Sunshine Over Penicuik.

There is a motley assortment of members in the Creative Writing Group; well I'm in it, so you get the general idea. While I, boringly, recycle pages from my blip journal, one gentleman is working an autobiographical piece about how he destroyed a colonel's tent during a camping holiday, a lady writes biographical stories about her family as related to her by her late mother while an eighty year old spinster produces a wide range of macabre and racy stories created by her vivid imagination.

Today we had a new member, I've known him on and off for about forty-five years but now, while he's a little deaf, he manages pretty well with the aid of hearing aids and lip-reading. We have no idea what his contribution will be but today we just introduced ourselves and let him enjoy listening to our work while consuming the obligatory coffee and cakes.

When I first knew him, he was teaching handicrafts at a school in Essex. He had devised this wonderful project of making a miniature cannon, it incorporated all sorts of skills: metal turning , wood turning, jointing, painting and varnishing, etcetera. The powers that be said that he had to decide whether he was teaching wood-work or metal-work.
Shortly after that he moved up to Perth.

It fell on my shoulders to give him a lift home, this is the view of the Pentland Hills a few yards from his front door.