Kite Flying and the Water of Life

Two completely unrelated topics in the post title.


I've had a cold this past week, and when it was in it's filled-sinus stage I was treating it with whiskey (and bed rest, I should add - I read 4 novels in 3 days). I've had people back in Canada recommend the spirit for head colds to me, but I never tried it back then. At some point in my sojourn in Scotland I was given whiskey, in the form of a hot toddy, when sick and it is rather miraculous stuff. Truly the "water of life" as its Gaelic name indicates. Honestly, try the stuff - whiskey, hot water, and sugar or honey if you don't like the taste of whiskey.


Unfortunately, I'm now at the irritating cough stage of the cold, which whiskey doesn't really seem to help with.

The weather's been holding up nicely - it's a bit cool due to the breeze at times, but it's still largely sunny, and not raining anyway. When it was warm enough (i.e. out of the wind), I've done some of my convalescent reading in the sun. Inverness is a really pretty town on a sunny day - walking down the High Street you see all the old buildings, and then the river and hills glimpsed in between them. Along the river loads of people are out for walks with their kids or their dogs. I think it's really nice that Inverness has a clean river, so that animals like ducks are in it, people can let their dogs swim in it, and people fish in it


Taking advantage of the sunny weather, I went kite flying with Sam out at Findhorn on Saturday afternoon. He bought a kite that has two lines on it, which means you can steer it, so it was unlike any kite flying that I've done before that was basically just holding on to a string. I crashed it a few times when trying to make it dive, and occasionally got it twisted up from loops and couldn't remember which way to make the kite loop to untwist it, but over the course of the afternoon I can say that my flying improved and it was lots of fun. And with a kite that you can steer, you can use it to chase people who annoy you, although I didn't put it to that use.