Insect Life

As anyone who holidays in west coast Scotland will know, the one thing that can spoil one’s day is – midges.

So it was with interest that I saw a TV item about insects as human food. Now I must admit to chewing the odd insect.

When I bit down on a wasp that had flown into my mouth, accidently I must say, it got its revenge by biting the in side of my cheek. Not fun! And other Scottish insects have made their way in from time to time.

In our travels around the world over our 33 years married, Sandra and I have encountered many foods new to us. We first tasted frogs legs in a Chinese Restaurant’s Annex in Unjang Pandang. That is in Sulawesi in Indonesia.

Annex is actually a bit of an exaggeration. We sat at a long table under the stairs in a part-built office block opposite the restaurant. I think they’d done a deal with the night-watchman for extra space. They needed it. Their food was excellent!

And on trips to the Middle East and in Africa, I have been variously offered ants in chocolate, bumble bee in honey and stir-fried locust.

But it is a Thai entrepreneur who has started a chain of cooked insect stalls. And he plans to bring them to the West. I wish him well.

If we could only harvest Scotland’s midges we would be world-beaters.

Our family used to caravan at a rather ‘midgie’ Achmelvich, near Lochinver in West Sutherland. It was a wonderful place for kids. And for some reason it attracted lots of medics like my GP father.

Dr David Hendry was a favourite. It seems that he had been a tunneller in a PoW camp in the last war. And he helped us build a network of tunnels in the sand dunes. Each year under his expert supervision we opened our previous efforts and extended them.

So I took happy memories with me when I sadly joined his family at his funeral last week.

Another doctor had not been so ‘lucky’. As a Jew he had been in a Nazi concentration camp.

Even on holiday, memories haunted him. He had to have a slice of bread constantly at his bedside so that if he woke in the night he would know that he was free. Free of Hitler, but never free of his memories.

I was criticised by a daily paper for my ‘P45 Stunt’ to focus attention on the failings of the Head of the Scottish Prison Service. In a free society they can make their comment.

When Parliament is not in session, we have to find other ways of getting messages across. Sometimes we match the mood, sometimes not.

But the use of Hitler by anti-Euro campaigners in the last few days to demonise our friends across the English Channel made me cringe. I don’t think that was just a matter of taste. I thought of that doctor and his bread.