Somewhere deep in the family archives is an end of course report from the Journalism programme at Napier College. It describes me as a cynic and warns this can lead me to excess. I have no idea how this supposed excess was manifested. I would also question the label "cynic". A cynic is one who has contempt for human nature. It is an unpleasant trait. I would own up to a degree of scepticism. A partiality to questioning. I would have thought that was a good thing in a journalist.

I was recently reading a book about Orkney in the old days. There was a story of a young girl who defied her neighbours by rescuing the crew of a ship being smashed to pieces on the rocky shore during a storm. The neighbours wanted the crew dead so that they could loot the wreck. I'm pretty sure Orcadians used to believe that if you rescued someone from the sea then you or a close relative would die as compensation for cheating the sea gods of their victim. A handy excuse indeed for letting a crew drown before the looting of the wreck could begin. It also raises the possibility that Lord Kitchener may have been tossed off an Orkney cliff back into the sea after surviving the sinking of HMS Hampshire in 1916.

When I was little my mum and dad opened a Post Office Savings Account for me. I suppose financial literacy can never be started too early. The account bore the name of the local post office and the number 500. It was really easy to remember. I was disappointed when the account just became a ten digit stream. Well, about ten characterless digits. So called progress. I'm pretty sure, based on the written additions on the phone dial in the Inverness Courier reporters' room that at one time the original number was Inverness 59. That would have been in days that calls went through an operator. By the time I worked there automation at the exchange had extended the number to ten numbers, if you include the dialing code for Inverness. I think the Courier was gas account No. 1 in the town at one point. Gas was used to melt the lead for the typesetting machines.

When I worked for the Government of Saskatchewan there was often a media question session immediately after the Legislature meeting in the foyer when ministers and their opposition counterparts were quizzed about events in the debating chamber. The thing was it wasn’t just the two parties with members of the legislature who showed up for the question session. Two guys who represented a party with no seats in the assembly also turned up. Sadly, at least one of the “journalists” would ask one of the pair what they thought too and published their opinions. So, we had a government minister putting his case, or spin, on developments and two critics, one of whom had no electoral mandate having their say. This may have given a subliminal impression that two out of three people thought whatever the government was trying to do was a really really bad idea. I didn’t think it was right. But, if I recall correctly, the pair had quite a bit of money.

I had no idea that Tudor London was so multi-ethnic until I watched the TV programme Wolf Hall. There was even, apparently, an African member of the Privy Council, advising Henry VIII. This colourblind casting is admirable in many ways. But. But when sisters obviously have different fathers then it can become a distraction. What’s the story there? Has Lord Whatever not noticed his second daughter has a strikingly different skintone from himself and his wife?