sixoh8sixoh

Morning all. Working from home today as the broadband was being upgraded. Engineer had problems with wiring in the cabinet which resulted in him taking an hour plus over my installation, when he had 15 to do before 1pm. Doubt he was impressed. Still, it seems I'm now getting a download speed in the region of 38mbps and upload of about 2mbps. (I might actually now be able to watch iPlayer in the lounge and upload YouTube videos!) GF has decided to work from mine too so some plans for the day have had to be changed! Good job I managed to wrap and secrete her housewarming present on Monday while she was out. She gets the keys to the new flat on Friday.

Afternoon all from a sunny Scottish HQ. Today is passing reasonably quickly so far, so I can't complain (well, I can, but I won't). I'd love a house where I had room for a proper model railway... the GF, as I've mentioned before, has promised me if we ever buy a place together I can have a garden railway, and I'm holding out for a small outbuilding for an indoor layout too (connecting to the outside world presumably through a sealable hatch to discourage any wildlife from visiting)! Very little chance of me winning the lottery, though, as I'm rarely going to play now that they've changed the odds so dramatically. Caught up on Sunday's Downton Abbey last night before watching the new series of Fargo, and to my surprise, Fargo was the less bloody. I've seen less blood in a horror movie than in Sunday's Downton. Hope Jock and Debs are on the mend, and everyone else is as well as can be expected.

Good grief. Someone missed their vocation in life writing for Mills & Boon.

Morning all! Back at Scottish HQ after my week away. I'm not going to say holiday, as I really don't feel like I've had a holiday, probably well over 1300 miles on the roads over the course of the week. Disney on Ice with Jamie, visiting relatives, meetings in Durham, then back up to Edinburgh to almost immediately head down to Manchester. Yesterday involved a 2K parkrun with Jamie in the morning, shopping and then climbing and bouldering in the afternoon. Hope everyone's well, and while the chances of me catching up are minimal I'll have a skim! Looking forward to Wednesday - I'm working at home while the broadband goes to FTTC. We'll see if that works, as I suspect the copper cable between the cabinet and my flat is rather carp...

I've taken some close-ups (sectional as otherwise there's too much reflection). I did ask if I could take it off the wall to photograph it in daylight outside but they didn't have the key to remove it from the wall! Can you pm me your email address and I'll send the files once I'm back home?

Ron, these may be things you've already seen or are of no use to you, but I came across them in The Wharf pub last night. This is my first visit to Manchester but I felt I knew that bit of the city purely from your modelling - so thank you! I'm going back in daylight today and looking forward to seeing the detail I missed last night. Apologies for the light reflection - lighting conditions were poor and they had picture lights shining on them.

Here's some photos from yesterday's trip. Union of South Africa 60009 in steam and St Andrew's House (Scottish HQ!) behind My friend Aileen on the footplate of 60009 at Tweedbank station Me on the footplate Abbotsford House, home of Sir Walter Scott Some of Scott's militaria. The second rifle up from the bottom belonged to Rob Roy MacGregor GF and I on the balcony at the catering college restaurant - fab view over Edinburgh

Morning all from a grey but dry Scottish HQ (for the last time until 19th October as I'm off all next week!). Still recovering from last night's meal. I need to get back to running as I'm flabbergasted (amazed at how much weight I've put on). Thanks Mick, pleased to say that Vulcan is flying very close to me tomorrow - I'll be down at Mum and Dad's in the afternoon, and it's due to fly near Consett. Will check out timings later and see if there's a chance of seeing it. Thanks Jock - I was on the train with a friend, rather than my girlfriend - then met up with the girlfriend for dinner. My friend really enjoyed the ride down behind 60094, just a shame there are no turning facilities and it was dragged backwards to Edinburgh! If I can work out a way of reducing the file size of the photos on the iphone I will post some - the 1MB file size limit for pictures on here poses a real problem for me! There's a brand new (well, 2 year old) visitor centre, shop and café between the car park and the house, which has the audiovisual bit, but the house will be mostly as you remember it Jock. Just a new glass front door covering the portico. Gorgeous building and I am extremely envious of Scott's study, with the upper area library accessed by spiral staircase. That's the dream! I'm still amazed at how well (comparative to previous PCs I've had) the 20" 2008 iMac is doing. It seemed to speed up on El Capitan, not that I got much chance to test it out, but I suspect it may not be too long before it's not supported for updates. It does suffer from "beach ball" issues, but it's had very nearly 7 years of abuse, which is more than double the life expectancy of any Windows machine I've ever had. While waiting for Apple Mail to "upgrade" my messages while I was restoring the system to Yosemite, I removed the partition on the hard drive of the iMac. I'd installed a partition a number of years ago, installed Windows 7 and a bootleg copy of Photoshop, but for a number of reasons (the hassle of starting up Windows, concerns over security, not really having the time to (learn to) use Photoshop) I never really went back onto using the Windows partition, so it's sat there for years taking up disk space. Amazingly the partition and Windows were deleted from the machine in less than 10 minutes.

