Blogmeet 2010

It may be slightly out of focus, but this is the documentary evidence of my latest blogmeet.

On the left is Eric of Straight White Guy fame, the gifted online journalist who serves the additonal role of my blogfather.

We caught up over a pint or three a couple of weeks ago, but I've just been too damn lazy to get the photo online before now.

Pop across to Eric's site, say hello and tell him I sent you.

I Have No Shame

Those of you who visit this humble outpost of the worldwide interweb on a regular basis (have you nothing better to do?) may recall that I am no fan of erstwhile Celtic and Wales striker John Hartson.

In this post, I placed him third in my list of most disliked Mhanky Mhob players. And in this one, I compared his dazzling good looks to those of the fatally wounded Darth Vader when he removes his mask at the end of Return Of The Jedi.

But last night, on a night out for Mrs Wife's birthday, we were in the VIP bar at Fat Sam's in Dundee, where our fellow drinkers were Rangers midfielder Charlie Adam and Hartson, the latter presumably in the City of Discovery for punditry duties at today's clash between Dundee United and Rangers.

Anyway, I clearly have no shame, as here I am with Hartson. It's very rare that I'm the thinnest person in any photograph, especially when the other person is a recently retired professional athlete:

Fuel Economy

A recent study conducted by Aberdeen University found that the average Scotsman walks about 900 miles a year.

Another study by the Scottish Medical Association found that Scotsmen drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year.

This means, on average, Scotsmen get about 41 miles to the gallon.

That Was The Week That Was

I'm operating on zombie-esque levels of sleep now what with the combination of Norway, Connect and being back at work today.

Norway was a strange experience - any country where three pizzas costs £75 and a round of drinks more than £100 is a tad too pricey for me. But we managed to see a bit of Stavanger in between the work sessions, and found enough free drink to keep ourselves going without taking out a second mortgage. A party on a traditional sailing ship in the sunshine on Stavanger harbour was the highlight of our time.

Our stay in Stavanger was fairly short, and within a couple of days my merry band was heading to Inveraray for the second Connect festival.

Highlights from the weekend were an incendiary set from Gossip, an all-too-short mid-afternoon slot by Elbow, a nostalgic run through Gomez's debut album and Friday night's headliners Kasabian blasting through their greatest hits.

And lest we forget, Rangers pumped Celtic 4-2 at Parkhead.

All in all, it's been a great week!

Season 2008/2009: Match 5: Montrose v Berwick Rangers

Scottish football can be a sadistic bitch.

It's rarely inspiring, and seldom drags itself beyond the the barest levels of entertainment.

In fairness, I expected little from Saturday's matches, given that I'd been out the night before, finally leaving an Aberdeen night club when the house lights were switched on at 3am.

I was up again at 9am, catching a train home in time to be parked on the couch for Falkirk v Rangers, the opening match from the SPL.

Having watched Rangers sleepwalk their way to an undeserved victory over a far livelier Falkirk side, I set off to my fifth live match of the season, in the vain hope that Montrose would defeat Berwick to record their first win of the season.

It all started so well for the home side, Chris McLeod rising unchallenged to head home Stephen Black's free kick in the seventh minute.

But the expected flood never came. Montrose dominated the match, but couldn't find a second. And sure enough, the visitors equalised with six minutes remaining, David Grant poking the ball over the line following a goalmouth scramble.

It was harsh on Montrose, who have now taken just two points from their opening two matches - hardly the form expected of title favourites.

I now demand a steward's inquiry - Berwick shouldn't even be in the SCOTTISH Football League - unless the borders have shifted slightly....

Hell For Leather, Lathered, Drunk, I'm Soused, I'm Pissed, I'm Sunk

I'm four days short of completing my 28th journey around the sun, and to commemorate this inauspicious occasion, a great part of this weekend will be spent in a drunken stupor.

