Strange Names Scotland is full of strange placenames due to the fact that a lot of places were named in languages no longer used.

Fife in particular is fantastic for the amount of Gaelic, Pictish, Norse and English placenames that seem to be intermingled at random.

Check out http://www.fife.50megs.com/scottish-placenames-fife-placenames.htm for a full list but four examples pretty close to each other are:

NEWBURGH : 'new village' ; neowe (old English) new; burh (Old English) village, hamlet.
LOMOND : Beacon from an old Brythonic Gaelic source (laomuinn) *note* i.e. Pictish
AUCHTERMUCHTY: 'upland for swine'; uachdar (Gaelic) upland; muc (Gaelic) swine.
WORMIT : 'the serpent' ; worm (Norse) serpent


The reason for this writing about this?
Well, due to roadworks on the Forth Road Bridge (again!) I took a detour through Kincardine to Kinross then Glenrothes on my way to Leven. I'd never actually driven that route before and the placenames were mental.

In a 10 mile strech you had signs for
Crook of Devon
Yett's o'muckhart
Pool o'muckhart
Drum
Saline (hometown of "Our Man in Shanghai")
Rumbling Bridge
Dollar
Strathmiglo
Auchtermuchty

It just stuck me at the time how strange the names were and how they didn't convey much underlying meaning.

Except "Rumbling Bridge" obviously, I had a good idea what to expect there...  ¶ 1:34 PM 2 comments

  Welcome Home Gran My wee Gran's been in hospital for the past few months so it's a relief to finally get her home on Monday. I went to visit last night and it was great to see her holding court in her usual chair.

The support given by the nurses and staff of the hospital she was in was tremendous and it was humbling to see them caring for the patients and to see the improvements made by my Gran and others. It was also sad that a lot of the patients didn't seem to have a lot of visitors, although just a couple of minutes chat really helped cheer them up.

Since she had a few pints of blood at one point, I'm going to give a couple of pints to make sure that we're not in debt to the blood bank.

Don't want them sending the vampire baliffs in...  ¶ 12:48 PM 0 comments

  England game boring Ho hum, are England the new Germany?
Clinically efficient and dull dull dull.  ¶ 4:25 PM 2 comments

  World Cup Nearly Here The hype for the World Cup is almost at fever-pitch, it feels a bit like the week before Christmas did when I was a kid.

The Fifa computers have done their bit and the group stages appear to be a nice wee starter to the main event of the knockout rounds, there doesn't seem to be a "group of death" but maybe this is because the competition has been expanded to 32 teams.

The big question causing controversy up here is "Should Scottish people support England in the World Cup?" See here, here, here and elsewhere over the next few weeks.

The easy answer is, in my very humble opinion, "No". Neutrality and degrees of indifference are ok but outright support for them?? seems a bit weird to me unless you have family/friends who are English.

My own attitute is initial disinterest building to gradual alarm the further they progress.
I just don't want to be reminded about it every five minutes if they ever did win it.

So who will I support since fair Caledonia didn't qualify (Cheers Berti ya prick)?

Trinidad and Tobago:
Obviously the first choice as they have loads of Scottish-based players (including a striker called Jason Scotland) and I picked them in the sweepstake at work. Plus I saw Marvellous Marvin Andrews playing for Raith Rovers against East Fife at Bayview many moons ago.

Ukraine:
Bit of a dark horse but I think Shevchenko is a fantastic player - I saw him play in the flesh when Euan and I took in an AC Milan game at the San Siro and he was fantastic.

Also watched a match on TV last year where Ukraine beat Greece in Athens, the way they played was tremendous.

Netherlands:
I love the way the Dutch play, some of my first footballing memories was watching Holland in Euro 88 and Van Basten was the man, especially for his goal in the final.

Predictions

Golden Boot Winner:
Shevcheko - he could get 4 or 5 against the Saudis alone

Winners:
Will go for Netherlands but... it's a bit of a guess.

My theory is a last 4 of Netherlands, Italy, Argentina, Brazil

A Netherlands vs Brazil final would be tremendous
  ¶ 12:58 PM 0 comments

  Willie Young - Shocking Referee Got emailed this video of Referee Willie Young getting ready in the tunnel before a match.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIZwlBD2j3w&search=referee%20shocked

Superb  ¶ 12:13 PM 1 comments