WHEN Britannia ruled the waves, everything you needed to transport you from cradle to grave was made in these isles.

No more. According to Greencore - "Britain's largest sandwich-maker" - we can't even put two slices of Hovis together. Greencore is investing £30 million in a plant in Northampton to make sarnies and has indicated that the locals are not interested in the job. It has decided therefore to recruit 250 people from Hungary where, it seems, the art of sandwich-making is taken seriously.

Needless to say, these sad tidings were met with dismay, not least in Northampton, which hitherto was best known for shoe-making. A spokesperson for Greencore said that sandwich-making was "not always the kind of work" people wanted to do.

While I digested that thought I caught an episode of The Apprentice in which the brainless contestants were required to make sandwiches as part of packed lunch. To say it made painful viewing would be to underestimate the effect it had on my blood pressure. I would not have fed those sandwiches to my pet hog, Farage.

I am surprised, however, that neither Posh Dave nor Eddie Moribund has seen fit to comment on this parlous state of affairs. At the very least they could have laid the blame fairly, squarely and predictably at the door of the nation's schools and decreed that in future there will be an A-level in sandwich-making, without which qualification entry to higher education will be a no-no.

TUESDAY

REMEMBER the referendum, when lies, damned lies and statistics were thrown at Yes folk by naysayers, such as Jimmy "The Eggman" Murphy and Ally Dahling? They and their Dodo chums were adamant that if we voted for independence we could say cheerio to naval contracts. Also, we were told that oil was about to run out and that to base our wellbeing on it was barmy. And lo! What have we here? Less than a month ago a new oil field was discovered east of Aberdeen. Why that was not announced before September 18 one can only wonder.

Meanwhile, we're now told that promises to build "the new generation of warships" in Scotia were about as sincere as the signatories to Irn Broon's "vow" on more powers for Holyrood.

Asked about the ships' affordability, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, the First Sea Lord, said that no decision has been taken about where the contract will be placed but he did say it may not be in these shores. They must think we came up the Clyde on the HMS Bananaboat.

WEDNESDAY

HOW did Embra become a "City of Literature"? I ask because the winner of this year's Saltire Society book award is not a novel or a collection of poems, or even a travelogue or a biography, but The Scottish Town In The Age Of Enlightenment 1740-1820.

In saying such, I do not mean to do down that tome's authors, Bob Harris and my old, esteemed friend, Charles McKean, who died last year.

I dare say their achievement is "magisterial". Its success, however, highlights the dire state of this nation's letters when two academics can triumph over an army of grant-aided, state-cosseted, over-praised "creative" writers.

THURSDAY

THE National Library of Scotia has dubbed this "RLS Day" because it's you-know-who's birthday. Had he not been tubercular, he would have been 164 years old, which would have made him the world's oldest man by a long chalk.

In its eagerness to celebrate RLS, the NLS is guilty of serious neglect.

Today I am celebrating my 40th birthday, which I have done for more years than I can remember.

It is incredible how, on a daily diet of steak pie and chips washed down by six pints of porter, one can remain - pace His Bobness - forever young.

T'other day a friend asked when I might retire. I told him that I retire every night before the watershed, which ensures I wake up ready to embrace whatever is thrown at me.

The look he threw me suggested that a pinch of salt might not go amiss.

BY the spookiest of coincidences I have been re-reading Kidnapped, which never palls. Thereafter I shall re-read Catriona, which may be the best sequel ever written.

Discuss, as academics are wont chunter.

In it, the further adventures of David Balfour are "set forth", including, RLS tells us, "his misfortunes anent the Appin murder".

How one's heart leapt at the sight of that "anent". If it's good enough for Tusitala then surely it ought to be good enough for the Kirk!

RLS is hereby admitted to the Anent Preservation Society (Posthumous Corps).

WHY in the name o' the wee man do our novelists bother? By which I mean write about sex. Dickens didn't, nor did Jane Austen or Wally Scott, and it didn't seem to do them much harm, did it?

The shortlist has just been announced for the prestigious Bad Sex Awards and features the most recent Man Booker winner Richard Flanagan ("He kissed the slight, rose-coloured trench that remained from her knicker elastic" - eneuch!), Kirsty "Renaissance Woman" Wark ("it was as if a dam within me had burst" - which one? The Hoover or the Aswan?) and my old chum Ben Okri ("When his hand brushed her nipple it tripped a switch and she came alight" - he must have been an electrician!). Meanwhile, Haruki Murakami, who is adored by groovy dunderheids, describes the nether regions of two young women with whom his hero is having hochmagandy "as wet as a rain forest", which takes hyperbole to a dizzy level.

Readers of this throbbing organ are doubtless aware that the Bad Sex Awards were the inspiration of my long-gone, dyspeptic amigo Auberon Waugh, fruit of the loins of the even more dyspeptic Evelyn. It may yet prove to be his claim on posterity. For those of us of who believe that ridicule is the last weapon civilisation has against the forces of barbarism and numptyism, it is no mean legacy.