Road Trip. 3: In Which I Meet Children

Ensconced in Scotland, looking after my sister's children. Have only dropped baby twice so far and seem to be getting on quite well with the four-year-old who shares my enthusiasm for Dennis the Menace.

I tell the boy about my new grave-digging job, he thinks about all the hole-digging involved and says:

I expect you have to do that to stop them smelling

Road Trip. 2: In Which I Purchase A Spiny Balloonfish

Headed into the depths of Yorkshire and found a suitably scary-looking inn to stay for night. The sort of place full of people who all go silent when I walk through the door.

Barman says that in this part of the world one drinks Baileys with Brandy, wanting to fit in, tried a few of these ... rather good actually ... don't remember much of the rest of the evening.

Needed a Hair of the Dog to get going the following morning.


Continued drive towards Scotland, stopped in small town to investigate curio shop with large, dried Spiny Balloonfish. Request to purchase item. Take surprisingly long time to wrangle what is effectively a brittle, fragile, balloon stuck with sharp spines out of shop and into car. Next stop I see that the beast has thoroughly embedded itself in my upholstery.

Road Trip. 1: In Which I Visit Art

I'm going to visit Scotland via Art. In order to get to Art as fast as possible I take the motorway.





Absence of planning on my part so I arrive at Yorkshire Sculpture Park between exhibitions, saw lots of sculpture-moving kit and car-park renovationers.

Thank the Lord there is still plenty of Art lying around; very much liked set of huge military jackets made of metal.



Very keen on James Turrell. Visit JT 'Skyspace' in YSP. Sky doesn't seem very interesting during my visit but allow that freezing temperature has diminished my ability to contemplate properly.