Excluded

Borne along by gale force gusts of wind and showers of horizontal rain, I braved the outdoors to hoof it into town to try and capture the definitive Friday blip.

The nice thing about Edinburgh is that no matter how inclement the weather and how strange it might seem to be walking about with a camera festooned around your neck in the rain, there are hundreds of tourist of all shapes and shades doing the same thing. This makes it possible to appear to remain on the right side of sane.

Our cycling dinner was very enjoyable but slightly marred by the arrival at the end, of a yard long paper bill which took about the same amount of time to apportion meal costs to individuals as it did to eat the meal.

Why we do this, instead of dividing the bill by the no of people eating it, is a mystery to me. Ok it means that the small eaters supplement the big appetites, but weighed up against the inevitable wrangling that happened last night and the bad feeling that ensued when some people left before the final bill was paid and the inevitable topping up by those remaining to reach the total, would be well worth it.

For the third night on the trot, I am eating out. His Lordship is taking me, his daughter and her partner out to a tapas bar to celebrate the birthdays of the two Scorpio women in his life.
This form of dining was not his first choice, being a man who likes to have a full plate of food and know that it is his and his alone.
But it will be good for him to learn to share what's on the table with us, his guests.

It is true that in my time, I have blipped a flower or two and even more regrettably a swan, but I think it is also true that I have never ever blipped a kitten or a puppy.
So today for good measure, I have two animals for the price of one.
They were left outside Peter's Yard in the cold, while their owner inside, enjoyed a coffee and maybe a Swedish bun. I call it animal cruelty