It seems curious that, as I've progressed in age and in weight, my capacity to handle alcohol has dimished almost in direct proportion.

As 17-year-olds, my friends and I would think nothing of drinking a half bottle of vodka each BEFORE going out to the pubs. And then feeling full, fit and mad for it again on Sunday morning, right and ready enough to tackle a game of football.

But, as a 28-year-old weighing two stone more than I did at my fighting weight, it takes substantially less alcohol to send me on the slippery slope to drunkenness and hangover hell.

I'm at a loss as to the reasons for this. I can't now imagine starting a night out with a couple of beers, finishing the best part of a half bottle of vodka and then spending four hours in the pub drinking more vodka. But surely, as I age, my body should be more tolerant of the punishment I inflict upon it?

Anyway, the amount of drink I can handle is beside the point. This weekend, a sociable meal at Roo's Leap in Montrose will be followed by several hours of carnage in Montrose's pubs, with several members of the party new to the excitement of drinking in the town of Gable Enders.

I may report back. If I'm able to write and able to remember what happened.

Carnage and Cup Finals

Apologies to you all for my shameful lack of recent blogging, but the past week has been fairly busy.

Besides my move from car-bound commuter drone to train-bound commuter drone, I've also attended a working lunch on the fledgling oil industry in Ghana, which was as thrilling as it sounds, and been on a stag weekend in Inverness, a gathering that has left me exhausted.

The look of dismay from the passengers on the train when 30 young men got on, one of them dressed as Superman with a bottle of Lambrini attached to his hand with duct tape, was priceless. There can be no better guarantee that your hopes of a quiet and relaxing train journey from Glasgow to Inverness have been ruined than when a stag party sits down and begins to work its way through countless crates of Stella at 10am.

Our weekend in the Highland capital also included the Inverness Caledonian Thistle v Falkirk football match, which I can safely say is the worst I've seen in many years. That the players on show at the match are amongst the highest-paid in the country is nothing short of scandalous.

Aside from the football, I am legally barred from reporting any other details of the weekend away, as it is common knowledge that what happens on the stag stays on the stag.

My journey home unfortunately clashed with the Rangers v Dundee Utd match, so I was unable to witness the Famous Glasgow Rangers win the first major silverware of the season and continue their push for an historic quadruple. But by all accounts, they were lucky.

Still, better to be a lucky winner than an unlucky loser.

Harbour Lights

Aberdeen's harbour, like the docks of many (most?) ports, isn't the most salubrious of areas in which to spend an evening, but that is what myself and my male colleagues did on Friday night.

In what other area of the city could you see 60-year-old women in shell suits hogging the dancefloors of the drinking dens, eyeing up and occasionally groping the younger male drinkers?

The harbour really does offer a nightlife experience unlike any other. Not in these areas will you find the brushed chrome and polished mirrors of the city centre bars. In the harbour, the decor is more dated and the ambience generally less well-honed. In one bar, the overwhelming smell that greeted us as we arrived was disinfectant - always a pleasant aroma to start a drinking spell.

Despite the fact that we spent the best part of our evening in the grottier end of town, a cracking night was, I believe, had by all.

One Paul Gascoigne

Alastair has posted on the sorry tale of Paul Gascoigne, who was sectioned under the mental health act yesterday, and my post here is a re-hash and embellishment on a comment I made on that post.

Aside from Brian Laudrup, Paul Gascoigne is the most talented player I’ve ever had the pleasure to see in a Rangers shirt. On his day and at the top of his game, he was simply unplayable, and I was fortunate enough to have a pitch-side seat the day he single-handedly destroyed Aberdeen at Ibrox to win the Premier League in 1996.

Unfortunately, he is also one of the most unstable, misguided, naive and easily-led individuals ever to have been sucked into the world of professional football. Hangers-on like Mel Stein, Jimmy Gardner and even fellow celebrities like Chris Evans and Danny Baker were happy to ride Gascoigne’s coat-tails whilst the gravy train was rattling on at a fair pace, but I doubt many will be there to pick up the pieces now.

