Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Monday 3/6/2002

Jubilee avoidance is in full effect, as I'm spending the long bank holiday with m'lady up in Scotland. Curious how little bunting appears to have gone up -- outside a couple of purple flags on Edinburgh's Royal Mile and a bit of the old red, white and blue in the genteel Morningside, there's hardly a whiff of monarchy to be had. Rather more pubs sporting the Irish tricolour for the World Cup, too, but then that's to be expected.

Not much technology to worry about, either: her indoors is a historian specialising in Early Modern Scots -- that's the bit between the 1500s and the 1800s, roughly speaking -- and she's giving a lecture on the Calvinists and their witch-hunts. I end up driving a slide projector (remember them?) in a theatre in Dumfries, and of course press the wrong button, sending King James VI into oblivion in dazzling white light. That's the sort of theological mishap that'd get you burned at the stake back then: these days, the Dumfriesians are more forgiving.

Later that same weekend, we go to a wedding reception somewhere quiet in the Borders -- a bit of a tautology, to be honest. When a man is tired of Selkirk, he's probably still got half an hour left on the parking meter -- which is attended by David Steel wearing some amazingly vivid tartan trousers. The trews shall set you free...