Recent Invasions Of Scotland by Alfred.N.Muggins

    Alfred and some of his friends had first invaded Scotland in 1984, armed with maps and guide books, and a car. Thereupon they had taken it upon themselves to take the castles, one by one, doing Kelso(actually an Abbey, ruined of course!), Edinburgh and Stirling, and then moving on to a number of other ones in the highlands, which he would now have to look up, because he couldn’t remember their names. Already the memories were blurring and getting mixed up.

    They took beautiful pictures, although they were probably now in the loft, and might never be seen again unless he made a bit more of an effort to clear it up! (Maybe he could get Mrs Muggins to do it? But no, on reflection that was probably not a good idea. He didn’t want anything trampling under foot, or getting filed in the wrong place!)

    On later forays into the Land of Castles they had started collecting Monroes: in English that means walking up to the top of as many high mountains above a certain number of feet! – was it 3,000 feet? Perhaps? But Scotland was far too big to bag them all, unless you came back again and again every year, with the grim purpose to collect (i.e. climb or walk) every single one. (Needless to say they did quite a few, and then gave up, because life has a habit of sending all of us in different directions, or you could say we all have more important things to do.)

Another product I have not yet mentioned in my Scottish writings is their incredibly moreish Shortbread biscuits, which are well worth invading Scotland for (and sometimes come in lovely tartan Shortbread boxes or tins. (The Scots would have done well to hide the biscuits from the English, and they would surely not have been invaded quite so often through the centuries! (The often greedy Scots of course did quite the wrong thing and even started selling the precious commodity to the English tourists, thus completely tempting them into further invasions and crown and parliamentary unions etc.))