Mad? Frequently. Bad? Occasionally. Sad? As his life has spiralled downwards in tandem with his prodigious abilities, most definitely.

Had his career blossomed ten years later than it did, Gascoigne would probably have been the world's first £100,000-a-week player, and a superstar on a par with David Beckham. Beckham, talented though he is, doesn't bear comparison with Gascoigne. But Beckham is more able to handle the fame and its associated pressures, and has made far more of his less bountiful gifts.

Gascoigne may have enjoyed his greatest successes and most stable years of his career whilst at Rangers, but the nine-in-a-row dressing room was not the ideal place for an alocholic to spend the peak years of his profession. Alongside fellow party lovers Ally McCoist, Ian Durrant and Andy Goram, Gascoigne was famously part of the "dressing room from hell", not renowned for its sobriety and quiet living. Infamously, all of those players sat out the 1998 World Cup, despite all easily being amongst the most talented players in their respective countries.

Whilst Gascoigne may have been a forerunner of today’s Beckham and Rooney hysteria, unlike Beckham he seemed patently unsuited to life under that kind of media microscope, and unfortunately has been paying the price of that fame since he was only a boy. I, for one, hope he has a speedy and full recovery.

Herge's Adventures of Groanin' Jock

Happy New Year to you all. Mrs Wife and I are now back on Scottish soil following our jaunt to Brussels for Hogmanay.

The weather held up for most of the trip, only turning to freezing rain on our final day in Belgium, although we did encounter some snow at Waterloo.

What have we discovered from our time on the continent?

1) When chocolate is found in any state other than completely solid, I am a serious risk to myself and others around me. This applies to drinking chocolate, chocolate fountains, the fillings found inside individual chocolates and the cocoa dusting applied to truffels. In short, if you want to avoid chocolate/clothes-based mishaps, minimise my involvement.

2) Belgium, located almost slap-bang in the middle of western Europe, has acquired facets of its national characteristics from its neighbours. These include the humility and good manners of the French, the the stunning good looks of the Germans and the Italians' attitude to queuing. As Misssy warned me, the Belgians ain't too good-looking. Mrs Wife disagrees, and reckons that the men aren't too bad. But most of the women are horrors. Nonetheless, their cooking is pretty good and their beer is unsurpassed.

3) I don't know how I've lasted almost 28 years on this planet without experiencing cherry beer, which now joins pear cider amongst my favourite drinks. "Un grand Mort Subite, S'il vous plait" is the one French phrase I truly mastered whilst in Brussels.

And now we have a weekend of recovery before returning to the wonderful world of work. Thankfully, most of the snow seems to have gone, so I've been spared the nightmare Montrose to Aberdeen drive in the dark during a blizzard. Hurrah!

Memories Are Made Of This

Dry, cold, cloudless winter nights like this evening remind me of childhood, staring up at the stars, the tingle of the cold air against my cheeks.

It's strange how one small thing can transport us to a different time or place. Any time I hear If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next by Manic Street Preachers, I am back in my bedroom in Napier University's Craiglockhart halls of residence during my first week of university.

The album from which the single was taken, This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours, was released on the Monday before I moved to Edinburgh, and it was on heavy rotation in my small shared room in those first few days away from home.

And so, even now, if I hear any of the tracks from that album, I can remember those exciting times when I went from living at home with Mither, Faither and Baby Brother, essentially being waited on hand and foot, to fending for myself, living on pasta, pizza and anything with cooking instructions on the packaging, drinking every day and spending every waking (and sleeping) hour in a five-floor building with 200 other 18-year-olds.

Now, more than nine years later, those songs still remind me of those first steps into life beyond the family home, Brechin and schooldays. I wonder what songs will remind me of being 27 when I reach 35?

What Next?

Some days, I can't think of anything to write here at this humble and far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb.

