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I’m sitting on my train at Inverness station, just about to leave for Aberdeen, and it all feels a bit strange.

Firstly, when I arrived at the station it seemed busier than it nomally is at this time of day. Platform 1, the big long one where London trains depart, had a train sitting on it – too late to be the 0755 and too early to be the sleeper (and the wrong colour or design to be either).

Then when I looked at the departure board to check for my platform, there was a departure for Crewe on the board within the next few minutes, stopping at Aviemore, Pitlochry and then nothing until various stations in the northwest of England.

Odd, I thought. You can’t go to Crewe from Inverness, except on the sleeper, and even then it’s a London train.

I’d not heard any news about an afternoon service to Crewe being launched. If there was such a service, surely it would have been promoted? And why was it not stopping in Perth or Glasgow, or for that matter heading further south than Crewe? I’d have taken a picture if I’d thought to.

Time was pressing though. I went to the ticket machine to pick up my tickets, only to find it wasn’t working. Then as I turned to go to the ticket office, it wasn’t there – it had moved temporarily to where the tourist information office used to be.

Once I got my tickets I asked the guy behind the counter about the Crewe train.

“What, the sleeper for tonight?”

I explained what I’d seen on the board – was it a new service, or a charter, or a mistake?

The man said he had no idea and came outside the ticket office’s temporary home to look at the board. He still had no idea, and seemed more gently bemused than the bewilderment I’d have expected from a member of staff at a station that had just acquired a new service without him being told.

I rushed off to my train – two carriages rather than the usual three, and platform 4 rather than the usual 2 or 3 – and in the time it’s taken me to write all that, we’ve arrived in Nairn (my iPhone is great, but typing isn’t half a slow process).

What’s wrong with the world? If everyone had two heads or were wearing silver jump suits and carrying laser guns, it would be an alarming revolution. But the fact that things are just quietly, harmlessly, slightly out of kilter, makes it all so much more unsettling.

Should I, as the famous poster says, “keep calm and carry on” in the hope it’s all back to normal when I return home on Monday?

And here’s Forres already. That was quick.

Too quick in fact… I hope there’s not something slightly wrong with Time too…

It’s the last few minutes of Thursday, and tomorrow I head after work to visit Nicole for the weekend, and then spend pretty much the whole of the following working week in the deep south (Edinburgh and Glasgow). After eleven consecutive nights at home – surely a record – another burst of travels begin.

I’ve enjoyed being at home. With the light evenings I’ve been able to get out and about, go for walks and enjoy the sunshine. Although more often than not I’ve just chilled out and relaxed. Even though I’ve still been working, it’s felt a little like a holiday.

But at the same time, it’s been busy too. The wedding looms on the horizon later this year – just over four months away – and there has been quite a flurry of activity of late on the planning front.

Spending so much time at home, whether being quiet or busy, has been nice. With all the travel I do for work, simply staying in Inverness can be a very refreshing and invigorating change.

Though I realised the other day that it’s my first year without an overseas trip for a long time. Maybe there ought to be a big adventure in 2010… although by then, I’ll be a married man…

I am the 776th person to be “Arthured”. Let me explain.

I heard about the film-maker and performer Anna Black‘s rather curious quest the other day – to travel the country getting photos of around two thousand people with a signed photo of Allo Allo star Arthur Bostrum.

It’s part of her campaign to raise awareness of M.E. – the link between M.E. and the photo of Mr Bostrum is something of a long and tenuous story, and interesting though it is, it’s Anna’s to tell so I’ll not attempt it.

A sucker for silly projects myself, I was intrigued to see that she and her partner in crime Maz were in the highlands, and so I offered to meet them. I caught up with them just earlier this evening as they were passing through Inverness, and got my photo taken with the photo of Arthur Bostrum. As you do.

They’ve notched up some weird and wonderful people on their travels, and it was fantastic to hear more about their stories, including how they managed to “Arthur” the likes of Danny Wallace and David Icke.

You can see Anna “signed photograph” page, and follow her blog, to keep up with the mission.

Inverness has a relatively small city centre, so it’s often quite hard to avoid invaders when they appear.

Mormons, for instance, used to be quite high profile around town, but I’ve not seen them – or had them on my doorstep – for some time now, which is good.

Chuggers are the latest invaders – accosting people in the street to ask them to sign up to various charitable causes. I find their aggressive attempts to squeeze money out of people when they’re attempting to just go about their lives to be a poor reflection of the causes they work for, as well as exceptionally rude.

Today, while doing various bits and bobs in town with Nicole, who was through for the weekend, we were confronted on three occasions by chuggers, with a variety of cheeky and over-personal banter failing to stop us in our stride. I am pleased to report I managed to be rude back to them in three different and original ways.

I think I might start taking my bible into town with me in the future, so if I get stopped by a chugger I can attempt to pray over them, offer them healing, or read scriptures to them until they run, screaming.

Seen in Dornoch this afternoon on a wee excursion with Nicole. Click the picture for an attempted explanation.

No sooner has the football season ended, it seems, than the next one has started, and we’ve almost had a team knocked out of Europe already.

The league season proper starts in a few weeks, but the European qualifiers are underway, with Motherwell having wobbled their way through their Europa League first round.

I’m not hugely optimistic about this season – Motherwell are a case in point, being a team in transition, being short of players and short of cash. The story is the same throughout much of the league, and outside the top four or five I think it will be an all-encompassing relegation dogfight, which should at least be competitive and go down to the wire.

At the top there’s a bit of light, in that Hearts seem to have had one of their more settled pre-seasons in years, and their eccentric but thankfully intelligent manager has got a few semi-decent players in (when getting any player in at all is something of a bonus, outside the Old Firm). The Old Firm themselves are not immune to financial problems, however, and the fact that Rangers are open to offers on pretty much all their players suggests that the gap between second and third might not be as great as in the past.

