MONDAY

THERE'S this giant steel bird with incredibly beady eyes, staring down at me in a most threatening manner. Either I'm having those hallucinations again, or it's the Famous Grouse Experience, right next to the Glenturret Distillery, not far from the charity shop capital of Scotland, Good Crieff.

Here we are, Ken, Rob and myself, plus a TV crew, about to complete our crazed motorcycle trip around Scotland's most northerly, southerly, easterly and westerly distilleries, collecting samples of malt whisky in order to create the ultimate blend. The Edrington Group's soon-to-retire master blender, the legendary John Ramsay, below, is in attendance to carry out this marriage of seeming inconvenience, with the addition of some of Glenturret's own cratur, seeing as this tiny distillery sits almost at Scotland's centre.

The combination of Highland Park, Bladnoch, Glen Garioch, Glenturret and western-most Islay newcomer Kilchoman, is stunning, the genius of John's assessment of proportions quite humbling. And so we repair to nearby Muthill.

Only it's not Muthill, it's Myoot'll. Home to the Barley Bree, one of Scotland's largely undiscovered culinary gems, where Fabrice Bouteloup, once of Atrium in Edinburgh, produces exquisite food while the lorries thunder by on the main Stirling road. If it wasn't for the busy thoroughfare that slices through it, Muthill would be even more of the delight it undoubtedly is, what with its 1000-year-old church and the local crew of rockn'roll miscreants, the Hugh Trowsers Band. One of whom I spot wandering doon a dunny, dressed as a hippy.

TUESDAY

LET'S have a general election! Well, they have to say that, don't they? Though you can see the spectre of terror in Conservative eyes at the very thought that they might actually have to try and run the collapsing country. Great to see Old Cameronian Boris Bunter negotiating with the unions by calling them "demented". Splendid!

The Gordonians, meanwhile, seem to have settled the hash of Labour's awkward squad, probably by pointing out that any change of leadership would necessitate a general election in which the people's party would be well and truly mollicated into a state of abject mollication. Here in Upper Caledonia, the Donald-Trumpettes-and-Sort-of-Nationalist-Party have been doing that bitchy, twitchy, snarling-and-grinning thing, while the Libocrat lairds snuffle and paw the ground like hobbled horses. Down in London, eggs are being chucked at the BNP, who seem to be relishing the yolk being on them. My mind wanders in the direction of Woody Allen as Isaac Davis in Manhattan. He suggests, at a party, that a planned Nazi march in New Jersey should be met with bricks and baseball bats, to "really explain things to them". Another guest suggests that a satirical piece about the march in The New York Times is "devastating". Isaac replies: "A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point." I fear that some of Nick Griffin's lumpen bodyguards may be immune to such blandishments.

WEDNESDAY

GOODNESS, this new super-shuffled Cabinet, gathered for televisual purposes, looks like a bunch of excited prefects, promoted to their very own common room for the first time. They've probably got a kettle and coffee mugs specially marked with indelible pen. How will it be when Sir Alan Sugar (known to friends as Mopsy, apparently), promoted to Lord Amstrad of Stamford Hill, takes up his offered post as governmental "consultant"? "Oy, Mandelson! There's no room for you in my organisation. Regrettably, you're fired. Again."

I'm back in Shetland, trundling off the ferry on my venerable Triumph Trophy, warily avoiding the camper vans and motorhomes that arrive in the islands at this time of year, their venerable drivers mowing down as many sheep as possible and blocking the entrance to the best fish and chip shop in the world, not to mention the most northerly, Frankie's in Brae. We eat there at least four or five times a week. Frankie's is the only catering establishment I know that is named after the owners' late dog. Mind you, it was a very nice dog. Whether or not a chipper is a fitting tribute I couldn't say.

