Scotland 25, England 13

Anyone spot yesterday's deliberate mistake about today being Mother's Day? I thought not. The Americans amongst you can be forgiven, but it just shows how the rest of you flit through these long, tedious posts, often without reaching the end. I gave the two kid's of the friend of mine a near heart-attack on the walk to lunch yesterday, and they frantically Googled up the correct date. March 11th... or was it tenth?

I just put up the rugby result to rub Colonel Blimp's nose in it. The world is turning upside down. Next thing you know, Scotland will be winning The Ashes. A Scottish Spring.

I have only ever been to Scotland in the Spring and Winter. This is not forward planning to avoid the Highland Midges, it just worked out that way. My friend married the Plantagenet up there in the Spring, and I spent a prolonged and drunken Hogmanay in Argyle once. I dropped out after four consecutive days, but the locals carried on for another two weeks.

For the wedding, we flew to Glasgow, hired a Mercedes A Class and drove another hundred and fifty miles, much of it in the dark.

For all of her life up to that point, H.I. had insisted that she hated Scotland, but could never say exactly why. She is like that about a lot of things. As we were crossing Glen Coe in the Spring sunshine, she looked at the spectacular - almost surreal - landscape and said, "This is beautiful!"