Nebbing at Gleneagles Station

Heading for Edinburgh this morning on the train – on what they call around here a dreach day. Always interesting to see who gets on and off at Gleneagles Station – this time it was two elderly gents with posh luggage. One sank into his seat and said in those tones which reverberate around a carriage – ‘London by tea time and, if all goes well, Paris by bedtime’ ‘God bless you, sir,’ I thought. ‘And may the light tread of your carbon footprint speed your journey!’ And I continued on my way to the meeting of the Information and Communication Board …

But it set me musing into my laptop about how much more romantic train travel is than just hopping on Easyjet. And then I became nostalgic about the days when travel really was travel in the even older and more faithful Passat.  I thought about the ‘aire’ we stopped in once heading south on the Entre Deux Mers Autoroute where you could actually smell the warm southern wind coming towards you. The children – who were all bred to be stalwart travellers – but who had been asking since the outer suburbs of Stranraer, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ at last began to believe that some time …

4 comments

  1. What a strange blog to land on. Oh well, greetings Your Excellency (what a brilliant term of address! It sounds like something out of Star Wars).

    I’ve arrived here because I didn’t know how to spell it either. Thanks to the above folks for the info. I plumped for dreach in the end but after reading the comments above I’m now looking at it again and thinking, English and American readers will be pronouncing my “dreach” like “bleach”. Oh well, C’est la vie.

    Goodbye your excellency. I have enjoyed my brief visit.

    Best Wishes
    Mo

  2. Was all set to comment also on the spelling of ‘dreich’, but I see someone got there before me. You could always try to argue that ‘dreach’ was the Irish spelling?

  3. Interesting – I checked the spelling on Google. Nobody who uses the word would be able to spell it, of course!

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