Aberdeen

Not the Charles Dickens book but the state of Aberdeen, the (self-proclaimed?) oil capital of Europe.. The biggest news, from a personal perspective this week, was probably the additional job cuts announced by the likes of BP and ConocoPhillips. All that puts into context a chance conversation with the guy behind the till at the corner shop where I grab the odd packet of biscuit or pint of milk when required. It turns out that he is a Reservoir Engineer, out of work for the last 10 months. ...

#WheresTheHoustonJobWhenYouNeedIt

There are only so many taxi rides that you can take before you begin to pick up on the subtleties of maintaining inane conversations. And if your default mode of transport is a taxi, you have no choice but to cultivate the art, unless awkward silence is your forte. Here then in no specific order are the non threatening things that keep coming up for me in my journeys in the Aberdeen area. ...

It is no real surprise that I wake up on Saturday morning with an overwhelming urge to leave my house and let the cold, crisp air clear my head; a succession of events having left me feeling emotionally over extended as though more activity had been packed into the preceding two week period than the entirety of the year before that. My friends O and Alf must bear some of the responsibility for catalyzing those events, as does a not quite out-of-the-blue response to an application I had, almost as a matter of last resort, tossed out three months before. A brown roll and an egg chased down with a cup of strong black coffee and a quick Google search later, I am awake enough to grab my water proof jacket and head out into the streets with the Torry Battery as my destination. ...