snorbens_caleyman

There is - you'd be taken to the cleaners by any half-decent law student No way on earth could that be fair. You do not change the rules of a competition once it is under way - unless with the agreement of all concerned. And I mean all concerned - look at the debacle about the ending of last season. That's enough from me on this!

But you could have a club saying "We have been penalised, but Aberdeen were not. Unfair!". It could make the difference between qualifying for Europe or not, or between being relegated or staying up - or simply a difference in prize money. So you would want to have the clubs agree to it. And we have just seen how well that works

The time for changing the rules to include points penalties was when any extra rules about bubbles and other covid precautions were agreed and introduced. It's not good to change the rules retrospectively after a specific event in the middle of a competition!

Greater Manchester is also in lockdown, and they are playing a test match at Old Trafford. Provided everyone involved obeys the rules, then it is reckoned that the risks can be managed. The test match bubble certainly excludes family - hence the fuss when one England player went home between Southampton and Manchester. The test matches are being played at Southampton and Manchester because these grounds have on-site hotels, where everyone stays. Even the TV commentators - when they are not on air, they simply go back to their rooms and watch the match on TV. But the bubbles for club sports - e.g. football and cricket - are not so drastic.

Love it! One of things that amused my wife and myself down here in the London area was the "discovery", about 10-15 years ago, of porridge as a "superfood". We had the very rapid spread of porridge outlets, in cafes, health food bars, and railway station stalls, all selling this wonderstuff to the trendy young professionals heading to their offices and trading floors in the City, in Canary Wharf, and so on. What used to horrify us was the stuff that was added to it to make it attractive (or just edible). Looking at just one website, I can see, amongst many others, porridge with: almond milk oats, butter, hazelnuts, cinnamon coconut palm sugar and apple fig, agave and chia seeds date molasses and Medjool dates vanilla cream, cocoa nibs, chia, banana mature coconut, dates, almonds, apple, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, hemp seeds, cacao and blueberries. Personally, I can't stand the stuff

It's Spynie Palace, between Elgin and Lossiemouth. Former residence of the Bishops of Moray. We were staying at the Orkney Hotel in Kirkwall. At breakfast, the waitress - English, obviously new - came and asked us what we would like. My wife said: "I think I'll have the porridge today". Waitress: "OK - just hang on, I'll go and see if we got any in overnight". Ever since, I have had this vision of a porridge tanker trundling through the streets of Kirkwall in the wee sma' hours, making deliveries...

Will leave it just now in case Mantis knows. It's probably less than 10 miles from the last one...

I think I'm coming to the end of my photographs which are suitable for this thread. Will have another look for more, but if I don't contribute, it doesn't mean that I'm not enjoying it!

I knew someone who worked in a chicken factory as a summer job, and who promptly went vegetarian. She stuck with it, too

Baxters. "Neighbours of mine, just across the firth", as James Robertson Justice used to say in the TV adverts back in the dark ages. He lived at Spinningdale, and I used to imagine him doing 100 miles across the firth and back in a wee rowing boat, whenever he found himself short of a can of ****-a-leekie. Later addition: do we really need to censor the name of a Scottish soup? Wonder what happens when I write Scunthorpe...

You're right - it's easy. The PM visited a well-known establishment nearby, as part of his Farewell Tour of Scotland last week.

So I've been in the neighbourhood, but not actually there.

Only one solution then - political vetting of anyone attempting to buy a season ticket

And another. Bonus points for identifying the ship!

Have just discovered, thanks to the mailing list The Loop, that this was 50 years ago today - Saturday 18 July 1970.

Snorbens' one IS Brodie Castle!

Sticking with the castle theme...

Aha! It's Moniack. Do they still produce wine? I used to be partial to their birch sap brew

No idea - but I'm sure that IBM will tell us what the car is

You guys are good! The reason my Dad took that photograph was that he had several times stayed at the house on the shores of the loch, just right of centre in his picture. I stayed there once. It used to be - and for all I know may still be - the residence of the head gamekeeper on that estate. In the 1940s, that was my father's uncle. His son, my father's cousin, succeeded him. We had a family holiday there in the late 60s. I have photographs of the place from the 40s, 50s and 60s. The estate was owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, who was, of course, absolutely stinking rich. When we were there in the 60s, I saw her arrive by her usual mode of transport - seaplane "landing" on Loch More. An Irish lady who was very much into horseracing, two of her most famous horses bore the names of mountains on her land - Arkle and Foinavon [sic].

Another of my Dad's photgraphs from some time in the 1990s. There's a little personal story behind it, which I'll relate once you've identified the location.

My Mum is from Nairn, and well remembers the airfield at Brackla. Towards the end of the war, they were flying planes directly from the factory up to Brackla, and immediately scrapping them. She also told me that scrapped planes were buried not far from where she lived in Nairn, alongside Nairn Dunbar golf club. If you Google for Kingsteps Quarry, you will see that a few years ago they checked it for radioactivity.

It is indeed the B9006 at Leanach, between Culloden Moor and the railway. That field and the housing estate used to be an airfield! I assume you have heard of the legendary Captain Fresson and Highland Airways, which he founded in the 1930s. (You'll have seen the statue at Inverness Airport, and possibly the memorials at Kirkwall and Sumburgh.) He operated from the airfield at the Longman - close by the ICT stadium - but had this field as his designated emergency landing ground for when the lower-lying Longman was fog-bound. During WW2, the RAF took over the airfield, and initially used it as a satellite landing ground (SLG) for Lossiemouth. The idea behind SLGs is that the planes from a bigger airfield could be dispersed to smaller, camouflaged grass-strip fields, in case of attack on the main field. Leanach had Hurricanes, Defiants, Beaufighters and even Wellington bombers. However, they had a problem with brightly coloured civilian planes using it too, so they had to ban them because they compromised the camouflage. There was also an RAF unit at Dalcross, and later in the war they too used Leanach as a relief landing ground. The airfield was eventually de-requisitioned in March 1945. That hut, which is still there accornding to Google Street View, is an RAF building. My Dad, being an Innes Street lad and a teenager during the war, used to hang about the Longman airfield, and occasionally cadged a flight on a plane. I also know that he and my Mum once flew with Fresson, which would have been in the early to mid 1950s, when Fresson had a private charter business. Hence the photograph!

Aw, gie's a break! You could at least have pretended to wait for a while Right, here's one of my Dad's, from 1994 or 1995. The area looks a little different now, but it should still be fairly easy. The question is why my Dad would take such a boring looking photograph. There's a clue in the picture, and it's still there today.

Since I haven't a clue about most of these, I might as well put in one that I know. Where is this bloke and his headless companion?