Had a lovely day on the train down, Union of South Africa performed beautifully, I stood on the footplate briefly. Abbotsford House is great, the tour was just a quick highlights one but the cost of today's visit gets me back in for the next year so I'll be back. Dinner was excellent. Amuse bouche of seared tuna in sesame seeds, plus chicken mousse in pancake, starter of trout en croute, prawn bisque, main of ballotine of guinea fowl with a prune stuffing, sweet sushi, dessert of croissant and marmalade bread and butter pudding with earl grey tea ice cream, and petits fours. All for £10 a head! We purchased the wine there but at £13 for a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc it was pretty reasonable. With two coffees at the end and tip it came to £40. Will be going back! I keep getting tempted by the beautiful 27" retina screen iMac in the Apple Store. I don't need it but by heavens it's pretty!

Morning all from a beautifully sunny Edinburgh! (I can't say Scottish HQ this morning as I'm not in the office!) Looks like a perfect day for a steam train ride down the Borders Railway. My friend Aileen and I have bought cans of G&T to have a civilised trip down (well, if the First Class folks can get prosecco, why shouldn't we have G&T?). This evening is a trip with GF to the local catering college for a Masterchef style menu by 3rd year students - 3 courses, plus amuse bouche, coffee and chocolates, for £10 each. Gordon, I was hoping I could spare you the problems I'd had by posting that as I knew you (and others on here) were Mac users. I'm back to Yosemite now, and all is working fine. I need to speak to Piotr at the Apple Care line tomorrow evening (before 7) about what to do with btinternet mail - I understand it's something to do with POP3 accounts being a problem but IMAP ones not. Once I'm told what to do, I'll post it here. I've always had my btinternet mail set to keep a copy on the server after it's downloaded, plus I regularly back up the computer, so I'm not concerned about losing emails. We're hoping that NICE changes its mind at some point about the availability of sapropterin dihydrochloride (Kuvan) on the NHS. At the moment this isn't available in Britain, as they can manage PKU by diet far cheaper. And GF spent a few months in Switzerland and confirms that the food there is appalling, and that the Swiss aren't good cooks! Have a good day all!

The avatar pic's about 5 years old I guess. I won't be updating it with the one from yesterday's committee appearance! Amanda Kopel has done a great job of bringing the campaign to public attention, helped by the media. The Cabinet Secretary yesterday gave assurances that the issue is being looked into, but that we can't waive charges for one cohort of conditions and not for another. (Excuse the politics / work issues!)

Morning all from a damp Scottish HQ. Last night I completed the curtain rails for my friend's friend, this time she's able to open the French windows. [Word of warning /rant for Mac users with btinternet email addresses] I also spent three quarters of an hour on the phone to Apple Care. I have a btinternet email account as my main email address and had upgraded the computer from OSX Yosemite to El Capitan (daft name, what happened to the cat based operating systems, Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Ocelot, Tabby...?) overnight from Monday to yesterday. Unfortunately El Capitan seems to take exception to btinternet mail accounts and won't load the mails in the Apple Mail programme (this is a recognised developing problem according to the Apple technician). After 3/4 hour on the phone, I used a Time Machine backup to wind back my computer to the previous day before I installed El Capitan. I have to phone the Apple care line again now that I'm back to working order with my Mail in Yosemite to solve the btinternet problem before I upgrade to El Capitan again. [/rant] Italian... Sombrero? Thought they were Spanish. Was this the Italian Farmhouse at West Rainton? I went there the night before the Great North Run three years ago.

I'm in a tie today too. As shown on the BBC News website no less! Could I have a consonant please Rachel? And a vowel? And another consonant...

Is that a very subtle reference to a notable day, BoD? If so, happy birthday and hope it improves for you!

Afternoon all from a showery Scottish HQ. Apologies for not having read the intervening 13 pages... I may have to accept that will forever be a mystery to me... It's been a busy couple of days (well, few days, actually!), including an all-day conference at Parliament yesterday and supporting the Cabinet Secretary at Committee this morning. One more day of work, then a day off on the Borders Railway, then one day in the office, then a week off! Hope everyone's well, hopefully keep caught up for today and tomorrow at least!

I found a particularly good type in Lidl the other day - 2 boxes of Furniss ginger biscuits (1 plain, one with chocolate chips) plus 40 Cornish tea bags for the princely sum of £1. Definitely recommended!

