Brae. A gay woman's tale!

It is not often I take an interest in politics .. apart from to “tut” now and again at some of the weird and wonderful things that come out of both the Scottish and UK Government’s bowels.

However, sometimes I do take a strong opinion on things .. and today is one of them.

For those of you who do not know him, Brian Souter (owner of Stagecoach) claims to be a religious man, but again, one of those bigots who hides behind religion in order to justify his hatred.

He donated a million pounds to the campaign to keep clause 28 .. You can read about him on Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Souter

Mr Souter has been awarded a knighthood and there is a campaign to have this revoked.

It is free to sign and you can sign it here http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notosoutersknighthood/

Is it right that such a bigot can be rewarded just because he has money and gives money to the SNP?

There is something very wrong with our country if this is the case.

He is simply an evil man who uses religion to justify his bigoted views.  Its about time decent people stood up to people like him.

Those of you that know me, know that I am a keen recycler .. and I’m also a Fifer, reknowned for our short arms and long pockets!

I love Freegle .. I give stuff away, I’ve picked up some lovely plants for my garden and have watched in wonderment as people have given away amazing stuff .. including a 17 ft boat!

My wee cottage is still in need of a little TLC, and because I am thinking of having either a real fire or log burner installed I thought I would do something about the broken tiles on my fire hearth.

I asked on Freegle today if anyone had double edged rounded tiles from an old fireplace they wanted to get rid off.  Within 2 minutes of posting my message I had an email back from a lovely chap saying he was renovating his house and I was welcome to any of the old tiles that I wanted.

I emailed him back with my number and he rang to discuss directions.  We arranged for me to pop over this evening after work to pick them up.

Off I trotted (all dressed up with open toe sandals on because we had a photo taken for a local newspaper today) to his house this evening, driving through a thunderstorm and floods to get there.

He met me at the door, all smiley and nice and welcomed me in .. the house was in a bit of a state, but when you are renovating and pulling fireplaces out it is bound to be.. right … WRONG!!

The fireplace was still in one piece and he handed me a hammer and wall scraper (not even a proper thing to remove tiles with!) and stood there yapping to me about how his wife had run off with a 21 year old so he had decided to pull the house to bits to get the valuation lowered! … it then dawned on me that he wasn’t really renovating he was just wrecking the place.

The leather sofa’s had also been spray painted … the electricity wires hanging out the wall and the doors hanging off the wall…

There is me .. sandals, work clothes, chipping away at tiles trying to make small talk and all the time just wanting to get out of that place.  In the end I managed to smash about 4 tiles and announced (probably much too cheerfully) ..” oh these are great .. this will do me”.

I left got in my car and had to laugh at my situation .. it never dawned on me to ask if the tiles were still stuck to the fireplace ..

I learned a lesson ..   even if it did freak me out a bit!

Oh … and the broken bits of tiles … they are in the bin!

The last week or so have been a bit of an up and down time for me.. for various reasons that I do not really want to go into in any depth but Ive gone from being extremely happy to being desperately sad and then through friendships (old and new) that I have made,  back to being in a place that feels positive and even a little exciting!

Sometimes things do not turn out as you hope in life, that, as they say “is life” and sometimes it gives you a hard little nip on the bum.   How we choose to deal with this is all about attitude.  I have learned over the many up and downs in my life that nothing, no matter how bad, or how good it feels, will ever stay that way.  Things change, we change, life moves on.

What we are left with are memories that we can keep with us, take with us and learn from. These memories, good or bad do shape our future and hopefully we will remember them from time to time.

I know I will.