Aberdeen, too, with an excellent new manager in Mark MacGhee, should prove to be good runners, as should Dundee United. They’ll probably take points off each other and Hearts, though, and as usual drop unnecessary points to lesser teams, such that it will be sadly the same old story at the top of the league, albeit as I say with Hearts coming a wee tad closer to second than last season.

My pessimism extends to Europe, too – although Hearts and Aberdeen really should make it to the Europa League group stage, and the Old Firm to that of the Champions’ League, that’s about as far as we can expect anyone to go this season.

The SPL is of course bereft of Inverness Caley Thistle, which is bad news for the city’s economy and status, although on the footballing side they are now in the same division as the mighty Ross County for the first time in a few years. With the prospect of the Highland derby back, I may even be tempted to venture to a County match or two this season.

Who else has a prediction or two?

A wee while ago, I discovered the rather excellent wee series on the BBC News website, Five Minutes With….

As the name suggests, it’s a series of five minute interviews, and those going under the clock are a diverse bunch ranging from Jason Donovan to William Hague, Moby to Terry Pratchett. The interviewer, Matthew Stadlen, packs in an impressive array of questions, putting the interviewees under the spot a bit more intensely and unpredictably than conventional interviews.

More or less all the guests come over as likeable and interesting (largely because it’s hard to grow to hate someone in five minutes, though some guests put in a good effort), and it’s a fun and informative format. Best of all, it fits neatly into those wee five minutes online that you might find yourself wanting to fill.

I got back from Glasgow yesterday evening, teeth all checked (24 hour trip for a 10 minute check-up – private dental care here I come?), and numerous friends all caught up with. Now starts nearly two weeks with no travels, which will be a marvellous novelty.

It was wonderful being back in St Silas on the Sunday night, and the sermon was one of the best I have heard for a long, long time. I didn’t particularly like it because it was spiritually uplifting (though it was): I liked it because it was simply a great explanation of faith, the Trinity, and all we must strive to be as Christians.

Kicking off a series on Ephesians, the preacher Gordon Reid used Ephesians 1 as a springboard for exploring a new relationship with God.

Basically (and you really needed to have seen the excellent accompanying powerpoint slides – though you can at least listen to the podcast), it started with an outline of the three types of Christian: liberal (illustrated as green), evangelical (illustrated as red), and charismatic (illustrated as blue), which were all visualised as thirds of a circle.

Each third was linked with:

• famous examples (respectively: Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, Jackie Pullinger)
• key motivations (respectively: achieving social justice, winning new souls; seeking spiritual experience)
• a point of reference which each takes (respectively: creation, Calvary and Pentecost)
• a part of the Trinity to which it is most closely aligned (respectively: the father, the son and the spirit)

We were told that if one point related to us more personally than the other two, we needed to grow into the other two parts of the circle too: partly through devoting our prayers to all three parts of the Trinity.

Finally, there was a brilliant link between each tradition through the three conversions we all need:

• from the world (in the liberal part of the circle) to Christ (in the evangelical part) – hopefully an obvious required conversion!
• from Christ to the church (in the charismatic part), because Christians must not be alone but a part of a bigger body
• from the church back to the world again, taking the Good News out to everyone else

Together these made the whole picture of the new relationship we should seek with God.

That’s probably not a sufficient or entirely accurate summary, and without the visuals it’s hard to do it full justice. And admittedly, it was perhaps not of much value to someone not yet a Christian.

But for me, the sermon – delivered with great thoughtfulness and humour – helped me understand a whole lot more about why there is a diversity of views among how Christians view the world and view God, and how each perspective has a huge role to play in the relationships we seek with God as individuals and as a church. It’s well worth a listen.

If it’s Sunday, it must be Glasgow. Thankfully, it’s bright and sunny, and free of the humidity or rain that the city often throws up.

I’m sitting in Offshore, a nice wee cafe in the west end that is not as busy as it can be. I’d be in iCafe just along the road (on the rare occasions I frequent such places here) but it’s seemingly closed due to fire damage.

I arrived earlier on today and am spending an hour or so here before St Silas’s evening service doing some writing and just enjoying chilling out.

Dentist’s tomorrow and then home by the evening. Thereafter, there’ll be no travels – work or pleasure – for the best part of a fortnight.

Hurrah.

I’ve been enjoying a quiet Saturday so far, so have been pressing on with uploading photos from the rest of the Shetland trip.

It was so nice, after so many visits of rarely seeing more than the college, the airport and Lerwick town centre, to be able to get to pretty much most bits of the mainland and to a number of the smaller isles.

Shetland is such a diverse, beautiful and surprisingly large place. With the weather as amazing as it was, and company in the form of my fiancee Nicole, it will definitely rank as one of the best holidays I’ve had.

I can’t be bothered doing much of a blow-by-blow account of the rest of the trip, but on many of the photos I have uploaded I’ve put a bit more background information and provided links where I can. So you’re best just browsing today’s uploads, or the trip’s set as a whole.

Some highlights, however, include beautiful beaches such as Bannamin or St Ninian’s, the northernmost island of Unst, and the utterly charming and compelling Fetlar.

Shetland – like much of the rest of Scotland, I suppose – can always be a bit of a lottery in terms of transport and sightseeing due to the unpredictable weather, and the enjoyment of this trip was significantly boosted by what people told us had been the best sunshine in years.

However, seeing as it’s an amazing place in all weathers, it’s a trip worth taking and I can’t wait to go back some time – to see some place again, and perhaps make it to other parts I didn’t make it to this time…