Morning all from a sunny-now-that-the-worst-of-the-mist-has-burnt-off Scottish HQ! Yikes, Sherry, that's some bruising! Hope it's less painful than it looks and that it's fully gone by the welding. Also hope that Jock's medication kicked in quickly and the pain is less too, and that Dom's accident doesn't keep him off the trams too long! Sadly nothing to do with me, Jock! (Though I'll certainly have a look, so thanks!*) My policy area at the moment is around adult social care, so policies around residential care and care at home, including the Free Personal Care policy. My consultation and draft Order are around the complaints procedures for social work - anyone in need of a cure for insomnia can read my consultation paper here: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/09/5341 Need to take papers to a solicitor at lunchtime on behalf of my girlfriend - I've got the signed papers for her house purchase with me and need to drop them off. She has friends arriving this evening for the weekend, so it's going to be a busy couple of days, by the looks of things. Sadly won't get to see the England v Australia game tomorrow but I will enjoy the BNL concert instead! Hope everyone else is as well as can be expected! [*Edit to add - I did try both the National Archives and the RCAHMS previously for plans of the River Oich viaduct at Fort Augustus, without any luck. Might try again sometime...]

I can confirm that Union of South Africa has made it back to Waverley bang on time!

They should have made it past there before the failure. National Rail times the incident at 1236 on the website, they should have reached Galashiels at 1203, terminating at Tweedbank at 1214. The return journey's due to leave Tweedbank at 1438, getting back to Waverley at 1602. They're predicting the incident to last until 1500 so they might just strike lucky.

Morning all from (again) a sunny Scottish HQ! Just clocked out briefly from work to watch Union of South Africa heading south towards Tweedbank. I've taken a video which I'd hoped to upload to YouTube and link in this post, but YouTube won't let me upload from my phone over 4G, only over wifi, so it'll have to wait until I'm on wifi. FMQs in half an hour, so will pop the earphones on for that just in case anything relevant comes up around our policies (it's possible). Had the blackberry next to me all last night in case there was any urgent briefing request. On the bright side, it's Thursday, which means the weekend's approaching. Not used to these 5 day working weeks!!

Try living here in Edinburgh... Afternoon all from a sunny Scottish HQ! Finally made it after a fairly trying morning. I had thought (having got my consultation published and the draft Order laid in the Scottish Parliament yesterday) that today was a blank canvas with no pressing deadlines. Until 9.30 when I got an immediate request for briefing for the FM... That'll teach me to tempt fate. Great news about Matthew, everyone seems to be enjoying the joys of spring today (only it's Autumn). Union of South Africa headed for the Borders again this morning (and will again tomorrow). My trip's booked for a week tomorrow. Looking forward to it immensely. I'm off to see the Barenaked Ladies (let's see if that makes it through the software... though given Buffers model railways' advert at the bottom of the screen is showing some in OO gauge, I don't see why not...) on Saturday night at the Queen's Hall (if anyone doesn't know them, they're responsible for the music for The Big Bang Theory, though I've been a fan much longer). The support is Colin Hay (of Men at Work - the band responsible for the earworm Down Under). Have a good Wednesday!

The Boss is letting you have a G Scale model railway outside?

Morning all from a sunny Scottish HQ. I sit by the window on the ground floor now, looking south. My view takes in some of the Old Town, including Jeffrey Street and the dome of the Edinburgh University Old College. Unfortunately being south facing here, I end up having to pull down the blind at lunchtime so I can't see that view! The talk of soundtrack music earlier reminded me of the one I particularly like to listen to as I zone out for writing briefing and similar things - Hans Zimmer's soundtrack to Gladiator. Particularly good music to write briefing to!

Afternoon all from Scottish HQ. Been a busy day so far, so this is first opportunity to post! Yesterday involved a 2K Junior Parkrun with Jamie (she was 10 seconds off her PB, so slightly disappointed with that), and then in the afternoon, skiing. We're so lucky to have the indoor snow facility in Glasgow - it really is a great thing to have around. Back is much better now, despite picking Jamie up a couple of times yesterday! Hope all are well!

Morning all from a currently sunny Scottish HQ, though there are a few oktas lurking! Last night involved testing a few drams with friends. Talisker, a single cask Caol Ila (~65% - cask strength) and a 55% Longmorn were tasted and tested. Head not too sore this morning but I'm probably being less productive than normal... On the bright side, I've booked up for a trip on the Borders Railway behind Union of South Africa on 8th October with a friend, and then for a meal at a local catering college that evening. The college offers a "Masterchef" menu evening on Wednesday and Thursday from 3rd year students - a 3 course meal, plus amuse bouche, coffee and homemade chocolate for £10 a head. Not bad - if it's edible! Yup, the ex uses that pronunciation too. Still extant in Glasgow. You called? To be honest it's rarely the bureaucrats. We make the simple policy instructions "we want this Bill to do this". Then the lawyers complicate it. Then the politicians amend it (regularly without realising the effect the amendment has).