Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

Work and Relaxation

As an aside from the ongoing CCP dramabombs, I just got back from five days staying at Hownam again.  It's the second time I've been there this year, and the timing couldn't have been better: Friday saw me with a deadline for a  product launch to user acceptance testing, and saw me do my first hand-in on my new masters course.  All of which rather conspired to see me reach new heights of stress.

Comparing this with my two full-time courses of study is quite a contrast: I had no idea how lucky I was to have so much time to squander during my first degree in particular.  But, on the upside, I didn't have the option of renting a big house in the borders when it all seemed too much pressure!

Anyway, every morning I would get up at 7.30 or so, walk the dogs a bit, eat a light breakfast then head out into the hills for four or five hours.  The collies - Sunny and Seleighe - love the place, not least since they spend most of every day running about outside, much of it on hillsides smelling of sheep and rabbits.  I'd climb a few hills, visit iron-age stone circles and barrows,  climb to millennias-old hill-forts, trace out the walls of Roman marching encampments, and sometimes follow Dere Street - a Roman road, but on a route that predates even them, and which is still in use in places.  The landscape in the Cheviots is packed with stone-age and Roman archaeology: literally every hillside has one or more features, be they watchposts, terracing, entrenchments or even abandoned medieval villages.

I'd return and shower, then eat lunch around four or so - chorizo, a chicken I'd roasted on the first evening, fresh and sunblush tomatoes, half a dozen cheeses, grapes, bananas, various north-african cous-cous and rice dishes, tabouleh, humuus, stuffed olives and vine leaves, tzatziki, pate, smoked mackerel and salmon.  And a lot of it.  I'd eat that outside, in the gardens.  It only rained once, for a few hours late at night: the central Cheviots have a wonderful, dry, sheltered microclimate that makes them one of the dryest places in Scotland as well as keeping away the midges!

After that, more tiring of the dogs in the gardens, teaching them new commands (always a delight to collies) and tempting them into the Kale Water at the foot of the lawn.  Then inside, clear and light the wood fire in the living room and read for hours while the exhausted pups - they're still only 11 months old - sleep, fight then sleep some more.  Having been immersed in reading papers, articles and books on requirements engineering I decided on history for this week, and read one book each on Edwards II and III, Simon Sebag Montefiore's excellent "The Young Stalin" (utterly rewriting everything I thought I knew of his early life, and debunking the traditional Trotskyite version), as well as most of "The Grand Alliance", the third volume of Churchill's memoir of the Second World War.