Then there are some days, like today, when I could write about any number of things, but none of them grabs me by the goolies (metaphorically and literally speaking).

Today, I could write about how Scotland are still top of the Group of Death, ahead of both World Cup finalists and fresh from a 3-1 mauling of Ukraine at Fortress Hampden. How a team that five years ago was a pitiful laughing stock has somehow risen to become one of the best in Europe, on recent form and group standings at least.

Or I could write about how Dungroanin' was invaded by three of Mrs Wife's friends at the weekend, so that the rooms became a flutter of hair straighteners, outfit changes and gallons of wine.

I could write about how I've just downloaded Radiohead's new album from the internet and how it represents a brave new world in music - allowing the consumer to set their own price for the music they purchase. I've paid a fiver for the album, and I'll be interested to see how it compares to some of their recent patchy efforts.

But instead, I'll leave you with Darth Vader's hidden talent, courtesy of Neatorama:

Gaunnae Get Me Sumthin Good Fur Ma Burthday?

A touch of retail genius from Scotland's west coast, in the Haddows branch on Copland Road, Ibrox, Glasgow (home of the Famous Glasgow Rangers).

Yes folks, it's the Buckfast, 20 Mayfair and packet of Rizla "gift pack", for the ned who wants to say "I love you" in that unique, carcinogenic and liver-rotting way that flowers and chocolates just can't muster.

Rumours of My Demise....

....Are greatly exaggerated.

Seeing as how it's been a week since I last spouted some nonsense on these hallowed pages, I guess an update is well overdue.

Thanks to all those who thought to check I was still alive (well, Erica did anyway). It's been a pretty hectic week, all in all.

The festival was as good as I expected it to be, although a tad quieter than both myself and the organisers had anticipated. The highlight of the weekend for me were Primal Scream, who rattled through a furious greatest hits set.

Seth Lakeman played a great hoe-down set in front of a receptive audience doing a drunken Strip The Willow in the mud, the Super Furry Animals managed to include Power Rangers helmets and crisp eating into their repertoire, and Teenage Fanclub showed everyone why they should have been the biggest band in the world.

Bjork's set wavered between out-of-key Icelandic yelping backed by a fluorescent horn section to a spectacular laser light show during the majestic bass-driven splendour of Venus As A Boy. And The Go! Team were the best surprise act of the weekend, bringing the opening Friday night to a moshpit-bouncing close.

Seeing as how the festival site was knee-deep in mud by the end of the first day, it was a good feeling to be staying in a caravan with a shower, cooker and real beds. I must be getting old, but the prospect of standing in the pishing rain all day before walking through a dark Scottish version of the Somme to get to a tent that has collapsed and flooded just doesn't appeal any more....

Anyway, a three-day pear cider bender isn't the ideal preparation for a week-long oil industry conference and exhibition. Offshore Europe is essentially just an excuse for a bunch of very rich companies to get together and give away lots of tat. The Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre this week is awash with free pens, sweets, stress balls and key rings. Hats off to Edda Accommodation for giving away leather attache cases containing USB pen drives and calculators and to Eni for CD wallets - at least their free shite is almost worth keeping.

So, I'm a tad exhausted, which is the reason for the complete lack of postage over the past week. If I'd had any foresight, I'd have handed the keys to the blog to someone else for a week to keep y'all amused - but I don't, so I didn't.

Oh, and Tuesday marked the first anniversary of this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb. I'm still surprised that anyone bothers to stop here at all, but for those who do - thank you. Please come again. (And have a nice day.)

Publican Relations

Scotland, for one reason or another, always seems to be defined in one of two ways: as the tartan, shortbread, Highland cows and kilts stereotype or as the violent, drunk, socially-deprived slums as portrayed in Taggart, Trainspotting and most other television and movie dramas filmed in Scotland over the last couple of decades.

