But...
    Two children were kicking a ball between them. Where on earth had they come from, I wondered as we pulled in? I noticed a tatty caravan tucked out of sight beneath the overhanging limbs of the trees. Beside it, there was an equally tattered van.
    ‘Gypsies’ I said.
    ‘Oh, well. Let’s just have a cup of tea and a read of the paper’ Lesley said.
    She rummaged around for the flask on the back seat and then poured the brew for us. Settling the paper on her lap with a little rustling flourish of the pages she gave a sigh of contentment. I needed a leak. I got out of the car and went down a short slippery incline through the trees to find a little privacy. I was sure though that I could hear voices in the bushes which put me off. Were there more gypsies playing just out of sight? There was also, what looked like a small boat a little way out with people on it, fishing.
    And looking at all that water and the rain didn't help. I was bursting, truth be told. All those trees and nowhere to piss. (See picture, right).
    I risked a swift one and then returned to the car. More than a little relieved, I settled back into my seat.
    I have to admit I was disappointed at not being able to nap. I had a vision of waking up to find the van gone, caravan missing, and children nowhere in sight; the wheels of our car noticeable by their absence.
    A single bird sang.
    Tweet
    Tweet  
    Tweet
    On and on like a squeaky wheel on a supermarket trolley.
    The trees shivered their leaves.
    The grey sky was reflected in the loch
    Buttercups were sprinkled all around like seasoning.
    A man stepped out of the caravan behind us and approached the car. I went through my stock of expressions; mean; moody; friendly; warning; flirtatious. Well, flirtatious was definitely off the menu seeing as he was a big hairy bloke. I settled for my “impassive but one wrong move and you're history, mate” look. The man was chunky… ok, fattish, with a soft voice; a sort of well fed hobbit of a bloke with a six o’clock shadow. Beneath his unruly mop of hair his eyes were kind and brown, like a rabbit.
    ‘Have ye got the time?’ he asked.
    ‘Ma wee uns 'ave shifted m’clock.’ He said, by way of explanation.
    We all laughed. I got the impression he was just checking us out. You’re not supposed to camp there overnight. He was more concerned about us than we were about him. He called the wee’uns in and quiet settled over us all.
    Lesley returned to munching on her ginger nuts and I got my copy of GQ out and read a very good article about dog shit.

So, we didn't get our nap. Tired, we moved on to the place we had booked for the night. It was a place called McGregor's Landing. We had stayed there before on quite a few occasions so at least we knew what to expect.
The name comes from the Scottish folk hero Rob Roy MacGregor. There’s a cave nearby where he sought refuge from the Duke of Montrose. He should have just booked into the hotel because it would have been a lot more comfortable than sleeping in a cave and having nettles instead of soft loo roll; but you know what these heroic types are like; no bloody brains. (Here's the back view of the hotel).

But anyway, when we entered the lobby the boy on the desk was taking a booking over the phone. Another member of staff was talking on her mobile in what sounded like Spanish. She looked Spanish too. That was pretty conclusive for me. I filed her away as Spanish and waited for Lesley to register. She had given her name whilst making the booking a few weeks previously. That done, we went into the well lit and spacious dining area.

It overlooks the loch; a wonderful view whilst you were eating.

