I MUST confess I bought the book purely on account of the title, "Does Anyone Like Midges?".

TULLOCHGORUM was a name on a farm signpost between Grantown and Aviemore – nothing more than that.

THE SILVER trumpets sounded, An angel voice said “Come!”, The pearly gates flew open, And in walked Mum.

LAST WEEK, I wrote about being the creator of a wine circle, lock stock and barrel, but I can claim to have created something much bigger than that – a complete Scottish village, with its pub and all the folk who frequented it.

THERE must be great satisfaction in starting a new organisation – a new football team, a youth club, a pressure group – and being linked with its fortunes through good and bad times.

JOURNALISTS know something about everything, whereas experts know everything about nothing. I've always thought of myself as falling squarely into the first camp, but a casual find under a bed reminded me that for a while I had been numbered among the experts.

YOU WERE going to get a well-argued piece about wind farms, and if we're all spared to prosper you may get it yet – but a phrase in a national newspaper sent me off on one of my favourite hobby-horses.

I RECKON you have met a real expert on a subject when he is prepared to say without embarrassment "I don't know the answer to your question."

I WAS in a craft shop the other day, and the trade-name on a coat-hanger caught my eye.

WE are well into February, so the Burns season is past and gone, but Robert Burns was still in my mind when I suddenly thought, "I wonder, did Rabbie ever drink tea?"

I READ the views of those who are fighting against wind farms round the Cairngorm National Park, and found myself nodding in assent – then I thought "You're being more even more of a mugwump than usual!"

WITH that curious aptness that seems to occur more often than you would expect by chance, my correspondent in Canada sent me a poem written some years ago by a farmer – in his late seventies – whose funeral was held just after Christmas. One of the other farmers read it at the service.

ON THE eve of the anniversary of Robert Burns' birthday, it is perhaps appropriate to tell you about a project I have in hand.

WE LEFT a member of my family on an operating table last week, having apparently just died. She herself felt far from dead.

WHEN I say that I got a letter from an old friend at the end of last year, that already seems a long time ago.

CHRISTINA Sheilds, of Corrour Road, Aviemore, and I have a connection that goes back 55 years; we were both involved indirectly in a tragic accident. A bus had run into a car bearing folk on a family outing.

THAT damned Christmas song was running in my head all day.

WHEN I start thinking about praise at Christmas, I remember a joke – funny, but slightly unsuitable.

MY son took sodium chlorate, and fed it into a length of lead pipe, crimped at the bottom to make a narrow metal bag.

I HEARD a story the other day, which deserves a place in my bulging "untidy world" file.

FROMwell back in November, I felt as if I had been bombarded with ideas for Christmas presents – "The ideal gift for her" which was a subscription to "Woman and Golf" (I'd like to see the Rev's face when she realised that was what her nearest and dearest had invested in).

A SCARLET poppy on an anorak, changed for a heavier jacket when the colder weather came, seemed to have more impact on me than the scores of red poppies that were to be seen around Remembrance Day.

A CONSTANT reader (and critic) of this column blamed me for just including the final lines of the poem I mentioned in my column in the 'Strathy' of November 1.

I WAS writing about whisky last week, when I remembered an ecumenical joke – a joke that was almost as good as the joke about the two wee boys in Belfast for putting the difference between various brands of Christian into proportion.

THAT story in the 'Strathy' led me on a long and round-about road to a conclusion I had reached long since!

ONE or two people were critical that I should have devoted a week's space to the subject of whisky.

I HAVE invented a new and pleasant drink, and have given it the name, meantime, of Red Grouse. I say "meantime" because some reader may come up with a far better name, and I wouldn't like to have welded the name to the drink.

WHEN I sorted out all my e-mails, wiping the ones I could easily do without, I found some that were not worth keeping permanently, but were worth a second look before dismissing them into the 'reject’ file.

“AMAZING what goes through your head when you are pressed up near someone’s sweating armpit on the metro!”

I HAVE gathered up the “Man in the Manse” articles for the last 11 years in two box files, so it was easy to pick out the ones I thought best, sort them into chapters, and have them re-keyed so they could be electronically printed as a book, which should be available before too long.

IT WAS half past three on Sunday morning when I woke, and lay, comfortable under the covers, thinking about getting back to sleep.

AFTER talking for the past two weeks about the uniqueness of each of us, and how we are bound to feel that the sheer variousness of the world tells us something about the nature of God, I found myself wondering who was the most unique person I had ever met.

AFTER LAST week’s piece about our individual uniqueness, and what I thought it told us about the nature of God, I couldn’t leave well alone, and went looking for examples of uniqueness.

“IF you think you are just one faceless member of a faceless crowd, you’re far wrong. In this forest full of surprises one of the most striking surprises is that every person is unique. Up till now there have been around 65 billion human beings, of whom over six billion are alive today. All different.”

FOR most of my life, Barr’s bottles have had an important part in my existence – their bottles, not their brews – so I was interested when I read that the firm is going to revive the tradition of the returnable glass bottle.

THERE are stains on my study floor, and the reason is a good example of how to make a saga.

I’VE known the plant, bog myrtle, for many years, and have never thought that its name was comical or offensive until I discovered that Boots the chemists were interested in the shrub. That being so, perhaps we will have to call it by its southern or Sunday name, sweet gale.

THIS could be the easiest week’s work I ever made for myself. Remember last week I told you about the competition for the ten best religious jokes, and the ten most offensive religious jokes, and I promised some jokes this week?

THERE were two wee boys in Belfast, and they were out playing, and were late coming in for their tea. When they came in, they were clean and shining, with their hair sleeked down.

I DREAMED that there was a message for me on the computer, but though I hunted everywhere for the right button to press, I could not click in and find what it was that was so important.

WHEN, back in March four years ago, I started to write an article about “visitors” I did not realise its personal significance. Indeed, its importance did not make its full impact on me until I was selecting the articles which are to form an anthology of my favourite “Man in the Manse” pieces.

A PICTURE in a daily paper of someone driving a grey farm tractor down the staircase of a London hotel gave my memory a nudge.

WHEN I was going through the “Man in the Manse” articles I have written, to prepare to publish a collection of the best of them, I came across the piece I had written about Newtonmore’s “sex beast”. Remembering the stushie it had caused, I was tempted to shuffle it out of sight and forget about it.

"WHAT caused that?" I asked the Rev. I had noticed her wincing.

THE memorial service for Ronnie Barker OBE in Westminster Abbey opened with a great joke - a visual pun. The choir, led by the beadle and the Abbey clergy, was preceded by the Cross of Westminster. And by four candles.

A MINISTER friend phoned me up about the piece I wrote about the Kirking of the Tartan. He was trying to remember when we had discussed the subject.

HAVING written a big, fat book on the subject of being happier now, I am (you can take it for granted) on the side of happiness.

KINDNESS is smittle worldwide - and people who appreciate kindness can make water run uphill!

NEWTONMORE public library has been closed - book-borrowers in the village got little more than a week's notice - and though it is quite a while since I made use of its facilities, I take its closure personally.