The latter depiction of Scotland always focuses on one of two cities: Glasgow (Taggart) or Trainspotting (Edinburgh). Which is a wee bit unfair. The rest of Scotland can be just as rough as the country's first and second cities.

Take Aberdeen for example. Per capita, probably Scotland's most salubrious city, thanks almost entirely to the money derived from North Sea oil. A city where young single men who have spent five weeks at sea arrive home with the best part of five thousand pounds in their bank accounts. A city full to the brim with seamen.

Sure, Aberdeen's wide, tree-lined, granite streets look very grand and refined. But venture down to the docks at night time, and you'll see man's base instincts rear their ugly heads in two forms. Drink and hookers.

For a first-hand account of a night in one of Aberdeen's seamier holes, check out this post over at The Misssy M Misssives. Or watch the video below. (Ignore the plummy-voiced twat from Front magazine who speaks at the start).

The Montrose Sessions

Today I'll be joining two of my mates under the pretence of a band practice.

Thankfully the others have a fair bit of talent between them, which means that they can just tell me what to do.

Our sessions rarely produce anything worthy of note, but it's not entirely about the music - it's just a way of relaxing and excusing spending a day drinking beer, eating pizza and playing PlayStation games.

Anyway, just to prove that we DO occasionally produce something that borders on worthwhile, here's one we prepared earlier. It's pretty rough, as befits a recording made by three partially drunk guys on a four track with only a drum machine for company. For anyone who cares, I'm on bass.

Eight Things About Me

As seen over at Blog d'Elisson and at Blissful Bedlam - Eight Random Facts About Me.

The useless knowledge is listed below, but first we'd better keep things proper by explaining the rools:

Write a post enumerating eight facts/habits about yourself. Include the rules at the beginning of the post.

Tag eight people, posting their names and links to their sites. (I'm not going to do that - if anyone wants to play, feel free. If you don't, don't.)

Leave comments at the sites you’ve tagged, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

So here we go - eight things you didn't need (or want) to know about me:

1. I've never had an operation under general anaesthetic. In fact, I can count my hospital visits on the fingers of one hand: the first was to get a piece of grit removed from my eye as a teenager, the second was to see how badly I'd damaged my ankle playing football (it turned out to be a strained ligament), the third was to see whether I'd broken my nose playing football (notice a theme here? I hadn't, just burst it open quite spectacularly), the fourth was to see if I'd broken my ribs playing football (I hadn't, they were just bruised) and the fifth was when I had my toenail removed by a doctor who gave me a single local anaesthetic injection. Please note that I was touching wood and crossing my fingers whilst I wrote that answer.

2. The longest I've lived in one house is seven years, when my parents and I (and for three of those years Baby Brother) lived in a small cottage in the countryside near Montrose. I took a drive down there on the way home from work a couple of weeks ago and it hasn't changed at all in the intervening 20 years.

3. The most keepie-uppies I have ever done with a football without it bouncing on the ground is 120. At the end of the session, my legs were exhausted and I'd moved about 10 metres in the time it took, which was probably about five minutes. So I can't begin to fathom how Martinho Eduardo Orige managed to keep a ball in the air for 19-and-a-half hours.

4. I've visited seven of the eight Australian States and Territories, including the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. Mrs Wife (then known as Miss Girlfriend) and I didn't make it to the Northern Territory because of an unfortunate incident with an exploding car engine that cost us $2,500 to fix.

5. I can lick my nose and wiggle my ears. But not at the same time.

6. Whilst at university I worked as a security guard, a kitchen porter and as a journalist for a Premier League football team.

7. My favourite alcoholic drink is Cointreau, lime and lemonade. Which is probably the least masculine drink that one can order at any bar in Scotland.

8. I'm allergic to cats and have a phobia of birds. Apart from that, I like animals.

Of Bowling, BBQs and Bombs

The weekend - where to begin?

