tuesdays hair of the dog

again all appologies for my late blog lagging at the end of the line, lost in a stack of papers somewhere on someones desk (dog knows not mine as i have no desk), perhaps forgotten and found again and again until at last, at the last minute in my usual style this unedited collection of days remembered in type is offered up for who to read? anyone with a password

I am saddened by bens censored blogs. I enjoyed reading these entires and hope he can come up with way to continue to describe his situation to us without using any descriptive words or phrases, nor any informations on locations, dates, policies, procedures, equipment which might jeopardise security. Such as it is i suppose, truth be told i was surprised someone hadnt censored sooner. ben im sure you can make it work.

February 18th

'nae bother! it dinae mata tae me. but if ie'were up tae me, id haf t'ho tin outa n pu in a wee gas burner outside. ts jus no in line wi the current technology. nae bother. ah il jus ga n tal i tom n fi wa na hablena be. bye the noe!'

So we've been having this problem with the arger in out house. The arger is supposed to perfrom the double function of being a stove and heating water for the radiators in our house. The problem is that while it does heat, it does so with the side effect of filling the house with smoke and soot. A shame, because otherwise the house is set up quite comfortably. The above quote is from the engineer who came to fix our stove. He was pretty awsome. A scotsman, he was a very loud talker with such a thick accent that most of the time i had no idea what he was saying. As the root of the problem has yet to be discovered, he as well as others have been here several times attemping to remedy the situation without success, ultimatley only making more mess for us to clean up. On his last visit it seemed he had given up and said the arger should be replaced. But as he says nae bother. He had a device with him that could read gas levels in the air and he said there was no carbon monoxide in the house and that the situation was not bad for our health.

Febrary 25th

i step out of the kitchen and stand in front of the hotel. My black leather shoes sink into several inches of snow, and the cold and the blizard flurry around me - a cold welcome after the smokey heat of the kitchen. I warm my hands against a half pint of roibus tea, the hot amber liquid visble through the glass as i stare through it out towards the loch, thinking about the events of that morning and the possible application of cluster theory.

the power had gone out some time inbetween my leaving the green house and when i walked in to work just before 8am. There were 10 people in for breakfast and 2 servers, inge (sounds like inga) and myself, scheduled on. by 20 past 8 no chef had arrived and the power was still out, i began to wonder what kind of breakfast would be served.

I stepped out for a moment im not sure why. When i returned Tom had shown and had obviously dealt with power outs before. The stove tops were gas so he got those going to boil water. We took the scones over to his house to cook in his oil powered arger. Then i went off to help jim set up a generator. After passing up a couple that didnt work we found a good one and got it going. Jim brings it over with the tractor close to the hotel. Run the cord ovens are on toasters working. By the time i got back to serve, a few guests had arrived and the scones ready for them. As the remaining diners filtered in we lit the fire in the bar and set up some candles. Service continued as usual save the dark kitchen. As breakfast wrapped up tom said something like 'It's really great having it so quiet in here isn't it? you dont notice it when its there but without the hum and buz of all the fridges and lights you can really tell the difference.' We all agreed. Then as Inge left the kitchen to take toast to a table she said, 'Silence is golden'.

February 22nd

I had a day off and nicki was on a split. If you google map us - monachyle mhor, fk19 8pq, scotland - you'll see that, as the crow flies, loch lomond is 15-20 miles west of our hotel. This was our target destination when we set off early afternoon this day.

We cycled as far as we could. About 2 miles of tarmac followed by another four miles of 4wd track winding its way up through a wide valley to the west. At the end of the 4wd track we left our cycles and set off on foot to hike up to a low point on the ridge at the end of the glen, from where we hoped to have a view of loch lomond. This was before the snow came last week. The terrain was mostly frozen wild grass, with snow on the north faces and the ridges. It was sunny and cold. We went from fully bundled up while biking to hiking in shorts and tshirts through the sun. By the time we reached the top of the glen the temperature had dropped and we were back to wearing thermals, trousers, fleeces, jackets and scarves hats n gloves.

At the saddle the terrain really flattened out to reveal our view to the west. As we were not using a real map, we were not sure what the terrain would actually be like once we reached this point. As it turned out there was a mountain inbetween us and loch lomond. however, we were able to see loch katrine to the south, and we had reached the end of the glen. We rested, ate, enjoyed the last of the sun and began to head back to work.

On the way back we talked to a sheppard who said it was possible to reach loch lomond without having to go over the moutain we saw. To do this we would have had to head north before reaching to saddle at he top of our glen to loop around, and bring a proper map.