HiGhLaNd GaMeS dAy FuN

These clips are not in the right order.

WE WILL ROCK YOU!


FANCY FOOTWORK


QUICK MARCH


QUICK MARCH TWO


HOKEY KOKEY


BONNY HIGHLAND LASSIE


WEE 'S' HAS A BOUNCE


THE EARLY MORNING

What a smashing wee girl

A Ceilidh for the 6th year leavers

Scottish teenagers dancing to celebrate leaving high school.

AlMoSt DoNe WiTh DrIvEwAy NoW

LeTtInG ofF sTeAm!

l have to say something about the Virginia Tech. shootings. My oldest son, D is just finishing his first year in the residence halls (engineering of all things) and my daughter, M leaves this September to do her first year at university too. This tragedy has hit close to home for me- it’s been all over the news and l am having such a hard time getting my head around it all- doubt l ever will. These students, still so young, leaving home to make something of themselves- and you think your children are safe- especially on campus!
Everyone is talking about forgiveness for this young man but all l seem to feel is anger. Anger not at him- but at what was done - but for the damage done that spawns such monstrous atrocities to emerge in our youth. How could he, why??? I saw a brief picture of his room. l think of my son’s cramped shoebox of a room and how he manages. What happened to this kid- why do these killers model themselves on film/game characters? It’s madness- all of it. The way l see it is that this lad wanted to commit suicide and he wasn’t going alone. How can it be so easy for a our young to become armed with the knife and the gun and to use them with cynical indifference or psychopathic madness. What kind of society have we created to so fester the minds of a young generation? Bred on a diet that makes them assume that what they want they have - and now - without effort or thanks, we increasingly see the streets of our towns and cities the battleground for marauding gangs of young people with little hope or sense of opportunity. Enticed into drink and drugs with a fragile sense of values, their reality becomes at odds with the rest of society and increasing alienation leads the extremes into little better than a feral lifestyle. The ASBO is worn as some ‘red badge of courage’. We have engendered a dependence culture that encourages young people to assume that there is always a safety net, always a handout and responsibility is someone else’s problem. I read on the news of a 12 year old boy performing a filmed beheading, teenagers brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers, a gang beating and knifing a lone teenager to death and a young American student cold bloodedly shooting fellow students. Nourished by a childhood of violent television and computer games, music that parades sex and violence cheaply, and a news representation of the world that revels in the violent and the corrupt, is it little surprise that some speak of this generation of teenagers as ‘the lost generation’. Civilization we would boast – by what definition?? Tragedy the Virginia shootings were for sure but, even greater is the tragedy of what we are doing to our youth. I would not be a teenager in these days, fear for my own and thank God they are surviving it. I’m rambling here but still feel angry and so utterly heartbroken for the families who lost their loved ones.
I know it’s not a simple matter of events but am just so shocked.

tWo Of ThE sAmE

Country dance by Norman MacCaig

The room whirled and coloured
and figured itself with dancers.
Another gaiety seemed born of theirs
and flew like streamers
between their heads and the ceiling.

I gazed, coloured and figured,
down the tunnel of streamers —
and there, in the band, an old fiddler
sawing away in the privacy
of music. He bowed lefthanded and his right hand
was the wrong way round. Impossible.
But the jig bounced, the gracenotes
sparkled on the surface of the tune.
The odd man out, when it came to music,
was the odd man in.

There's a lesson here, I thought, climbing
into the pulpit I keep in my mind.
But before I'd said Firstly brethren, the tune
ended, the dancers parted, the old fiddler
took a cigarette from the pianist, stripped off
the paper and chewed the tobacco

ThE dELiVeRy aRrIvEs

a ScOtTiSh SkY- yEaRs To MiNuTeS

Please take the time to watch this through. The stars and trees at the end are fantastic!
Ewen Meldrum uses time-lapse photography ~ the film is two years of work wrapped into minutes. News report HERE.

By photography teacher Ewen Meldrum

My ViSuAL DNA pRoFiLe

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

TiMe PoEm

To realize the value of one year:
Ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of one month:
Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week:
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one hour:
Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute:
Ask the person who has missed the train, bus or
plane.

To realize the value of one-second:
Ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond:
Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the
Olympics.

Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you
have. You will treasure
it even more when you can share it with someone
special.

wOrKeRs In WeLLiEs

The song below is one that l used to sing in the playground when l was in primary school.

THE WELLY BOOT SONG
(McEwen)

Wellies they are wonderful, oh wellies they are swell,
Cause they keep oot the water, an' they keep in the smell,
An' when yer sittin in a room, you can always tell,
When some bugger takes off his wellies.

If it wasna for your wellies where would you be?
You'd be in the hospital or infirmary,
Cause you would have a dose of the flu or even pluracy,
If you didna have your feet in your wellies!

But when yer oot walking, in the country way about
An yer strolling over fields just like a fairmer's herd.
And somebody shouts "Keep aff the grass," and you think "How absurd;"
And, squelch, you find why fairmers a' wear wellies.

Chorus

There's fishermen and firemen, there's farmers an a',
Men oot digging ditches an' working in the snaw;
This country it would grind tae a halt and no' a thing would graw
If it wasna for the workers in their wellies.

Chorus

Noo Edward Heath and Wilson, they havna made a hit,
They're ruining this country, mair than just a bit,
If they keep on the way they are goin', we'll all be in the sh..,
So you'd be'er ge(t) your feet in your wellies.

Chorus


Tune: "The Work of the Weavers."
Recorded by Billy Connolly on _Cop yer whack for this_; Polydor (1974).
Note: Connolly remarks:
I'd like now to sing a song about Scottish Highland national dress...
Wellington boots. Did you think it was the kilt? Edinburgh's the only
place you see kilts, really. Teuchters wear wellies. And the welly is a
great, great form of clothing. It used to be the great mark of poverty
in Partick: wellies in the summer.
And when you're lying on the beach in Spain trying to let on you're a
millionaire... wi' a four bob cigar an a seven bob bottle of champaign.
You're found oot to be working class cause you've got welly marks on yer
legs. Two rings of No Confidence

[teuchter=stranger...in this case "highlanders"]
[Partick=a working class section of Glasgow]

LYRICS FROM HERE

CoLoUr & WoRd CoNfUsIoN

I saw this in one of my husband's training manuals. I tried it and felt confused and disorientated. But then I do. Apparently the right side of the brain tries to say the colour while the left tries to read the word. I can now understand how confused Blair must have felt and panicked when he read the words SOCIALISM and LABOUR in the same sentence a decade ago.

So, WhAt'S tHaT bUtToN fOr?

What’s the chance of a tipper truck getting jammed under an overhead motorway sign? Well it happened somewhere between Glasgow and Stirling today. Luckily the car and truck driver escaped injury.


A force spokesman said: "This is a highly unusual set of circumstances and the operation to remove the rear section of the truck from beneath the gantry is a delicate one."

Photo & BBC News HERE

JuSt LeGaLiSeD cOuNciL gRaFfiTi

Is this really necessary? We didn't have a problem with this junction before so why now?
As for our own street, there is still a legal dispute as to whether the double yellow lines are entirely legal. Before there was no problem but now we have created a thoroughfare for young boy racers. Our children have to cross between parked cars and neighbours are vying for space to park- not a pretty sight! When parking across the street l worry every time l take Sam from his car seat and unload the shopping~ hense the reason we're putting in a driveway.
More blasted yellow lines to add to our neighbourhood’s decline, and because it is the Council- they get away with it. Hmmf!

"SeA-FeVeR" rEaD By HoRiZoN ;)

a WiNdY dAy

HaNdY aNdY

Read more about Andy HERE