Sunday 4 October 2009

Today we went off to The Reindeer Centre which is less a centre than a vast area in which reindeer are allowed to roam and multiply, like retired maths teachers. I had thought reindeer to be alien to the UK, but apparently they were plentiful here until about 2000 years ago when they disappeared for unknown reasons, but which was no doubt connected with early venison burgers.
They were reintroduced fairly recently in millennial terms and now there are around a couple of hundred roaming around.
After negotiating a tortuous series of stone steps we emerged onto a mountain plain to meet the reindeer which we were allowed to feed by hand.
It was a day of minor casualties. Two of our party fell over and a woman who bent down to get some feed was summarily mounted by a short-sighted stag. She leapt up with a squeal and the reindeer fled, leaving not only hoofprints on her shoulders, but a sinister glistening stain on the back of her skirt.
The Ugly One was similarly mounted as we left the enclosure. The last thing we expected when we embarked on this holiday was to be sexually assaulted by reindeer. I’d have preferred the kilted prison officers, but as I have discovered in life, one can’t have everything in this world. Not straightaway anyway.
After a pleasant and very filling lunch in Aviemore, not even spoiled by the screaming presence of several annoying children, we took the steam train trip to Glenbogle (which somehow has stuck in my head as being called Benfogle) from whence we headed back to the hotel for an early dinner.
The ME & D tonight was a very good performer with an electric accordion although we did not see much of him. We went upstairs to find out who the finalists of X-Factor were.
Louis Walsh has picked those eejit Irish twins, Famine and Pestilence or whatever their names are. I’m with Simon Cowell, unusually, on this. ‘Hate them! Hate them! Hate them!’
I pointedly push my finger onto a flat surface with each repetition.