A Highland Visit.

Just got back from a few days in Mallaig at the top end of the West Highland Line. The B&B we stayed in served one of the best black puddings I have ever had and when the landlady confided that it came from the local Spar her indoors set off post haste to secure a sample returning with a 18 x 3 inch specimen that we later smuggled across the border. All part of a most enjoyable  Scottish Experience that also included pints of McEwans, loads of fish and chips, walking the glens, Scottish Pies, a trip to Skye and witnessing a full on punch up outside Glasgow Queen Street Station. 

The trip was also incentive to learn something more about the Highland Clearances, a part of British history that I was shamefully ignorant about. The Clearances were of course a terrible episode of betrayal and cruelty and in many ways just another example of how little a people can come to be valued when they stand in the way of profit or 'progress'. And don't run away with the idea that "it couldn't happen now". You only have to look at what is going on in Amazonia today (or for that matter the Isle of Dogs not so long ago) to see the error of that assumption. Never trust an elite and don't ever think that just because they are members of your own tribe, clan or class that they won't sell you out and sacrifice you on the altar of 'modernization'.  Oh yes! and it rained four days out of the five.