The waitress, a young girl called Yanni attended to us. We ordered food; seafood for Lesley and a steak for me. Yanni made a note of it on her pad. She had a calm open manner about her which is good, because I didn't want her to suddenly panic and stab me with her pencil. She asked if we would like a drink while we waited on our meal. Lesley asked for tea. I said ‘no thanks.’
    ‘And would you like any sauces with your steak?’
    ‘No, thank you’.
    Damn! I thought, suddenly. I was on auto ‘no’.
    Yanni drifted off to sort out the meal.
    Behind us the family who had just finished their meal got up and left. I was glad. I was feeling a little hemmed in because I like plenty of elbow room when I eat. I relaxed that bit more and suggested we go to the bar and have a smoke.
Sitting in the cool confines of the bar on a chunky brown leather sofa, I felt like we should be discussing the cricket and the state of the British Empire. The bar had the feel of a gentleman’s club. Instead I just tried to not make embarrassing noises on the leather when I shifted position to tap my ash. The girl who I had down as Spanish came up to us, ostensibly to sort out our drinks (I had relented and asked for a Budweiser) but first she said.
    ‘There are two million South Africans in London alone, and when you count the rest of the country, it’s nearly three million.’
    It was an interesting fact, not because of the number, but because nobody asked her. She just volunteered the information.
    ‘Oh. Right’ I said.
    A little silence plopped onto the table like a piece of food launching across the room when you cough at the wrong moment. I didn't know what else to say and I couldn't think of how many bicycles there were in Botswana, so I could join in the one sided conversation.
    Embarrassed silence.
    'I’ll go and get those drinks,' she said. Thank the Lord. I thought she was going to name all the South Africans residing in London. Lesley and I looked at each other when she'd gone, a little puzzled. Maybe it was a local custom or something; in South Africa; maybe; certainly not here... on earth, I mean. She returned with the drinks, smiling delightfully, which I found reassuring. Somebody had obviously upped her medication.
    I asked Lesley about the girl's accent when she had departed once again, no doubt to baffle one of the other guests with another obscure fact; such as: a gazelle can smell fish for up to three miles.
    ‘I would think she's South African’ Lesley said.
    ‘Well, wherever she’s from, my beer’s flat.’

    Dinner was very pleasant. The large windows hid nothing of the view. The watery light outside and the mist on the hills around the loch was a balm to the eyes. And the food was great. My rump steak was perfect. I had asked for it to be very, very, very well done and it absolutely was, but still succulent and proud of its juices. That portion of cow, bless it's arse, was cooked perfectly; tasty and fresh and no gristle.
    I’ve had steak in some places, where I didn't specify just how well done I wanted it. (Well done for me isn't far short of having been incinerated). I've then stuck my fork in it, only to find it was so rare, it flinched. You know it’s underdone when it starts nibbling on your salad. Or when it comes with pepper sauce and a bandage. Or worse, it asks you to phone an ambulance. That’s always a very bad sign.

    There was just time after dinner, for a short drive before the sky pulled its celestial duvet over its head. Twenty minutes down the road and we found a place to park. It was in a lochside car park, in a place called Tarbet. It's a couple of miles south of the hotel on the shores of the loch. The rain was bouncing off the car in great big suicidal splashes of water thrown from a bad tempered cloud. Visibility was bad. Not because of the weather, but because both of us were smoking and we couldn't roll the windows down. It was like sitting inside a drum with the rain pelting down. I tried rolling down the window a crack to let some air in. Outside looked like a scene from The Perfect Storm. I promptly got slapped in the face by a load of water as if I had pinched its bottom.
    I settled back to have a nap; although I may in fact, have just passed out from lack of oxygen.

    A noise
    I woke
    Fist cocked
    Didn't know why.
    I used to do that all the time when I lived in Ireland. Many times, I've come close to whacking the person who disturbed me from whatever place I go when I sleep. I've never struck a loved one, thank God. This may be in part because after a while, the person knew me well enough to only wake me by prodding me in the back with a barge pole. I confess to doing the same thing myself, but for entirely different reasons. And barge pole is something of an exaggeration even if it was tied to an anvil for a week or two.
    Once again, I was absolutely bursting for a leak.
    Thank the Lord that the biblical rain had stopped. I got out of the car and made my way around the back of a building catering to the needs of tourists; enquiries about accommodation for example; and conveniently you could piss up against a tree at the side of it, without being seen from the road. They probably left that bit out of the tourist information brochure. I was very satisfied with the facility in any case. I then went around the front of the building. I had noticed a computer screen in the window when I was trotting over from the car. The screen displayed the weather. As thunder rolled across the sky, standing there, damp and somewhat discomfited by a cold breeze, I read Thursday is going to be sunny.
    Smashing!
    I trotted back to the car as the horizon softened with drizzle, whispering across the loch toward me.
    'Hey, guess what?' I said, beaming. I felt like the Dove bringing twigs to Moses.
    'I give up, what?'
    'The weather on Thursday is going to be good, sunshine, blue skies, and all the trimmings.'
    Lesley, with quiet authority, informed me, because she knows about that sort of thing ‘today is Thursday, darling.’
    Bugger.

