In the UK, in the wake of swine flu no-story, a number of British MPs were discovered to have been claiming from the UK tax payer things like moat-cleaning expenses and for mortgages that they had already paid off. The Prime Minister claimed rather too much for two toilet seats and someone else claimed a large amount for some light bulbs to be fitted.

The press, who paid for the information from a civil servant leak, are horrified. I am indifferent, because my bench-mark for things like police brutality and government corruption is low. Clive James in 'A Point of View' put it rather well:

"In liberal democratic societies, where the free market is regulated by government, there is a limit to corruption. What we are all being asked to be amazed at right now, is that there is such a thing as human dishonesty, but really we should be amazed by how it is being kept in bounds. In countries where no bounds are set, and corruption remains unchecked, hardly anyone can afford to be honest. The terrible truth is that the full force of corruption is doing its dirty work even among us. We, however, have the luxury of being able to call it crime, not politics. The apparent scam of MP's expenses looks bad but the fact that it looks bad is the very thing that makes it not so bad. The outrage that we are encouraged to feel means that we live in a country where corruption is not the norm. If it were, some members on the front bench would be laughing at us right now, not sweating."

Though I nearly expired from a hang-over yesterday, D. had the very good idea of going to the park with a picnic. It was a blazing hot day, and the park was filled with people playing frisbee and football. I fell asleep to the calming sound of conversation from the Romanians near to us, and was awoken by the sound of young Romans squealing over a volleyball game. The park, once belonging to a Roman aristocrat but now turned over to the city, had some beautiful buildings in it which look over the city down below, very red in the late afternoon sun.

The light in the streets of Trastevere at night is almost infra-red, tight alleyways lit by strong overhead lights. The piazzas are full of cautious English tourists with a finger in a guide book, and Romanians and Sri Lankans selling fluorescent whizzing toys. Everyone else noisily eats ice cream and celebrates being in a city where life is warm even at 10pm.

D.'s street is quiet, just wide enough for a small car to pass and has that strange Trastevere feeling of ancient medieval civilisation and 21st century social grit, graffiti over almost every carefully-laid wall. At the end of the street is a small high-up shrine to the Virgin Mary, where a candle flickers day and night.

Rome, a city where everything looks quite perfect but, on closer look, isn't quite, but is stunning all the same. This old pomegranate sitting in D.'s fruit bowl seemed to have aged beautifully.

Incredibly, after a week of hail and rain, the morning I left Scotland, the skies cleared and the water became still, like a mill pond.

C. and A. are neighbours, living in a remote stone house almost an hour's drive away from us. The house, which was once a school, is hidden high up on the hill and has views sweeping down the slopes and onto the sea, out to the Treshnish Islands beyond. The day we visited, there was little in view from the kitchen doors as rain and fog had obscured much of the heather-covered hills.

Tea seemed more of a formality, served up in a metal teapot alongside a lovely Victoria Sponge. Soon after we had finished out first cup, A. started rootling around in the fridge for tonic, coming back with some large drinks, the ice tinkling in the glasses. We discussed my recent parasite- A. is a parasitologist-, love, the state of the roads and the wind. The wind features heavy on the agenda in Mull, especially in this old school house, stranded alone on the hill with nothing to protect it from the raging gales that blow in from the Atlantic.

On leaving, C. offered us some eggs laid on Saturday by the golden chickens that pecked in and amongst the thick heather of their garden.

"We're selling them in the kiosk now," she said proudly, and led us to a small shed sitting proudly beside the gravel driveway, though not near the single-track main road. Lowering the front shutter and putting right the sign that had fallen to the mud, we stepped inside to find eggs and cards for sale (honey to follow) and I thought, this is what Britain is missing. In Dakar, this would be known as a 'Diallo' shop, referring to the hard-working Fulanis (often named Diallo) who take over small boutiques and run them day and night, selling eggs, single cigarettes, hair-weave and toothpaste. In Bissau, it might be known as the 'Narr', referring to the Arab Mauritanians who seem to make such good shop-keepers, keeping tinned mackerel, peanuts, raw shea butter and soap powder for sale in tiny quantities in their tightly-packed shops. The boutique is the quintessential emblem of west Africa- for its readiness to face any eventuality, any time of the day or night, no planning required.

C. and I played shop-keeper for a while, pretending I was in Abidjan and selling "a-thie-ke chaud" to imaginary passers-by. C. said that the first day she opened shop, she came home to find three cards and six eggs gone and a £5 note in the honesty box.


*****




There was snow on Ben Moore, but we only saw it once or twice, when the cloud lifted just enough to be able to see the white-capped hill across the loch from the house. The week brought gusts of rain, gales and a hail storm, and three sheep camped out on the lawn and ate their way through the luscious grass that had shot up with all the water.

Last night, as we were eating dinner, a car pulled up into the drive, our first visitor in a week. It was M., the farmer from down the road with his dog Taff. He was looking for his sheep, which had just that afternoon moved off elsewhere. I invited him in for a drink; it was a lovely still evening and the wind bristling the loch had dropped so that the hills were reflected in the glassy waters infront of the house.

"Aye," he said, "I'll just find my sheep and then I'll be in."

He went to the cab of his red pick-up, pulled a ten-day old lamb from inside, and handed it to me along with a Sprite bottle filled with milk, and a long red teat.

"He'll be needin' feedin'" he said, and drove off to find his tups.

The lamb dragged on the teat, and drank the bottle of warm milk in just a few minutes. His wool was tight, warm white curls, and I could feel two hard horns just emerging beneath the black wool on his head. As I held him by the stomach, his umbilical cord, now hard and black, stuck like a tangled wire into my hand. His bursting, wriggling energy reminded me pleasantly of home, origins. It's been more than twenty years since I fed a lamb, but it served to remind me of my very happy childhood.