Musings of a REAL Tank Commander – Part 4 Work, idleness and hedonistic madness

WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW is an attempt to describe what it was like being a young-ish, single, junior officer in a Germany-based Scottish armoured regiment in the 1980s. I hardly know where to begin to be ...

Mummy hits the wall, sticks with the pyjamas and discovers 'plug patrol'

The Mummy Diaries

SPOILER ALERT: Real life mummy rant. If you’re one of those perfect mums, with the perfect kids and ‘loving the lock down’, spending quality time together-type families, then look away ...

Musings of a REAL Tank Commander – Pt 3 Becoming my troop’s muppet

TO PREFACE what follows below, I must just tell you that the regiment I joined after Sandhurst, the 4th Royal Tank Regiment (Scotland’s Own), usually known as 4 RTR or 4th Tonks, was by common consensus the ...

ThinkMovies: Top Five Picks From Disney +

ROUGH as being in lockdown is, can you imagine doing it with even slightly dialled-back technology than we have now? 

Picture, if you’re willing to, that the Coronavirus, or some other malady ...

Musings of a REAL Tank Commander – Pt 2 Sandhurst beckons

I LEFT YOU ALL in suspense after my visit to 3RTR on Salisbury Plain when I had my first hurl in a Chieftain tank. I was, of course, pleased and relieved to have navigated the ...

Bye bye naps, scary movies and say ‘Cheese!’

The Mummy Diaries

WEEK THREE in the big brother house, err I mean self-isolation. Our new routines are starting to become the new normality and although it’s tough not being able to ...

Musings of a REAL Tank Commander – Part 1

AS FAR BACK as I can remember, I always wanted to be a soldier.* I can’t really explain why, it’s just the way it was. My Dad had been subaltern in the Highland Light Infantry ...

Full lockdown: how not to kill your kids & banish the baking!

The Mummy Diaries

IT’S ONLY week two of proper isolation and I’ve already drank my lockdown reserves of red wine and eaten the kids emergency stash of chocolate. Although I did manage ...

ThinkMovies: The five movies to watch during lockdown

THIS EDITION of Think Movies is, by necessity, a slightly different one. The cinemas are closed temporarily and I’m staying in so there are no new releases about which I’m able to offer you an ...

Social distancing, The naughty step – and a couple of life saver recipes!

The Mummy Diaries

WHAT A WEEK. It has been a case of just taking it a day at a time and trying to stick to some kind of routine both for the ...

Help NHS staff deal with Coronavirus

ALTHOUGH A LONGSTANDING writer for ThinkScotland I am trained as a medic and can swear COVID-19 is a huge emergency. If you wish to help and have no NHS qualifications please click the link below:

Baking buns, building dens & dancing – Coronavirus? What Coronavirus!

The Mummy Diaries

LAST WEEK my lovely Mum wrote the Mummy Diaries article as she and my Dad were watching the kids for a few days while James and I escaped ...