ALIAS POOR YORICK

Top Ten Really Really First World Problems 1.  You run out of Greek feta for your spinach and feta omelette and have to use Bulgarian feta instead 2. You pay $10,000 more than you should for a new Fiat 500 3. You and your partner have a really intense argument about whether the correct wine to have with Blue Castillo is a zinfandel or a pinot-Gris. This argument becomes so intense one of you writes an email to zany Age wine writer Mark Shields only to discover he has been dead for fifteen years. This leads inexplicably to fresh arguments and bitter recriminations over an affair one of you had with a sommelier back in the late-nineties. And then things get completely out of control when you argue about whether you can even have wine, let alone cheese, on your newly-adopted paleo diet.  In the bitterly contested divorce settlement your partner gets custody of the fake Brett Whitely. 4. Your friends laugh at the way you don't seem totally comfortable...

Call me Macgregor. Mmm, that sounds good. Kind of punchy. I might just carry on and write a book. Find me a bloody enormous fish immediately. But no, seriously, I am diverted from my true purpose. I am here to claim my Scottish heritage. To embrace my inner Scot. Yes my friends (except the f***ing English) I really am he who is called MacGregor. Why am I talking like this ? I have no idea . Perhaps it's the poetry innate in the soul of every true Celt, perhaps it is that this heart of mine truly belongs in the Higlands, perhaps it is this whisky. But friends (except the f***ing English) I may not look like the stuff of the Higlands. Or even the Highlands. But I am Scottish where it counts, on the inside. Yes, my heart is wearing a kilt, and there's a dirk stuck somewhere in my esophagus, which may account for that stabbing pain I occasionally experience. And 'tis now I must share my song with you. I wrote this song while suffering from exposure high high in th...

It was a day like any other day, except it was dark, so it may have been night. You notice things like that in my game. You have to. I was in my office. I had no idea what was going on. I work best like that. I lit a cigarette and poured a large scotch - it's important to have a proper breakfast. It'd been a long dull week punctuated only by bursts of extreme boredom and I felt like slapping someone. There was no-one around so I slapped myself. And I liked it. Just then a woman stumbled into the office, which was something of a relief because I was sick of slapping myself. And four word sentences. Besides, this story was going nowhere and I'd been there before. This dame was quite something. She had long blonde legs that went all the way to the ground and straight back up again with only a brief pause for an espresso and a cigarette. She was beautiful in a dangerous way, dangerous in a beautiful way,  and had eyes that said she was capable of microwaving your...