A lot of you won’t be old enough to have heard of Desperate Dan, but I am. He’s a main character in the Dandy comic, and has been since 1937. He’s also one of the landmarks in Dundee, where I spent the weekend. There’s a whacking statue of him in the middle of town, with a smaller Minnie The Minx in the background.

I’ve been to Dundee a couple of time, staying with Adam and Loz who I met for dinner again this time. For a change, though, I stayed with the lovely Leah who I met in Singapore many months ago. This is the first time I’ve actually gone through the town itself as on the other occasions I was visiting for work, so it was just a chance to catch up with my friends over a KFC that my employers paid for. It was cool to actually see the place and Leah was great company.

On the Friday night, we met Adam and Lorraine for dinner in Bar Rio. Nice place, very varied menu, superb food. The only hard bit was getting anyone to take our money at the end! I think we could have snuck out without paying. But everyone else was too honest.

Saturday evening was spent indulging in a great Scottish tradition – drinking heavily. We started in one bar which was showing the rugby World Cup final. I think myself and four girls behind me from Lancashire were the only ones supporting England (though in honesty I still wasn’t that bothered with it being egg-chasing). The rest of the bar were cheering the (victorious) Springboks. Hey ho.

A good night was had as we moved across a couple of bars. My thanks to all of Leah’s generous friends who kept me well stocked on Brown Ale!

On Sunday, we loafed (OK, we slept in to avoid being hung over) and I headed down to my folks’ again for a superb Sunday roast. Oh, how I’ve missed that! Again, I buried myself in paperwork, emails, web updates and so on. Through Monday and Tuesday I managed to shred around 18 months of bank statements, junk mail and the like. It filled a whole bin sack.

Monday was much of the same – trying to organise things, and getting an invitation to another job interview in Manchester on Wednesday. I also turned down another interview for an admin position (all in France) as my French wouldn’t have been good enough. In the evening I popped back up to Dundee – originally to watch the footie, but as it was on Setanta I couldn’t watch it at Adam’s (he has Sky) so I went over to Leah’s and we watched Ratatouille instead. While munching on proper chip shop chips and battered sausage. Mmmmm…

And off up to Scotland for a couple of weeks. Rather than heading directly to see my parents, I drove up the M74 to Glasgow to see my little cousin who I’ve missed a lot. I’ve actually missed around a quarter of her life during my travels as she’s only just over six years old. Her mum also raised almost £500 for my charity walk for which I’m incredibly grateful.

My cousin’s changed a lot in 19 months, which is to be expected at her age! She’s at the “losing teeth” stage as well as the “cheeky” stage. This doesn’t stop her being at the “gorgeous, endearing and the most wonderful kid in the entire world” stage as well.

So, a couple of days here and then up to the folks’. Then Dundee. Then back to England!

Another short visit, this time to see Chris and Ali near Aintree. Since I left, they’ve inherited a beautiful laborador called Ashley who’s about as soft and daft as his breed are allowed to be. As ever with C&A, this was a complete chill-out of a visit.

Beer drunk, pie and chips eaten (yum), Top Gear watched (yay!) and bed crashed in.