing you need to do is definitely not exercise it, so god knows how he’s going to manage that.

And now I must go and get myself ready for a university visit. Posting this to my blog will have to wait - the signal to our wireless dongle comes and goes, and now it’s raining quite heavily actually, there’s no chance. I’ll try again later. If you’re reading this, I succeeded. If you’re not, it’s probably still raining.

I’m in Leicecester! It’s a fleeting visit - we’re going on holiday on Saturday (hooray!) so we’ve come to drop off the chinchillas with my mum. Normally we’d leave them with some anonymous pet sitter, but what with Gus having still not entirely recovered from when I drove over him in a steam roller, we thought it best to let an expert take care of him in our absence. But since we don’t know any experts, my injured-hedgehog-nursing mother seemed like the next best thing.

Did I mention that we’re going on holiday on Saturday? To Scotland! I’ve never been to Scotland. I don’t think I’ve been further north than Keswick without leaving this country. But I suppose technically Scotland is leaving this country, in which case I’ve been further north on several occasions. Norway and Finland if anyone’s keeping track.

Anyway, we’re not just going to Scotland - we’re going to Edinburgh, when the festival’s on, which we’ve both fancied doing for a few years, which is the main reason we’re going to Scotland. I wonder what we should go and see. There’s loads!

And do you know, I’ve been self-employed for five years now! Five years since I walked out the gates of Kelvin Hughes Ltd never to look back. Except when we went to London a few months ago and I drove past and pointed it out to Jess.

On the subject of my self-employedness, have you seen the price slider thingy on my website? It’s rather a clever invention of mine - you move the slider up and down, and the pretty picture gets more or less detailed as the price changes, so you can decide how much money you want to give me. Which means it’s fairly important that the picture is representative of what you’re likely to get, but over the years my technique has changed, and it increasingly wasn’t. I’m still pretty happy with the drawing, but after doing it most days for five years, I’ve got a lot better at colouring in. You might think that’s the easy part when you do it on computer - that’s what the flood fill tool’s for, after all - but, well, it isn’t. So last night I recoloured the picture to bring it in line with how I do my colouring in these days. Spot the difference.

What do you reckon? I think it’s a big improvement. Of course now I want to recolour the whole of The Unhappy Hiccup. But I won’t. That would be crazy.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Right. I will not let all of July go by without blogging. But my goodness I’m cutting it fine.

Jess went to Europe, and I intended to catch up with lots of chums while she was away to prevent me going mad, but then I got too busy and it didn’t happen, unless you count henry’s funeral. Oh! That reminds me. We decided to have a sort of combined SimonG.org/henry the thirst memorial meet, and a quick straw poll on Facebook revealed September 4th to be the most convenient date, so that’s when it’ll be. Somewhere in the region of New Haw. Further details to follow, but for now, write it in your diary. And if there’s anything else written in your diary for that day, scribble it out. And if you haven’t got a diary, buy a diary.

Then Jess came back and Colin came to visit like what I said about before, if you can remember as far back as my last blog. And we had a great time catching up and doing all the touristy York things that I’ve never got round to doing in three years of living here, and it was great! But probably of no interest to you, so I’ll move on to more dramatic news.

I STOOD ON Gus! Yes, I am a horrible chinchilla owner. He was out in the kitchen hopping about while I cleaned the cage, and I went to put my foot down, and he was nowhere near, and I continued putting my foot down, and suddenly he was under it. Gravity and inertia thwarted my attempts to not do him any injury, and he’s still hopping now. I mean, he hops normally, because that’s how he walks, but normally he does it on four legs instead of three. The vet doesn’t think there’s any permanent damage, but I still feel incredibly guilty, and have been giving him far more treats than are probably good for him. He looks like Mr Potato Head in Toy Story 3 where he has to use a… well, you know. I won’t say what in case anyone hasn’t seen it yet. You should, it’s ace.

Meanwhile I’ve finally got an agent interested enough in the first three chapters of my novel that she’s asked to see the rest of it, which is good, though she does qualify her enthusiasm:

I enjoyed reading your sample chapters; your prose and plot are strong, and I like the climactic twist. However, Killing Elizabeth presents us with a big problem. The market is flooded with crime/thrillers at the moment; in any case, crime novels with a comic element are very hard to sell to publishers.

I wish I’d known that five years ago. I’d have written something bleak and depressing about vampire pirates. Vampirates. That could work.

Elsewhere in the news, I’ve been super busy revamping simongoodway.com to make me appear even more professional and brilliant than I already did, if such a thing is possible. If you visit, I’m currently experimenting with nine different versions of the website text - you’ll be assigned one at random - so if it seems oddly concise/verbose/casual/formal/in Klingon, that’s the reason. So far the one generating the most business is medium length, casual, and not in Klingon. Unless you happen to be one of my competitors, in which case verbose and formal is definitely the way to go. Oh, and it turns out you get more work if all the examples of your work are really rubbish. And if your site redirects to simongoodway.com. Yeah.

Finally, I could tell you an amusing story about a poem wot I wrote several years ago and had completely forgotten about, but I won’t, because it makes Omally look a bit silly, and we wouldn’t want that. So instead I’ll just tell you the poem.

By the side of the Wey Navigation Canal
Stood a man and some geese and some goslings et al.
The former was trawling the waterway’s bed
With a magnet attached to a long piece of thread.

At his side were the treasures he’d salvaged to date:
Two pennies, an orrery, pieces of eight,
A Harrison watch and a small submarine,
Some paperclips and the Enigma machine.

Now cut if you will to the watery deep
Where a mermaid arose from mermaidenly sleep.
Half woman, half goldfish, upriver she swum
With a long string of poo hanging out of her bum.

