Distance is relative. Sometimes we feel closer to someone who is many miles away than someone physically closer, sometimes the distance is one of time and we feel closer to someone or somewhere in the past than we do today. Surely the best thing to do is live each day as best we can and if we are granted another one, be grateful.

To live in Scotland is to live in many places and dimensions at once. It is perhaps the most beautiful and at the same time most tragic place. Perhaps there is an inevitability in the association, spectacular places can inspire spectacular deeds both of good and evil. There are definitely locations here where whatever separates us from whatever the universe really looks like has worn thin. Maybe it is something to do with the combination of light or shapes or sounds, the wind across the reed bed by the mountain loch or the light running off the mountains like liquid gold on a summer evening.

The Scots themselves are often accused of being too ready to assume inferiority, too easily depressed and too pessimistic in a world which demands continual teeth gritted optimism. To do so I believe is to misunderstand a country of the most diverse talents and abilities. The best food in the UK is to be found here, and the worst. Anyone with even half a glass can appreciate the infinite subtlety and variety of Scotch Whisky, far surpassing anything other comparable drink. And how could a nation that invented golf be accused of pessimism?? The whole procedure of hitting a small white ball hundreds of yards across country into a tiny rabbit hole is so optimistic it baffles belief.

And from a nation that invented almost everything, I learned today that they also invented the famous Green Welly, the Hunter boot. The firm has run into financial difficulties, so anyone out there with a few million to spare get yourself up here pdq and restore my faith in serendipity.

Next week we will discuss windmills and 300 feet high pylons, as Don Quixote might have said. Bring along your set squares and rulers and a lot of black coffee.