As I explained previously, on Friday the company we work for paid for all employees in its Aberdeen office to spend the afternoon playing Pirate Island Adventure Golf, spinning about the on the dodgems, eating too much, playing pool and bowling.

Four minutes on the dodgems wasn't enough to demonstrate my Lewis Hamilton-esque driving, my golf was inhibited by poor approach work (though my putting was immense) and my pool playing was a bit rusty. I did finish a creditable joint third in the bowling though, missing out on the five pound prize after a play-off decided by means of one game of pool. (I came from seven balls down to lose it on the black - so close.)

And then Mrs Wife and I rose on Saturday morning to find Montrose basking in glorious sunshine. In fact, had we started our housewarming barbecue at 9.30am, the weather would have been perfect. But by 1.30pm, clouds were scattering across the sky, and by 3pm drops of rain could be felt cooling my sunburt neck. And by 6.30pm we had a full-on Montrose monsoon. But by then most people were fed and, if not drunk, merry enough not to care that they were crammed into Dungroanin' like giant sardines in a standard-sized phone box.

It was whilst we were partying indoors that news came in of the terrorist attack at Glasgow Airport. For so long, terrorism in the UK, whether that perpetrated by the IRA or by Islamic extremists, has focussed on London. But to find out that this unholy war has moved north of the border was a shock.

I would imagine that every single person in the room when the news came through has been to Glasgow Airport at some point in their lives, whether as a passenger or there to collect a relative. To see mobile phone video footage of the burning jeep at the airport brought home the fact that this was happening just over 100 miles from my front door, almost live as we saw it.

Apparently this is the first bombing in Scotland since the Luftwaffe crossed the English Channel. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But if we thought that those who claim to be acting in Allah's name were going to concentrate their efforts on New York, Washington and London, we were obviously wrong.

Should we be afraid? No, we should be angry. We can't live in a state of fear - for then these ideological cretins, who would kill anyone unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, would have won.

It remains the case that you're far more likely to die in a car accident or from a heart attack than as a result of a terrorist attack. And our emergency services and military are amongst the best in the world - Glasgow airport was fully functional less than a day after the failed attack.

The greatest show of strength we can put on is to continue life as normal, to show that no matter what evil these people can summon, we will always overcome.

Socks Appeal

Dublin is a strange city. The city centre, with its Georgian townhouses and the landscaped beauty of St Stephen's Green, seems fairly affluent, albeit not in an overly ostentatious way. But the bus ride into the city from the airport takes you through suburbs as run down as any I've seen in western Europe. I suppose that all the EU money that the Republic of Ireland has pulled in over the past decade or so only stretches so far.

Mrs Wife and I were in Dublin this weekend to attend a party celebrating the marriage of a good friend of mine from my university days. Having decided to wed on a beach in Thailand, they then invited their family and friends to a low-key soiree in Dublin.

It was the third time I'd visited the Irish capital - the first was with the friend whose wedding party we were attending, way back in the days before I knew Mrs Wife and he knew his new bride. Six of us spent a week touring Ireland, a tour which involved spending more time in licensed premises than in tourist attractions.

My second visit was in 2003, when I took the then Miss Girlfriend to Dublin to see Justin Timberlake touring his debut album. At some point in the future, I may write about that trip, but for now, I will concentrate on this weekend.

Although I'd visited Dublin twice previously, this was the first time I'd flown into its airport, having arrived by train from Belfast on my previous trips. This trip was also different in that we knew that our sight-seeing time was to be limited, as we were partying on both the Saturday night and the Sunday night, the main event taking place on the Sunday.

When we were first invited to the party, I tried to book a hotel as close to the venue as possible. Mrs Wife and I have decided that, on reflection, selecting a hotel that "boasts" a nightclub which remains open until 3am was probably not a great idea. It would seem that the hotel in question makes most of its money from the nigthclub. Our room was easily the worst we have stayed in whilst travelling in Europe, and was worse than most of those we endured during three months in South East Asia.

