26th December 2012 photos.

BBC Scotland Viaduct sunset...

Canal boat

Viaduct as well...

Roslin Glen only 1 mile from home, trams will be going there soon 



Remember Val and I were walking through the glen when we met a nice American man, it had just gone one oclock, "when was the battle?" he asked "a couple of minutes ago" say I ,how come he said "well according to the brass plate it happened at 1303" he was not amused

Used to be a gunpowder factory in there...

How come Roslin Glen isn't spelt the same as Rosslyn Chapel??

Doesn't really matter how they're spelled. Gaelic was not a written language so there are numerous ways to spell it. Means headland by the pool. Ross=headland, linn=pool. (Or near enough anyway).

Its changed over the years that Irish and Scots Gaelic have separated. "Ros" over here is a small wood. I'm from Roscommon which is Coman's Wood. How do you mean Gaelic wasn't a written language?

It was never written down over here Dermo, it was a "spoken" language. That's why it was such a blow when the English proscribed the speaking of Gaelic as the "bards" or storytellers couldn't pass on the genealogy of their ancestors or their feats in battles etc. It was all lost, especially when the clan chiefs became "lairds" and cleared their clans off the land.

It was banned here as well as part of the repression of general education to the Catholic masses, but the Catholic church ran what they called "hedge schools", where children would be educated through Irish in the various subjects. The penalty of being caught in one of these hedge schools was that the child's family would be evicted from their homestead and the choice was either starvation or emigration. Its why I think the "thick Paddy" jokes came to be, i.e. the British government of the time had banned education hence the view remained/remains that the Irish are uneducated or thick ( just my own reasoning here). Its also the reason why Catholic schools make up 90% of the schools here though this is changing rapidly. I think Minty said before that all schools should be secular with time put by for religion and that individual churches should send in their teachers for these periods. I'd ban it altogether from schools ( we have new system here called "educate together" where no religion is taught and all creeds are accepted but parents can use the school on weekends for religious education ). They can't build these new schools fast enough to keep up with demand. Also, all Irish language schools are becoming more popular. Same applies to these, no religion ( actually no books either, they have ipads or tablets, and teachers are called by their first names. Waay different to when I went to school and much better I think)

No, I never said that, I do recall the post your on about, I was on about religion being taught at schools, something I totally disagree with, scools for englishit  and mafs,,, religion is a total pice of made up shite that should be eradicated from the small planet we live on, made up feckin shit that causes a lot of trouble...

Oh, merry Christmas.

 Hic...