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Heaven's above... last day of August and not a dish washed! Would you believe that we are already on the road to autumn (for us northern hemispherians)? So that was the summer, was it? They just aren't what they used to be when I was a kid. I remember that summer days lasted for ever, the sun never set and it was always warm and sunny. The school summer holidays were days during which we left the house as soon as we woke up, and only went back home when the midges became unbearable. We would waken at the crack of dawn (and in the west of Scotland during summer, dawn is about 4am), leap out of bed, make 'pieces and jam' (jam sandwiches with big chunks of hard butter to add flavour - all on Scottish crusty plain bread - I think the American word for jam is jelly - jelly in the UK is jello in the US... confused??!), put them in our pockets, and disappear into the woods and fields behind our house. Days were spent playing soldiers, chasing (and running away from) cows, building dens, climbing trees, making tyre swings across muddy burns (streams in England, creeks in the US), and generally getting very dirty. When we were a little older (about Liam's age - when the hormones were beginning to kick in) we would cycle out to Scalpsie Bay to try and get close to the seals, or to pre-Co-worker Ettrick Bay, to ogle at the exotic girls with strange accents who were on holiday from such distant places as Glasgow and Paisley. Those were the days, my friend.

Last year I was just swanning around up at Clatto