On holiday, hooray. It's a short walk across the road to ringed plovers, wagtails, oystercatchers, terns and shelducks. And not far to Islay House Community Garden where they dig up the vegetables only when you buy them, and the brewery next door where you can take away very fine cask beer. And lots of other stuff too, you don't need to hear about how good my holiday is.

At least we weren't flying here. Lots of sanity points to our First Minister Alex Salmond for pointing out that suicide bombers are individuals. A lot better than the knee-jerk 'let's all stand together in the war against terrorism' BS that came from our new prime minister: what a disappointment. Yes, it's depressing that there are people prepared to commit mass murder just along the road from where I live. But it doesn't make me more afraid. The combination of bravery and perhaps stupidity that led members of the public to beat the crap out of the bombers rather than run away seems hearteningly Glaswegian. Life is already scary; some idiot who can't get past an automatic door in a jeep loaded with gas canisters isn't going to terrify us further. But if in our name our government chooses to bomb someone else's country back into the middle ages, we can't expect there not to be consequences. And that really is depressing.