Hillz

Four days in Perthshire, two of them with about 15 family members and assorted others, have well and truly blown away the cobwebs. I have eaten more in four days than in the whole of the rest of the year, and exercised the same amount, by going up and down the steep hill once a day. I've driven 1000 miles or more in a titchy little car, getting about pretty quickly, but I'm still in transit in my head despite arriving home more than six hours ago.

On Saturday night we had a wonderful semi-violent galumph around a dance floor murdering Scottish dances (I realised at one point that I'd been dancing the Military Twostep to the St Bernard's Waltz with Offsprog One). We charged up and down in Strip the Willow and Offprog Two begged it to stop. Small children dressed as fairies risked being decapitated and elders held their eyes aloft to ignore the displays of incompetence we provided for their delectation.

I always miss Scotland when I'm not there: the colour green, the rain, the humour and the food. On the way back into the hotel two days ago, a red squirrel was sitting in a bush by a garden wall. I was so delighted that I gasped, and the terrified animal rushed up a tree so fast that I couldn't photograph it. We also saw a greater spotted woodpecker and all sorts of fungi. And mist!

Now back in Barnet, I will have to get used to normal breakfasts of just cereal, and also No More Sweets.