    It was getting dark.
    It had been a long day.
    Time to bathe and slumber.
   
    Morning rolled over in its sleepy eyed slumber and woke the world.
    Lesley was gone.
    And I needed traction.
   The bed was softer than the one I was used to. There was a time when I wouldn't have said no to a hot cup cake of a girl to wake me up, but yawning and scratching, all I wanted at that point was a cup of hot tea; and a cake if possible. Then I would need someone to bring me the morning paper, get me dressed, shaved, slung over their shoulder and carried to the breakfast table.
    There were no takers.
    And where on earth had Lesley gone?
    I moved my mouth, doing that tasting thing, where you try to taste your own mouth. I tried to remember just exactly when, I had eaten a badger.
    I felt really tired and lay there thinking if someone were to carry me downstairs, I would need a sumo wrestler and not a geisha. I didn't care, just so long as I wasn't the one who had to change his diaper.
It was all just idle speculation because I would get neither. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. Still yawning, I filled the sink up with water to wash my face and shave. Afterwards, I discovered I couldn't get the plug out of the sink. The soapiness of the water made it impossible. Rather ingeniously, in my opinion, I resorted to using Lesley’s toothbrush as a little crowbar, flipping the plug up and out and down into the toilet, together with the toothbrush.
    Shit.

    Lesley, poor thing, was sitting beside Elvis on a little wall. She was smoking and sipping hot tea and looked content. Not knowing your toothbrush has been in the toilet can do that to you. I decided not to mention it, or the trouble I'd had fishing it out of the bowl. I also resolved not to kiss her for the next two months if it could possibly be avoided.
    'Good morning, sweetheart,' she said, in fine form.
    She had been having an interesting morning.
    Unable to sleep past 6.45 she had gotten out of bed and gone down into the cold mist laden morning. There was an air of Camelot to the pale light, with the bird song and the scent of pine. Silence. The dew on the grass bowed to the blades of green grass. She said she could feel her spirit opening up toward the infinite sky.
    But it was cold so she decided to sit in the car and commune with nature from there with a cup of tea and a ginger nut. She had just poured herself a cup of tepid tea from yesterday’s flask, when...
    A pale white moon of a bottom had appeared out the back of a red van. The van was parked across the way.
    She held her breath.
    Jaw dropped.
    A naked man stepped into view, urinated on a nearby horsebox, and then disappeared again into the back of the van.
    She dropped ash on her lap.
    ‘Well, I never…’ she thought to herself.
    All went quiet again, so she took up the book she had brought for the trip and began reading. After about an hour, the engine of the van abruptly burst into life. The van sidled across the car park and pulled in a few car lengths away from her.
    She slouched a little further down in her seat.
    Then the back door of the van opened and three men trooped out of the back and disappeared into the foyer of McGregor’s Landing.

    I had passed them in the foyer on my way to find Lesley. As she related this tale to me, I wondered which of the three’s arse it was? I felt vaguely miffed that she had seen another arse.
    I’m the only arse in Lesley's life. I know this because people tell me constantly.

    Hey, wait a minute…

    Later, to the sound of The Only Living Boy in New York we were eating a hearty breakfast when, mid-sausage I noticed Lesley was surreptitiously pointing her fork at another table of diners. It was ‘Love Boy Three’, the Highlands' very own three musketeers from the back of the red van. I looked over just as they got up to leave.
    ‘Which one was it?’ I asked.
    She did that woman thing of moving her lips, without actually saying anything.
    I just looked baffled.
    She rolled her eyes and whispered, ‘the blonde one.’
    I looked over, and found myself uncharacteristically checking out the man's bottom. I had hoped it would be flabby.
    It looked like it could have cracked coconuts. His buttocks must have had more steroids in them than the whole Ladies Russian Shotputting team.
    ‘I expect they’re all gay,’ I said, magnanimously.