We're flying up on the 17th Feb til the following Monday, and we're staying with his mum in Blackburn, near Livingston which is just outside Edinburgh.

I'm giving my wee car a rest this time.

I went up for Xmas and New Year years ago, stayed in a little fishing village, St Monans near St Andrews. It was great. 10 days of solid drinking!

We went on a little tour of scotland in the summer and one of the places we went to was St Andrews. It was sooo foggy and eery. We couldnt see out to sea at all and apparently it had been like that for weeks.

I dont think I've ever spent that long up there, dont think I could manage it with his family.

Rab C Nesbitt his dad is he?

No thats his neigbour!

His mum and his grandparents are lovely but his mum has 4 brothers and a sister so its a large family and one or two of them are a bit too much to bear sometimes.

The first time I met them all, was at a party and his auntie Carne (correct spelling) got really lairy and was having a go at me for being English.

Then there's his uncle Mick who is very loud and attention seeking and cracks unfunny jokes all the time.

And my favourite is his 14 yr old cousin Michaela who goes around telling lies about us to their other cousins. The best one was how She was our favourite and only she was gonna be my bridesmaid. That obviously upset his 6 other cousins and so my boyfriend had a text conversation asking her not to say things like that again. To cut a long story short, her dad now says that we should be cast out of the family for being 'nasty' to his daughter.

Just to put the cat among the pigeons perhaps you could have the other 6 and not her........its not like you'll have to see them that much!

Yeah thats true, I could have been the unlucky one and moved up there with him, rather than him moving down here with me

I don't think the Scots generally like it when the English move up there. An uncle of Marks did that and wasn't welcomed at all. Got moaned at constantly for 'taking their jobs'

My boyfriend gets that down here actually. Most say it in jest but some are quite nasty about it but he's getting a thick skin to it all.

I don't think you get it as much down here tho'. we're a bit more cosmopolitan

I suppose I've never been up there long enough to notice..

The Bast*rd New Fascists are picking the Pockets of People who are Sick and Unemployed now, even though it was the Government who made many of them 'sick' in order to remove them from the Unemployment Figures.

They're talking about giving the stolen Money to Pensioners coz there's 11 million of them and most of them Vote. But they're just bashing the Poor to curry favour with a big Voting block in the forthcoming General Elections.

Herr Blair: "It's for zere own Benefit, ve are not giving zem any"

The waiting time in our doctors surgery....I'm sure they manage to do something Einstienian with time...it passes so effing slowly. Iwas only there for 30 mins total, but it felt like hours.

Cockney reds

Well I don't know whether I should be 'Pissed off' or 'pleased'. I'm pleased that our house was spared. There's trees down everywhere I look (effing big mothers)and I had to put the roof of the sheep shed back on this morning. The powers' been off for the last twentyfour hours and has only come back on in the last half hour. Considering we're on tank water (no electricity = no water) I've been bucketing it. (oh, praise the gentle hum of the dishwasher)

Apparently it was the worst storm on record, going back to European settlement.
At the moment, and looking around our district, I believe them.
Remember I was having a whinge about how hot it was? Well I'll stop doing that now. ............ Was 36, within two hours it was 13 WTF? Then the storms came.

It' s funny you know; Everything is normal again. Oh well, better make the most of the situation.........There's heaps of firewood lying on the ground at the moment.

after it being so hot for so long you must have needed the rain, tho' maybe not quite so much in one go would have been nice!

We've actually been having a bit of a wet summer but the 5 inches in 36 hours we got is playing havock. That's a quarter of our average yearly rainfall.(In a good year) I'm waiting for the creek at the back of our house to swell. The tomatoes are stuffed and the corns looking a bit wonky. Damn I was really proud of the vege patch this year

I'm not sure. I know a lot of animal and hey sheds and the like are down. But it's mainly fences and trees.
Some roads we're inpassable this morning.I believe the outer suburbs of melbourne got damage to houses but I won't know about here until the grapevine gets round to me.

Nothing on the news.. tv..?

The storm was Victoria wide with a lot of flooding and Sydney copped a battering and floods.
Unfortunetly it's only just happened so as soon as they collate it all I'll know. Do you get SKY news over there? We get half hour Australian news 1/2 British news.
I know there were delays on the way to Melbourne Airport. People were pulling over to the side of the road and hauling themselves and luggage up the freeway.
Some kid has apparently been washed away on his way to or from school but nobody has reported anyone missing yet. (It was only wittness reports) A beach in Melbourne has been washed away. And the ferry from Vic. to Tasmania was ripped from it's moorings The 'Spirit of Tasmania' had to turn back to Melbourne and she's a big ship/ferry. Twenty foot waves hit the side of her and smashed cabin windows, the oil riggs in Bass Strait were evacuated (about three I think.)
It's amazing, I look outside now and everything is still.