THURSDAY

MORE Gordons in trouble. Ramsay, this time, in Australia, apologising for being offensive to a TV presenter. He's been condemned by the prime minister of Oz, who appears to have little better to do with his time than watch live cookery demonstrations. Mind you, the future for TV presenters may be in live shows, rather than actual broadcasting, as the money there appears to be drying up fast. It seems the BBC called its top presenters in for what they thought would be a glass of Don Cortez and some bits of cheese with pineapple chunks on cocktail sticks, but turned out to be an announcement that everyone at the Beeb earning more than 100 grand a year would be taking a 25% cut in salary. Jonathan Ross, above, wasn't present.

And neither was I, in case you were wondering, seeing as I don't earn anything even close to that. But one's heart does go out to the Clarksons and Hammonds of this world, faced with cutting back on their Lamborghinis and Bentleys, their hideaway palazzos in Tuscany, their cellars full of vintage Buckfast. How will they manage?

Back in the Greater Zetlandics, Lazarus the cockerel is still with us. Savaged affectionately by a visiting Derry dog called Cuillin, I put the hen out of its misery by wringing its neck (go on, call the SPCA, take me to court, why don't you?). Except I didn't. Six days later (some timing error, I think) it was back from its final resting place (the compost heap), somewhat more swan-like than of yore, but flourishing. I must take lessons on neck-wringing from someone who knows about such things.

FRIDAY

ARCHITECTS are having a tough time of it, what with people not building buildings, and the buildings that have been built being unbuilt. So they've set up a support group, called the Rubble Club, aimed at providing architects with supportive, designer-clad shoulders on which to weep when their edifices get demolished.

Among members are Reiach and Hall, designers of that soaring canopy over the Forth Road Bridge toll booths, above. It was demolished less than a year after completion, when the tolls were scrapped. Remember? No? Oh well.

Neil Gillespie of Reiach and Hall, on the Rubble Club website, said he had been, well, disappointed: "The canopy took the form of a distorted crystal inclined to the rail bridge with more than a nod to the north. It sadly became a very early and easy casualty of politics through tolls being scrapped by a new SNP administration.

"We are pretty sanguine about what we do as architects - buildings are there to be useful. An unimaginative government felt it was useful to them at that moment that the canopy vanished." Och, Neil, wipe the tears from off your linen suit and take comfort in the fact you don't live in the Red Road Flats.

SATURDAY

LIFEBOAT Day in Lerwick. Money must be raised! Stalls must be manned! As my friend Dave Hammond, keen yachtsperson, is wont to say: "I don't see a contribution to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution as charity. It's insurance." So wife and daughter will just have to go and woman a stall or two, while I watch the coastguard helicopter circling overhead, and look for reviews of my new book.

You may count this as shameless plugging, but I'm not going to mention it by name, or its publisher. I will simply point to a weird anomaly which appears to hit new books that are sold on the web. If, a week before publication, you went to the Amazon page for my book (oh, if you insist, it's called Serpentine), you would have found, in addition to the official note that said masterpiece was not yet available, the odd assertion that three used copies were for sale from "Amazon Associates". A few clicks revealed that these were "used-like new" books being sold by secondhand bookdealers. Before publication.

Now, how had they obtained them? Surely these couldn't be review copies, flogged to dealers by hard-up hacks? Never!

Just so long as they read and reviewed them first. Positively ...

***

IN

Outlandish Glasgow band The Trembling Bells. Eggs as a form of a political protest. What sort of eggs were thrown at Nick Griffin? Free range? What a waste, if that's the case. Should the chucking of eggs become an everyday event, then surely there's only one type that ought to be deployed: Duck!

OUT

The English language. Finished, finished utterly, as its "millionth word" is added, according to the Global Language Monitor. "Web.2.0" is not a word. Nor is it new. Or even current.

SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT

The Cabinet. Shuffled, reshuffled, but from a rapidly diminishing deck. Call Sir Alan! You're Hired! But wait a minute: Donald Trump, right, has Hebridean blood ...

and hair.