A few moments later the rope became taut
And the man wondered what kind of treasure he’d caught
So he heaved and the mermaid splashed onto the shore,
Her earring drawn in by the magnet’s allure.

She looked up from the path to the man’s smiling face
And said “Please sir, I beg, put yourself in my place!
“Show some mercy I pray and in Tethys’ name
“Let me hie myself back again wherefrom I came.”

That night over dinner the man would regale
The lady he loved with his curious tale
As he poured the main course from his cookery pot
And they scoffed every bite of his nice mermaid splot.

I’ve had this entry percolating in my mind for a week or so. That happens a lot, it’s just that usually I don’t get round to the bit where I actually write it, or else circumstances change and it ceases to be relevant. But this time the opposite has happened.

I recently got back in touch with my old chum Colin. You remember Colin - he got the occasional reference in the early days of this blog, then was mentioned less and less as we lost touch. No special reason, our emails just became increasingly infrequent until they stopped altogether. Anyway, a few weeks ago I decided this was silly and sent him an email, and then he sent me one back, and we ended up having a good old natter on Skype, and it was just like the old days. He’s coming to visit next month. I can’t wait!

But it got me wondering what had caused the increasing infrequency of our communication, and I’ve spotted a worrying pattern, which might be indicative of a terrible, shameful, misanthropic flaw in my character, or it might just be an amazing coincidence.

I’m going to have to give you my life story now. I’ll be brief.

When I was seven my family moved house and I had to make all new friends. Thanks to someone throwing up over him during story time, I became best friends with Jonathan, who remained my best friend until I went to university, where I met the aforementioned Colin. Not long after that I lost touch with Jonathan (though that didn’t stop me visiting his parents to ask for a very cheeky favour a decade later). Now my best friend was Colin.

A few years later I started geocaching, and made this blog, and the Favourite Things Experiment, and started to make lots of new internet friends. One of those internet friends, henry, told me my website should have a chatroom. I thought this was a mad idea and no one would use it, but I had lots of spare time back then, and writing a chatroom sounded like fun, so I made one anyway, and it turned out it was a brilliant idea and cemented a lot of those internet friendships and turned some of them into real life friendships and at about this time I lost touch with Colin. Have you spotted the pattern yet?

Then a few years later I met Jess (in, it should be noted, the very chatroom henry told me to make, so it’s thanks to him I met the girl I’m going to marry). And we became rather more than best friends, and ever since then I’ve been woefully neglectful of all my other friends, and very rarely do anything like, say, talk to them.

Now correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation, but I can’t help thinking it looks a bit like as soon as I make a new chum, I abandon all the old ones. Which is both a) a horrible character trait and b) an unusually introspective thing for me to blog about, or even to introspect about. And in the normal run of things, this would probably be one of those entries that gets composed in my head but never makes it as far as the internet. But now one of those friends I rarely talk to is gone forever… well, you know. Suddenly it seems to matter.

Anyhoo… on Monday Jess goes to Europe for sixteen days of adventuring. I’d go too but we’re off to Edinburgh in September and I’m not rich enough to have that many weeks off work, but I won’t be working every single waking minute, and I’ll probably go slightly insane from lack of human contact, so if anyone fancies doing anything in the next couple of weeks… well, it seems like a good excuse to see some of those friends I never talk to, doesn’t it?

Just a quick note to report some sad news - Henry the Thirst passed away at the weekend. The cause isn’t yet known, but it seems like he went peacefully.

I’m not going to say anything else at the minute - I’m still far too shocked to put any coherent thoughts in order - but I know a lot of people who cared about him read this, so I thought I should let you know.

EDIT: henry’s blog is now back up at henrythethirst.com. I’ve copied the comments from here to there, since that seems like the most appropriate place for them.

A couple of years ago I was eating my dinner and there was something crunchy in it, and it was my tooth, thus prompting my first visit to the dentist since I was eighteen. He gave me a filling, but warned that so much of the tooth was missing, there was a chance it would give me further problems in the future.

Tuesday was the future, and it started giving me trouble. I went to bed with frozen peas tucked inside my lip to numb the pain, and it wasn’t too bad. On Wednesday it was worse, and I booked another trip to the dentist.

By Thursday I was in agony, high on painkillers, and trying every folk remedy for toothache the internet could suggest. I rubbed peanut butter on it (I hate peanut butter), I swigged whisky (I hate whisky), I swigged water with salt dissolved in it, I swigged water with bicarbonate of soda dissolved in it… they were all vile, and only helped to the extent that their vileness slightly distracted me from the pain for a few moments. I think the pain is my least favourite thing about toothache. My favourite thing is probably that it gives you a good excuse to eat chocolate buttons, because they don’t require any chewing. But I don’t think the chocolate buttons made up for the pain. Why people rave about pain au chocolat I don’t know. (Do you see what I did there?)

On Friday morning I went to the dentist. By this point the left hand side of my face had swollen up. My theory was that I’m allergic to Nurofen Plus, though the dentist reckoned it was the result of the infection in my tooth having spread. I was terrified he’d have to do root canal surgery - not because I feared the operation, but because I knew he wouldn’t have time for it in the only slot he’d had available that week, and it would mean putting up with it all weekend. Fortunately he offered me an alternative solution, which could be done more quickly - he could pull the tooth out. I went for that one.

So I’ve spent the weekend with a missing tooth, a sore gum, and a face that looks like someone sawed Laurel and Hardy down the middle and sewed them back up the wrong way round. It’s a good job I wasn’t scheduled to participate in any pie eating competitions. I’d have done rubbish.

My face is almost back to normal now. I had a pizza this evening, just because I can. I’ve never needed any other reason.