Firetop

On Wednesday morning we awoke to another beautiful sunny Scottish day, having overslept and only just made breakfast we had to rush to pack and check out by 11am. Having said goodbye to Melville Castle we drove around the Edinburgh City Ring Road and over the Forth Bridge (at a £1 toll fee) heading in the direction of Perth. The drive was relatively easy, very few cars or lorries about and we could see the mountains and grey clouds ahead of us on the horizon. It was certainly picturesque from the outset with hills and widely differing weather systems on show from West to East. Having passed both Perth and Dundee we were making good time - so at Forfar decided to take a large detour West via the Grampian Mountains. (more…)

Having spent two nights at the Melville Castle Hotel we checked out on Wednesday morning. We enjoyed our stay thanks in part to the extremely friendly and helpful staff. The aging porter ‘Angus’ seemed to take a shine to Suzie_Q, calling her ‘Princess’ at all times and insisting that she should be the one to receive the tour of our hotel room and not me; “You’re just her butler nowâ€? he said to me. He tested all the lights in our suite when we arrived – even changing a blown table lamp bulb within minutes of our arrival. (more…)

On a Tuesday morning filled with bright sunshine, with Scottish breakfasts lining our stomachs, we drove into Edinburgh City Centre in search of a car park. We found an NCP (St John’s Hill) and the fees were no worse than average at £5 for 6 hours. Having parked up by 12pm we took a stroll up Chambers Street, past the Royal Museum. Initial impressions of the surrounding architecture and beige stone colouring reminded me very much of Bath. As we reached the top of Chambers Street I saw a whole bunch of toothless edgy characters standing on the corner – they looked like they should have been on the Jeremy Kyle show… of course they were standing outside of main Edinburgh’s Court House! (more…)

We arrived in Edinburgh airport early on Monday afternoon, after a very bumpy approach as high winds buffeted our little British Airways plane; we could see the choppy Firth of Forth below us through the cabin window as we clutched our seat arms tightly. Thoughts of movie classic Flash Gordon went through my head as I hoped Ming the Merciless wasn’t about to fly into the cockpit and rip our pilots from their seats. (more…)

As I type this evening there’s a new addition to my left hand - a wedding ring blessed by god and placed there by my new wife Suellen. Yesterday’s church ceremony went perfectly, the reception was great, hundreds of friends and family showed up, my speech seemed to be well received… and my usual rendition of Engelbert Humperdinck went down a storm. It’s true what they say about your wedding day being the best of your life - it exceeded both of our expectations by a mile. (more…)

Continuing with my reviews of newly acquired Xbox 360 games, tonight I put Gears of War on Ebay. That in itself about sums up how I feel about it after three evenings. I’m not sure why GamesMaster say ‘The best game we’ve ever seen’. Rated ‘Certificate 18′ with ‘Contains Strong Bloody Violence’ slapped on the back, the splattering blood is about all the game has got going for it. For some reason, in Xbox Live more than half of the competing players are Scottish (with strong Glaswegian dialect which sounded as foreign to me as French or German) upon discovering you’re English they boot you out… lovely. (more…)

Last weekend I bought Bethesda’s Star Trek Legacy for my Xbox 360, as a big fan of Star ‘Wars’ games (Battlefront etc.) I was hoping to be equally enthused about Star ‘Trek’. However, with Xbox live my main priority on any games that I play, this game should be renamed Star Trek ‘Let Down’. For forty five minutes last night I tried to play against other Live players, ten times I got an ‘insufficient connection speed’ message just before the game started, five times my 360 crashed completely and had to be rebooted. It wasn’t just me, everybody was complaining in the lobbies. In the end I had to settle for hosting my own two player game - hardly as much fun as four player… and the game itself isn’t really worth all the trouble anyway. (more…)

As we sadly come to the end of the Christmas and New Year holidays, I thought I would post some secretly filmed footage of a family argument taking place over a game of Trivial Pursuit (90s edition). In scenes I suspect were repeated all across the country at this time of year, a row broke out over the answer to ’What is a glass of Red Wine a day good for?’ - the official answer ‘The Heart’… the answer given ‘Heart Disease’. As the answer didn’t match what was on the card a row broke out, see the video footage on the links below. They’re taken from my phone so not the best quality but they made it onto youtube anyway. (more…)