Yes, it is a very small and straightforward puzzle. And because it's so easy there's no prizes!!

All you have to do is identify which one of the tiny beauty contestants below went on to win first prize, and (much later) to settle in Cheesetown under the pseudonym of Macy.


Remember your job is not to correct the original judges' decision and decide on who you thought should have won. You have only to spot the actual winner (ME !!)

Yes really snowed in. We had snow: not the-annoying-stuff-on-the-ground-that-makes-the-car-skid type of snow; not the stuff-that's-rubbish-for-snowballs type of snow. This was the real thing, the deep-and-crisp-and-even-St Wenceslas type snow. The roads blocked between here and Q'Ferry type snow. The forget-about-even-trying-to-buy-last-minute-presents, and the-airport's-closed-again type snow.

Yeah, and yadda yadda yadda everywhere else has better and deeper snow. I know.

But it seemed a shame not to show off Cheesetown...

Enjoy the winter slideshow - if there are a lot of graves it's because Ned and I shortcut through there on our way up the hill... nothing more macabre...

He was into photography. Everywhere we went he carried this great heavy rucksack with his camera, filters, zoom lenses, and equipment stuff. He worked mainly on slide film; a lot of abstracts, friends in pubs, friends at parties, family in NZ, scenery, holidays, and of course endless ones of the cherub once he arrived on the scene.

And when we split up he took all the albums, and files and loose snaps with him. And I was sure that in the first months after we split he would have been happily destroying any of the ones I was in...

Well I've inherited the albums. And the photos are all there. And it's great. It's not sad at all. It's really great looking at them all again.
I'd forgotten so much, and now I have the slides and photos to remind me.

The photo above is us in NZ Feb 1993.
Me " the camera's going to leave a shadow....my hair's a mess...is it in focus?...I'll do it"
Him "It'll be fine: SMILE"

Sums up a lot of what went wrong between the control freak and the laid back kiwi, non? Hey, whatever, turns out we were BOTH right. Which could be the moral of this blog.

Now all I need to do is get a gadget to convert those thousands of slides to digital...

The experiment continues, five reasons to be cheerful need to be listed today if I am to achieve 25% increase in happiness, fitness and general well being.

And who better to test this theory to the nth degree? OK, here goes, this week's reasons to be cheerful.

1. I have a dishwasher that actually cleans dirty pots
2.W is feeling slightly better today
3.Capri Sun is on two for one at Scotmid (strictly speaking this is cherub's reason to be glad)
4. We saw not one but two rainbows this morning.
5. Got a great photo of Ned, hey?

The following is from a poem by Ted Hughes in the "Birthday Letters" collection that W gave me many years ago.
I think it sums up what I feel looking at these pictures now.


It was not meant to hurt,
It had been made for happy remembering
By people who were still to young
To have learned about memory

Given that this blog is called "The View from Macy", I thought this would be a good morning to add a view.
This is the view I can see as I type here on the 16th August - High Summer in central Scotland.

In the background, behind the grey cloud are the pentland hills, in the centre of the picture is Cheesetown's 900 year old church looking suitably grim, and inthe foreground is my garden which has gone completely to pot since no one in their right mind is going out in this weather to mow lawns or prune roses.

Note. This blog is not sponsored by the Scottish Tourist Board.