So, spent the last four days of my holiday lying around groaning about being sick with some bloody bug that I’ve had on and off for about three weeks. It was considerate enough to leave me alone for the wedding and all but one day of the honeymoon, but then it decided to take its revenge. This time it came back double-time and got Steph as well. As a result, we’ve done very little constructive, just read a bunch.

I don’t normally have enough time for reading books, and if I hadn’t been ill, I doubt I’d have managed much this time. As it is, I’ve read Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn by Robert Holdstock, one of his Mythago Wood sequence of books (not as good as the others in the sequence; the ideas and writing were good, but it wasn’t as engaging as the others), Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod (a good book, not totally mindblowing, but good enough that I’ll probably read the rest of the series when I’ve got time), and Raw Spirit by Iain Banks. This latter book is a non-fiction travel/whisky/anecdote book, superficially focussed on the search for the perfect dram. I’m a big fan of Banks, and I’ve read most of his stuff. This was a decent book, too, but I think it could have been a lot better. Part of the problem, for me, is that I don’t think I share many interests with Banks. If, for example, you are interested in cars, roads and getting drunk, then you’ll probably find more to interest you than I did. Having said that, there were plenty of bits I chuckled over, and some wonderful descriptions of Scotland, particularly interesting when he was talking about the bits we’d just been to. Banks’s writing, of course, is always excellent, just for the way he puts words together, and so the whole thing was completely readable and pleasant. All in all, I prefer his fiction, though. I’m now reading the Al Franken book, Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them. This book’s a lot of fun, and Franken’s a funny guy. His views are, I think, more mainstream than mine, so the bits I’m enjoying most are when he’s attacking the nonsense his opponents write and when he’s making jokes. Good stuff. Steph may steal it back off me at some point as it’s her book.

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So, getting married. Steph’s already done a brief journal entry on the wedding. At some point, when we get the photographs back, I’ll put up something more detailed, but for now...

The wedding went absolutely perfectly, just as we’d planned. We decided right from the start that we were going to write the service ourselves and plan it all ourselves. It was kind of hectic doing so, but it meant we had the wedding we really wanted with the people we really wanted to be there. We got married at 2pm on Saturday 7th August 2004. It was a blindingly beautiful summer day and a whole bunch of people I hadn’t seen for ages (in some cases many years) came up for it. The whole thing was intimate, close and fun.

Like I said, details maybe when the photos are ready.

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For our honeymoon we went up to Scotland, to a small town called Ballachulish, near the bottom of Glencoe. This is in the western highlands, an area of wild mountains, deep locks and high moors. We rented a nice cabin in the woods with a mountain right behind it and Loch Linnhe/Leven about a hundred, hundred and fifty yards away through the trees. (I say Loch Linnhe/Leven because I’m not totally sure which one it is at that point; it’s close to where the two lochs join and become simply Loch Leven on the way to the sea). This is a sea loch, like many of the bigger Scottish lochs are, and gently tidal. The mountains come steeply down on both sides, leaving room for a road only in most places, and isolated villages and small towns. We also found a rather good café which served lattés and vegetarian food, with a good view across Loch Leven and to the Pap of Glencoe, and went there everyday, in between our excursions.

We spent a lot of time in Glencoe and on the moors above it, as well as down on the shore of Loch Linnhe. It’s a popular spot, but if you get out the car and walk for ten minutes, you can be far away from anyone and able to hear only the streams and the birds. Beautiful place, and perfect for a honeymoon.

We got lucky with the weather. Our first day there, it rained solidly, and then for a fair bit of the next day, a couple of hours on the third, but then it was great weather for the rest of the time. The rest of the country suffered from unseasonably awful weather that we seemed to miss.

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Minimal writing accomplished, of course, as always when we have lots of free time. We write best when we’re both working and have to set aside one hour a day to do it in. All this free time is a bastard for discipline.

Tomorrow is work again, and I’m praying I can shake off the bloody bug in time or it’s going to be grim. I need to return to my review journal, too, as I took a holiday from that too. See if I can catch up on the ones I’ve missed. If not, too bad. The journal’s only supposed to be occasional anyway. I’d have to be mad to try to review all the fiction I read on a regular basis.

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Right, I need to go and cook. More soon.