My father was a bibliophile. His passion for books started in his childhood, and I recall some of the early books he kept on his bookshelf: nearly complete works of Julius Verne, books by Jack London. Each of them neatly wrapped in either cream or blue packing paper, a handwritten label on the front, positioned with a millimetre precision, and inside an ex libris stamp in the shape of a pocket watch. The love of books remained with him all of his life, indeed during one of the last lucid conversations I had with him he was complaining about all the new books he acquired but didn’t have time to read yet.

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Let’s be clear on one thing: in the good old USSR decent people didn’t rise through the Communist Party ranks to the Politburo, they were sent to the Siberian gulags. The Politburo was the cesspit of the Soviet system — this is the basic lens through which the Gorbachev legacy must be viewed. To remove it, as the various UK commentators are invariably doing just now, is to engage in gross revisionism of history.

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I see that Chris Packham and others are making waves about the amount of Sitka being planted in Scotland. Funny that. There is nothing new here. I have raised this issue years back when the Scottish Government first published its Draft Climate Change Plan (2016?), and various environmental groups and outdoor influencers were praising its tree planting objectives without bothering to scrutinise the numbers (simply putting the tree planting numbers along the timber production targets in a different section of the DCCP made it clear that most of the new trees were going to be Sitka). At the time I got some fairly condescending responses to those concerns from some who should have known better.

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The Beeb has a photographic piece on cycling the NC500. Unfortunately, these serene images, featuring four cyclists riding quiet scenic roads, are completely misleading as to the reality of cycling on the NC500.

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The year has began splendidly: the sun is shinning, the sky is blue, the hills around caped in snow, the reservoir part frozen, and under my wheels the satisfying crunch of hard ice. I turn onto the minor single track road that takes me over the hills. Here in the shade of the frost decorated evergreens it’s noticeably colder. I leave behind a stuck 4x4, pedalling out of the trees into the sun, grinning. At this moment there is nowhere else I’d rather be, nothing else I’d rather be doing.

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This piece in the Atlantic is well worth a read, cutting right through the cosy myth of the 19th century conservationism. There are lessons there for the present here in Scotland today for sure.

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I rarely enter photographic competitions, but the Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year is an important point in my photographic calendar: Scottish landscape is my primary photographic interest and it’s always worthwhile to be able to place my own work in the wider context of other people’s imagery.

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It’s been an odd year, to say the least. A year that brought out a pinch of community spirit in all of us, and alongside it a large doze of selfishness.

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COVID has, so I hear, brought new levels of antisocial behaviour into the Outdoors: stories about irresponsible campers seem to appear daily in the news, and a petition asking for curbing of rights to camp has been lodged with the Scottish Parliament.

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How many phone calls does it take to organise a COVID-19 test for a ninety+ year old who needs an emergency admission to a care home?

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… expect a circus.’

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There has been much hoohaa in recent days over people breaking the recommendation not to travel further than five miles for their recreation. But while the images of weekend scenes at Balmaha and Arrochar are quite ridiculous, the politicians need to get of their high horses and lose that self righteous indignation, for the real problem is not with us people.

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… did nothing wrong. Of course not. They never do, do they? No matter the vandalism, the destruction in their wake, the trail of buckie shards left behind, someone else is to blame.

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Take a comfortable lockdown seat, stick some popcorn into the microwave and watch: Remember the overweight BoJo stuck on a zip wire waving the Union Jack? You’ve seen nothing yet, England and her Tories are about to find out the true cost of putting an inept clown in charge.

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At the top of this week’s Netflix ‘for you’ list came the star studded 1995 classic Outbreak. I cringed a bit, but watched it in the end, being the lockdown and all that, and I am glad I did, for I finally understand where the UK Government got its COVID-19 strategy from! This Hollywood disaster cliche has it all: the politicians’ cavalier attitude to loss of life, the war imagery, the pseudoscience, the vaccine produced in days, the triumphal ending.

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This week’s attempt of the Scottish Government to start a grown up conversation on how we deal with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis is most welcome, to the extent to which it goes, which is not far enough.

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