Burns' Night in Jimmy's Bar

It takes exactly the right amount of Glenkinchie to trigger a spontaneous but flawed rendering of Holy Willie's Prayer in a corner of a pseudo New Yorkian bar in an international hotel in Doha, to a small select audience of two, one of whom works for 30 seconds occasionally, by releasing a button, while the other writes about it.
In other words, surrealism is alive and well in Qatar. Probably, when it comes down to it, surrealism is the unifying thread in the warp and weft of the expat fabric.
All that remains is to append the imperative, 'Discuss!', to the above to have created the ultimate examination question. But as that is not my intention, I'll resist the temptation.

By Way of Wintery Summary

Nothing much has happened in my first few days back in Doha. The sewage tanker has not been bought after all, but the hopeful vendor has adopted a new policy of moving it to a different location each morning (never more than 400 yards from the old location) and returning it at night. As it is now as dusty as the rest of its environs and bespattered with the season's first muddy rain, the chances of a quick sale seem slimmer than ever, especially as the A4-size for-sale signs are now faded, tattered and all but illegible.
The piddling little rain showers seem to have lent credence to the notion that it is cold, which it isn't, and once again we are treated on all sides to the curious spectacle of gentlemen attired in dish-dash, sports jacket and sandals, grumpily picking their way between the puddles in the mall car park, while struggling under the bulk of new boxed electric heaters. I find myself wondering what hapened to the heaters they bought last year, and the year before that? What the place needs, to restore a sense of proportion, is a decent heavy fall of snow. But it's not about to happen. Not this year...

Horse Shoe Bar, Bowling and the (Beer) Desert

I can't quite remember why I took this shot of a fairly ordinary pub in Bowling (near Dumbarton). Maybe it had something to do with the mock black and white frontage. That's not impossible, because at the time I'd not ventured much out of Scotland. A few years later, in Shakespeare country, real black and white cottages were all around me and I wouldn't have given the imposter a second glance.
But looking at it now, what stand out, literally, are the signs for WM. YOUNGER'S and TENNENT'S LAGER. Because this was the era of  the keg beer, before the real ale revival came North of the Border. Most Scottish bars served Younger's Tartan Special and Tennent's Lager and if you were lucky McEwan's Export. A few also offered Light, which was dark, being the opposite of heavy.
And that was your lot, apart from a handful of specialist Free Houses that flew the flag for McClays, Deuchars or the holy of holies, Belhaven. Nowadays (for the benefit of any English beer drinkers considering a Scottish holiday) all that has changed. The small brewers came back with a vengeance and the big ones fought a rearguard action by relaunching traditional lines. It's quite safe to come North. You can get a decent drink almost anywhere.
And you can still find Tennent's Lager which knocks spots of Carling...

Connemara, with bloke, donkey, cottage and telegraph poles

connemara, with bloke, donkey, cottage and telegraph poles

Digitising all of Dad's old family slides and all of my own was fun but enough of a good thing by the time I'd finished. For about six months afterwards, I just didn't have the notion to switch on the slide scanner again. Until today. I've decided this time to process my old black & white negatives, mostly shot between 79 and 81. This one, aptly named Connemara, with bloke, donkey, cottage and telegraph poles, was taken in Connemara, and shows a bloke, his donkey, his bicycle (because his donkey is a pack animal and not for riding), telegraph poles complete with 'jam jars' and wires, and a cottage. The bloke is a donkey pedlar and a bicycle peddler. This happy thought keeps him cheerful even on the longest hills. His donkey cares not a whit.
The rest of this first film features a potentially lethal safety hazard, a few shots of Oban, one of a pub in Bowling, one of Galway Bay and several more from Connemara.