6:30pm, friday 5th
Finally! I'm on a flight to Aberdeen with Nic. Think BA have problems due to:
- news story which says they've been auctioning off spare bits of Concorde (ooo, two rollsroyce Avons for £50,000? A toilet cubicle for £5500?) - talk about being strapped for cash.
- Our flight being cancelled - first excuse, "not full enough", then seconds later, "aircraft shortage".

So we wait good-naturedly at a costa for about 2 hours commenting in middle-class ascerbic wit style interjections about Tony B's thoughts on stuff following a loss of 3 men from the 850 british soldiers of the Black watch that 150,000 Mercan (USA) gun-toting blockheads so desperately need.

Honestly, you'd think the US never had to indulge in urban pacifiation, would you? At least northern ireland gives our troops some perspetive: one of the black watch senior commanders was reported as saying they'd be back out on the streets tomorrow: "they can't all be bad", he said. That's the approach that has UK forces in the south patrolling without helmets - although I'm sure that is probably a gross oversimplification, I guess where they are now is more of a hotbed of "insurgents" (which still sounds like a washing powder ingredient to my engineers' ears).