Yeah we get Sky News. I'm on the website now but cant find anything about your storm

That'd be right. Arse end of the world, nobody cares about us

Ohh here ya go, I found something


From - http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp.../130602/1/.html

Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 03 February 2005 1319 hrs

Freak storms lash eastern Australia, at least two dead


MELBOURNE, Australia : Freak summer storms lashed eastern Australia overnight, dumping record rains on Melbourne, hitting Brisbane with a towering dust storm and leaving at least two people dead, officials said.

Melbourne received more rain in the 24 hours to Thursday morning than during any day since records began in 1856, leaving the city's rivers and waterways swollen to bursting point.



Victoria state police were searching for a teenage boy reported to have been swept away in a suburban Melbourne creek while two people were killed by falling trees in neighboring New South Wales state.

The storms, caused by an intense low-pressure system, hit a vast area from Queensland state in the north, through New South Wales and Victoria and on to the island state of Tasmania off mainland Australia's southeastern corner.

The front swept in on Wednesday when eastern Australia was experiencing blue skies and sweltering heat normal for the height of the southern summer.

But within hours temperatures plunged to record lows and skies went dark as massive storm clouds dumped rain, hail and even snow across vast areas.

At the height of the storm Wednesday evening, Melbourne registered its coldest February day on record with the mercury dropping to 12.8 degrees Celsius (55 Fahrenheit).

Fallen trees blocked roads and toppled power lines across the region, cutting off electricity supplies to tens of thousands of people, authorities said.

In Melbourne, Australia's second biggest city, rain caused flashfloods that snarled traffic and damaged many homes, with local emergency services reporting more than 2,500 calls for help.

"This is shaping as one of our busiest storm operations ever as the rain and wind continues to lash Melbourne," said emergency services spokesman Peter Cocks. T

"The number of calls has stretched resources to the limit and I ask people to be patient as many volunteers have been on the go all night."

High winds, hail and rain also pummelled Sydney and other parts of New South Wales (NSW), killing a 16-year-old girl early yesterday when a tree fell on to her tent during a school camping trip.

A forest worker was killed early today when he was hit by a falling tree in a rural area of southern NSW, and another man was in critical condition after a tree fell on his car in western Victoria, officials said.

To the north in Queensland, high winds whipped up a massive dust storm that sent a wall of rust-red particles across the large state, cutting visibility to 100 meters (yards) in some areas and forcing the closure of 20 regional airports.

The storms were all associated with a single weather system that swept cold air up from the antarctic and over eastern Australia, said Andrew Haigh with the bureau of meteorology.

"You've got a very strong cold front and a low-pressure system combining. There's very cold air in the upper atmosphere over southern New South Wales and Victoria," he said.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said the freak storms were a harbinger of climate chaos to come due to global warming.

"Freak storms and the climate havoc we are currently experiencing across Australia is a taste of tomorrow's world unless we start to cut greenhouse pollution" blamed for global warming, foundation spokesman John Connor said.

Yep! That just about raps it up. I didn't know about QLD though.

I cant believe its not on any of our news, especially as you havent had anything like it for such a long time.

Oh well. In two weeks we'll be on bush fire alert again. Go figure!

Shit I'm tired, but I know as soon as I put my head down I'll toss and turn.

My kids school burnt down today, they are well happy but the better half is not too happy, probably drive her insane while they're off school. Glad i'm at work. ( luv 'em really )

What? It burnt down during school hours? Shit!

What's pissed me off...a blocked set of bath/basin drains. I failed to clear them. Got to get a jetter in.

The neighbours daughter is having a late night music session...we can't sleep.
Ho Hum.

That bloody bird that sounds like a smoke alarm I;m sick of it

Been on a diet for two weeks and haven't lost any weight.

my left arm fell off

I know. No warning nothing. one minute it was there and the next THUMP it hit the deck!

Well he could have bloody well told me first......stuff his mysterious ways and all that, I feel I have a right to know such things

I think that gives you enough right to go ahead and be a hypocrite dont you think?

Noo, Not me.......Not while I've still got one hand to turn the pages on my bible

For two weeks now i couldnt sleep well i dunno what is the problem so i might need to c a doc

Woken up with a cold and the other half is P***ed at me coz i was having a nightmare in my sleep, he went to hug me to try and wake me up and I cracked him one and he's getting a black eye, oops

I told him he was being a girl, that didn't go down too well

Exactly, he stomped out the house, I felt like asking him whether he wanted to borrow my handbag, but decided against it!

I think he's just upset coz I can hit harder than him

Hadn't thought of that