What are you thinking right now?

[Caspin]

Also Cumbria - so many empty holiday homes there too. Some of the villages look like film sets of abandoned places, with their shabby cottages and unkempt gardens that only get spruced up when the owner turns up for two weeks in August or whatever. We did a survey of them for geography at school and it was the most depressing field trip I attended! It's funny you mention firebombing them in Scotland. My landlord is Scottish and very strongly nationalistic and once talked to me about how infuriating he found it that rich people bought multiple houses up there and priced local people out of the market. He got so riled up I thought he was going to grab a pitchfork and march up there to reclaim the properties. I don't know whether he thinks he's retaliating by buying all these flats in London, but I guess at least they are always occupied.

I will shut up about this now.

[Minty]

Yeah, it's funny how nationalistic Scots get when they're no longer living there.

I can understand to a certain extent the moans about "white settlers" - Home Counties more money than braincells types who decide to retire early & move "up north" because it's far cheaper or to property speculate, & who do everything possible to upset the locals. Or New Age hippy types trying to turn another place into another Findhorn (same as the SW gets on everywhere that intersects a ley line!)

But the flip side is I cannot remember the moans ever being about anyone OTHER than English incomers. You get rich Germans buying up holiday homes (or whole islands) & acting like the worst WW2 stereotypes, but not a word said. The part I cannot abide about Scottish nationalism is how much of it begins & ends with blaming England & the English for everything - same crap as over in Ireland, & that most of the worst horrors were carried out by fellow Scots is glossed over.

It was Scottish landowners who presided over the Clearences (Highland and Lowland), Scottish troops which imposed it (mainly the Black Watch), & Scottish newspapers with Scottish journalists (The Herald & The Scotsman) who spoke in favour of the removal of "an inferior race" for sheep - virtually the only mainstream newspaper journalist voice condemning it was a certain Karl Marx in London (ironically one of his major grievances was the way "the opium of the masses" were forced to sell church lands for a fraction of their worth to the treacherous clan chiefs who betrayed their own kin because without their mass-deported congregations they were white elephants).

I used to annoy some of the most rabid ones at uni by asking them if they intended to firebomb The Broons' Butt And Ben - that one always made me laugh. A Scots family living in a rented tenement, but who owned a Highland holiday home! Only in the world of DC Thompson would that make any sense.

[Caspin]

There were quite a few like that at uni with me as well. Whenever they'd go off on some anti-English rant I'd let them run on for a while and then ask if they felt that way about me. They'd look aghast and fall over themselves in their efforts to assure me that this was not the case, usually resulting in me being bought more drinks per night than I could reasonably be expected to put away in a month, even in student days. I guess Scots show their love for you by number of drams.

I find that most irrational prejudices fall away when you make people confront them with examples close to home. I had a family member who was expressing a lot of homophobic views. I asked if she applied these to person x,y,z, naming three friends of mine that she didn't previously know are gay. As soon as she realised that she was saying cruel things about people she had met and liked, she changed her tune.

Right now I am thinking that the England team are going to melt in Brazil and might need to be carried around the pitch in buckets. I am watching them play against Peru with my brother. Rooney just went off and he looked completely trashed. It'll be a bit hotter in Brazil, boys! Better get acclimatised.

[Caspin]

Waaaaaaaargh! Draaaaaagon attack!

[Minty]

I'm thinking "that didn't take long, did it?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-ed...e-27706202

[Caspin]

Oh dear. She was unhurt, though, by the sounds of it. Bit of a non-story in a way, like the person who rang me a while back to advise that they wouldn't be late.....

[Caspin]

I am thinking 'Breaking Bad' versus 'Game of Thrones' - who wins? Tricky tricky tricky.

Tricky!

[Ollie]

I am thinking, I have an idea of how I want Hope to end. It won't happen too soon, and particularly since I'm going quite slow at producing updates at the moment, but I want it to have a definite ending and hopefully it'll be a good one, so I can focus on my work in progress world, which I haven't done much with in the past month TBH.

[Caspin]

I hope you do find time to finish Hope, Ollie. I've enjoyed reading that story. I remember when you made a video of the TV news announcing the car crash - I thought that was terrific!

[Caspin]

I am thinking that yesterday was my two-year anniversary of joining Sims Forums. I should have made a cake or something. Thank you for putting up with me jabbering away for all this time.