Two enjoyable nights on the town aside, and discounting the grottiness of our room, the defining factor of our trip was my wardrobe. Deciding to exude a little Scottish class, I took my kilt across the Irish Sea. As I was awaiting our bags at the carousel in Dublin airport, it suddenly dawned on me that I had neglected to pack a shirt to go with the kilt. Whilst an inconvenience, this wasn't an insurmountable problem - I would simply buy a plain white shirt, which would be a passable replacement for the real thing.

Having found a suitable stand-in shirt, I was hanging up my outfit in the hotel and checking that I had all of the other constituent parts of the kilt. Sporran - check. Shoes - check. Bow tie - check. Socks. Socks. Socks? SOCKS?

Damn. I'd forgotten the socks. This may not sound like a big deal - socks are socks. Except when the outfit in question is a kilt. Because the kilt extends to knee length, and the shoes lace up around the calf and shin, the socks are vital to the overall look.

Mrs Wife was, of course, suitably impressed with this revelation. As Dublin's shops had closed for the evening, it meant that Sunday, the day of the party, was spent roaming the city's streets in search of socks for an outfit from a foreign country.

We tried many different outlets, including one chain that rents kilts out, but in vain - Dublin is not the best place in the world to buy kilt socks. Finally, with our hangovers reaching the "fatally dehydrated" stage, our patience wearing thin and our feet aching, we were directed to a store called House of Ireland.

They didn't stock kilt socks. But they did have thick, knee-length, woollen socks, which would stand as passable replacements for one evening. I almost baulked at the pricetag - ELEVEN POUNDS for a pair of socks (I am a man who normally buys underwear in packs of three and always for less than five pounds - eleven pounds for a pair of socks is a bit steep).

And the moral of the tale? Listen to your mother's advice - ALWAYS pack clean underwear.

(As a post script to this strangely lengthy tale of socks, most of the other guests at the party were wearing jeans and casual shirts. But hey, a man in a kilt in a roomful of Irish people wearing jeans is ALWAYS going to stand out.)

Foaming At The Mouth

Many aspects of my childhood years are gone forever - cartoons I enjoyed as a boy have long since been cancelled, the computer systems I grew up playing have long been rendered obselete and friends with whom I enjoyed countless games of football, hide and seek and manhunt have grown up and we've lost touch.

Food and drinks that I gorged on to satisfy my healthy childhood appetite have also changed, most of them not for the better. Curly Wurlys, once a half-hour of solid chewing on a slab of toffee half an inch think, are now thin, chocolate-coated slivers of caramel providing a far smaller task to finish. King Size Mars Bars were, to my recollection, once the equivalent of one-and-a-half regular Mars Bars, not slightly bigger, as they are today.

But one hallowed foodstuff from my formative years has gone forever. Creamola Foam, a soft drink made by mixing a flavoured powder with water, has long since disappeared from our shelves.

In Scotland, we revel in our unhealthy diet. If something can be consumed, it must have sugar added or be deep-fried. Creamola Foam, I am sure, can't have been healthy. It tasted unnaturally sweet and came in a variety of lurid colours.

Although I did enjoy partaking of a glass of Creamola Foam as a child, my fondest memories of it are from my teenage years, when a group of us found that it made the ideal mixer for vodka. It was common for us to mix a litre of vodka and a whole tub of Creamola Foam (which made around four pints of the soft drink) in a basin. Even with so much vodka swilling around this mix, no taste of alcohol could be discerned, making it the ideal concoction for teenage drinkers finding their feet in the world of illicit activities.

But alas it is no more. Which is why some of my nostalgic countrymen have begun a campaign to bring back Creamola Foam.

Gentlemen, whoever you are, I wish you every success. We may be living in a world at war, where children die every day due to poverty and where the very future of our planet is questionable. But I, for one, sincerely hope that your quest to bring back this vivid brew is a success.