The debonair Basil Marigold's

London. Saturday afternoon. It is grey, and it is also drizzling. I am in Fleet Street, heading towards St Pauls. London can be a grim place in these conditions. However, on we stroll. Then, what comes towards would take some believing if I weren't in London, in which case it becomes entirely believable and you tend to just ‘sigh’ and say, ‘ah, London!’ It is called a pedal bus. It is literally what it says on the tin. It has about 8 seats, like bar stools, with 4 on each side. You sit on the seats and then you pedal. The trolley then moves. Basic theory of motion. You pay to do this. You can drink beer at the same time my friend tells me. They certainly were. I assume the person directing the pedal bus is an employee and can’t be one of those drinking! It’s an absurdity. It is so London.

It has been a few years since I have attended a full Remembrance Day parade. This year our children were participating in the parade as part of there extra-curricular activities, so we went with them to the local Parish Church. Which, is incredibly local to us. Both of them didn't seem to mind the autumnal cold that accompanied the parade marchers from the church to the war memorial. It is only a few hundred metres away, but it was a little like a wind tunnel today. They, our children, aren't particularly old so they don't have the sense or understanding of what all of today means. Over time I am sure they will be fed the usual stories at school. Our history curriculum, if like mine, will feed them full of WWI and WWII history. The English obsession; our military prowess in the 20th Century, to the detriment of our other incredibly rich periods that can easily be chosen from. However, the 20th century has been a horrific hundred years for the world, and remembrance is

Edinburgh Castle is an incredible place. It sits atop the whole city. Like a granite sentinel. They say that the actual outcrop has been inhabited for many thousands of years. When your look at the defensive attributes, you perhaps, understand why. It's now been developed around so the Edinburgh you see has an old town and a new town. However, when James the III or the VI were wandering around the castle the view from the bottom of the much smaller city would have been far more impressive than with the old town cluttered around it. The old town is cluttered around the castle now. The beautiful old town, with its internal courts and dark, narrow alleyways. Edinburgh does a neat trade in ghost walks and the legends of the body snatchers haunt the area of the grass market.  Though, of course, the castle as we know it began development in around the 12th century, by David and the chapel that still sits centrally within the castle walls. It's a tiny one room chapel, often sn

For those who are aware of my literary tastes, will know that I am not a voracious reader of Crime novels. They very rarely appeal to me and I am not particularly enlivened by the idea of the police drama, etc. There are two very notable exceptions to this rule for me. Two authors; Agatha Christie, and another, Ian Rankin. As planets can align then 2017 has seen, oddly, an alignment here, too. In August we visited the summer property of Agatha Christie, Greensway. A particularly attractive house set into a stunning view on the river Dart, in Devon. The second opportunity presented itself when we decided to visit Scotland and knew we were going into Edinburgh. This is the John Rebus pilgrimage. John Rebus, is to Ian Rankin what Hercule Poirot is to Agathat Christie. However, this is the end of the comparison. John Rebus is a native of Edinburgh, who served in the Army when he was younger but then returned to the city and became a detective. And this is where the books start. Ian Ran

It has been a fair few years since we last made the visit north of the wall, into the land of the Picts. It is not a particularly easy journey with young children. It is a very long way, and takes a large portion of any day to achieve. Google maps has it done for about 5 and a half hours, not including any stoppages. When the children were very young the very idea of making this journey seemed a self inflicted punishment. However, they are both a little older now and are quite capable of making long trips. Provided, of course, they have their DVD players with them. I cannot express the boredom that I used to travel from Devon to Nottingham with absolutely no entertainment. Counting the number of red cars loses its interest after, oh, I don't know, twenty minutes into a 5hr drive (Pre-M42 of course). So, don't let anyone tell you that all progress is bad. It really isn't! The journey north passed with absolutely no issue. If anything, the problem was one of sheer boredom o