So which countries in the World Cup have England either colonised or been at war with? As it turns out, most of them:

(More detail to come…)

The Haggis is a creature found in Scotland, created from the dreams only of a true-born Scot. Scotland in unique among all the countries of the world in that certain vapours escape through the earth’s crust where they are fermented in the Scottish lochs before escaping into the wider atmosphere. These vapours are breathed in by the Scottish where they gradually build up in the blood in only the minutest quantities. Babies exposed to these compounds in the womb are more susceptible to absorbing these vapours and as a result only a 10th-generation Scot or better will have enough of the compound in their blood to produce a haggis.

What happens is this: When a true-born Scot dreams, they slowly produce a ‘boillsgeach braghairt’, an ephemeral tubular creature that will flit around in the night before ascending to heaven at sunrise. These creatures are normally barely visible and most people disregard them as a trick of the light. However, the consistency and behaviour of a boillsgeach braghairt will change depending on what the dreamer is dreaming and when a true-born Scot dreams of the rolling Scottish hills and the sweet scent of the Scottish heather a slightly different creature is born, a ‘fleòdradh braghairt’. There are more substantial creatures that can be captured with the use of a hook and line, but have very tough flesh and an exceptionally bitter taste.

The fleòdradh braghairt were viewed as useless until a Scot named Domhnall Gille Mhuire worked out that the fleòdradh braghairt could be transformed into something delicious if the dreaming Scot had been drinking alcohol the night before. Different drinks give the haggis a slightly different taste, so it is well worth going on a Haggis eating course, where you will be presented with Haggis resulting from many different dreams and beverages (Personally I recommend a haggis borne from a Scot dreaming of the Dornoch Firth who had been drinking ‘Glen Garioch’).

When a true Haggis is born, rather than appearing above its dreamer’s head, it will appear in the landscape of the dreamer’s dream – hence haggis-catchers (‘prainnseag-sealgair’) will camp out in Scotland’s areas of outstanding natural beauty and hunt in the small hours of the morning.

Hunting the haggis is quite simple. A rotting vegetable (often a cabbage) is soaked in vinegar and scotch and put on a wooden spike. The Haggis is attracted by the smell but knocked out by the scotch. After that the prainnseag-sealgair can just despatch the haggis by knocking it on the head end and then the wings are dissolved off by rubbing it in pig fat and immersing it in a stream for 3 days.

Well, overnight about 3-4 inches of snow fell in North London, which is very rare. Some years we never even get a complete inch settling. All the children’s schools were closed so I rang up my boss to see if I could take the day off out of my holiday allocation so that I could play in the snow with my family. He laughed and said ‘Yes’. It was the start of a good day.

We headed out to the park opposite our house, and my Wife Maria started making a snowball in the kid’s park:

After a while, the ball had become rather large:

We continued rolling it down the park with the intention of rolling it back up our road and into our front yard. I left Maria and the girls to it while I took Gabriel back home to warm up.

It was taking them quite a long time to get it up here so I looked out of the window and could just make them out with the camera zoom:

After a bit I headed back out to help. It was incredibly hard going; the ball by this time was very heavy and moving it across the tarmac had given it some flat sides that were very difficult to move it off. It was also tricky moving it while at the same time preventing it from hitting the parked cars.

In the end we tried rolling in to a tarpaulin and I attached some ‘reins’ to it and the twins and I tried to pull it along:

It was too heavy, and the ground to slippery to get a good grip. We had to go home and have a nice cup of tea and some lunch.

While at lunch we decided the only way to move the ball was to split in half with the axe, as we’d left it blocking half the pathway in front of someone’s house. After lunch I cleaved it with my axe and Maria and I tried again with the tarp & reins, this time with one half at a time. It was still hard work but with a bit of effort and some assistance from Hayley for the bigger half, we got it back to our front yard and stuck the two halves together. We covered it all with a layer of fresh snow to cover all the mud that we’d picked up along the way:

After that we made a new ball for the rest of the body – it needed some attention from the axe as well so that we would be able to lift it up onto the body.

Soon after that we made another ball and put the whole lot together to form the basis of our snowman:

After that it was a case of doing a bit more shaping, getting some more bits and bobs for him and carving him a face. The weirdly-shaped carrot was donated by some kind ladies who had started off making a snowman but then decided it was too much like hard work.

All in all, it was a great day!

I made a little gadget to measure how close vehicles overtaking me on my bike are.

And I’ve been documenting it a bit to help anyone else who might be interested in making one.

I had an amusing incident on the way to work; I was just waiting for the light for the bike lane to turn green, when a guy coming the opposite direction got confused and almost drove up the bike lane..:

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It was obviously a geniune mistake and he apologised as I went past. I smiled at him. Everybody makes mistakes…!