Platinum Jubilee for Dr Barrie

One of the very first Liberal Democrats I met when I came back to Scotland after 11 years in the East Midlands was Derek Barrie. We very quickly forged a firm friendship, based mainly on him taking the mickey out of me and referring to me (in public) as the Wicked Witch of West Lothian. In return, he became my Grumps. I had wondered if I might take a break from political activism, but he ruined those plans by dragging me in ever deeper to election training and preparations. When I later spent 3 years as Convener of the Scottish Party's Campaigns and Candidates Committee we worked very closely together on selections and elections. Our finest hour was the 2005 Westminster election where, along with Iain Smith, we tried to provide the best support we could to our candidates and campaign teams across the country.

Derek and I were also responsible for implementing the development day candidate approval system in Scotland way back in 2002. Together with a brilliant team of assessors, we approved the likes of a certain D Alexander and W Rennie.

As the Scottish Party's Campaigns Officer and later Chief of Staff, and ALDC's Scottish Officer for many years, everyone in the Scottish Party will know him and most of them will love him too. What they may not know, because he's kept it very quiet, is that he turns 70 today. Although he allegedly retired in 2008, he is working just as hard as ever he did. He was invaluable during this year's Council elections and has just taken over for another stint as North East Fife's Strategy Vice Chair. He is also on the Scottish Party's Executive and takes the minutes for its meetings.

So, I'm sure you'll all join me in raising a glass (a virtual one, it's early yet) to Derek and wishing him a wonderful day and a fabulous decade to come.

Happy 40th Birthday, Danny Alexander

Our Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the most important Ginger Rodent in the UK, is 40 today. I had to make sure you all knew his real age because I heard a rumour* that because it's a time of austerity, he's only allowing 21 candles on his birthday cake.

It doesn't seem like 5 minutes since he was Scottish party press officer, or since I was part of the team that approved him as a Parliamentary candidate.

Danny is a good highland boy who knows how to laugh at himself. It therefore seems appropriate to give this an airing. I guess you can't help what your surname rhymes with....



*Oh all right then, I made that up

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and I............

....have something in common. I have no magical ability, countless millions and a habit of giving money to the Labour Party, but the three of us share a birthday, 31st July.

I love having a birthday at this time of year. It was a quarter of a century before I even had to work on my special day.

Yesterday was one of the best. I woke up, did some blogging and played with my lovely new iPad. I'm aware I haven't written a gushing post about it yet, but I will inflict one on you at some point, you can be sure of that.. It is utterly fabulous, even if my friend did mistake it for a place mat the other night and stick her handbag down on it. How is that even possible?

I was lucky enough to have two parcels presented to me from Bob and Anna. After the iPad I hadn't expected anything. I confidently predicted that they were a chocolate orange and a book. In fact, the chocolate orange shaped package turned out to be Dolce and Gabanna's Rose The One perfume. I really like it, but it amused me that they hadn't tested it to see what it smelled like. They made their decision on packaging alone.

The book shaped parcel turned out to be a lovely protective leather case with attached bluetooth keyboard for my iPad. I had been scared to take it out of the house in case something happened to it, even with its smart cover on, so this fitted the bill perfectly.

Quite the best present was an animation done for me by Anna. It's getting to be a bit of a tradition for special occasions to be marked in this way. These things take literally hours and hours of work and she has such an imagination. For Mother's Day it was an animation of cats singing Defying Gravity. For my birthday the theme was a tv show inspired by our rabbits, Benjamin and Patches. It was all very hilarious and crazily original. I wish I could post it here. Maybe she'll show me how.

My birthday seems to have this habit of clashing with the Hungarian Grand Prix these days so I spent the afternoon on the sofa. My mind went back to last year, when my lovely Twitter friends @petronella, @kayels and @emlah tweeted details of the qualifying session. Not the real ones. The ones I wanted to hear, with Michael Schumacher ending up on pole and Lewis Hamilton crashing out.

Now, the last thing I wanted yesterday was a McLaren 1-2, and it looked for a while that I was going to get one. Then Lewis Hamilton managed to muck things up for himself with poor tyre calls and an avoidable penalty, so it was left to Jenson Button to claim his second victory of the year.

Then we headed out to Wagamama for dinner. I tried the new Chicken Raisukaree dish, having been assured by Marc that it was even better than my previous favourite, Yaki Soba. I'm not quite so sure about that. It's a coconut, coriander and lime based curry with lots of red chillies on the top, which I mostly decanted. I always feel a bit cheeky criticising a dish that probably spent months in the planning process but, really, it could have done with just a wee bit of that pickled ginger. It was delicious though. I managed to get my ginger fixation with their excellent white chocolate and ginger cheesecake with toffee chilli sauce.

This was an excellent prelude to our trip to the cinema to see the assault on our emotions that was the final Harry Potter movie. I'll do a separate review of that, but suffice to say that we all loved it.  And Molly Weasley rocks. It just seemed appropriate to see it on our joint birthday.

We went round for a wee nightcap at our friend's Anne and Stevie's before bed - and she gave me a lovely pressie. I am rubbish at choosing pressies because I don't go shopping if I can avoid it, so I generally don't know what's available unless it's a book or a DVD.  Last year Anne gave me the Handbag of Awesome, which has literally gone everywhere with me since. This year, it was a voucher to get my nails done. The only time in living memory I've actually had nail polish on was when I had it done at the School Pamper Night in June. I'd never do it for myself, but I kind of liked how it looked and I'm looking forward to getting it done again. And it was definitely the right choice from the treatments I had that night. Getting my eyebrows threaded gave me the worst pain I've ever had in my life without there being a baby at the end of it. Never again.

So, all in all, a fabulous day with family and friends - and to top it all, my wee sister got home safe from her crazy adventures.

Happy Birthday, Anna

Today is Anna"s 11th birthday. I can"t believe I"m awake at this ridiculous hour. It"s a bit like the day she was born, when we finally got up to the ward at 5 am or so. I had been awake for some 26 hours at that point so you would think I'd want to sleep, but all I could do was look at my gorgeous little baby in wonder, gratitude and astonishment. Those feelings haven't diminished one bit in 11 years.

As I watch her sleep now, I have 11 years of amazing memories to make me smile. Obviously she's gone through many different phases. So often I've thought that motherhood couldn't possibly get any better but it always does.

This year has seen her become more of a Doctor Who geek, enjoy the Twilight books, develop a flair for making videos and take up two new interests, Judo and Drama, both of which she loves. She's still also involved in the local youth choir. Unfortunately, today's going to be a day of work for her as she has a drama dress rehearsal immediately followed by two choir concerts. We're going out for dinner afterwards so we won't see Doctor Who till later.

Stephen came over last night and gave her the K9 box set which includes the very first K9 story ever & K9 & Company which was a much inferior forerunner to the Sarah Jane Adventures, but it has K9 and Sarah Jane in it so I watched it regardless.

I should also say Happy Birthday to Stephen's mum who is celebrating today too.

As for Anna, I hope she likes the presents we've given her. She has everything she asked for & a little bit more.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Happy Golden Jubilee Iain Smith MSP

Any political activist or their offspring who is unlucky enough to be born in April or early May is going to find that their birthday most years is subsumed by election campaigns, even if it's a special one with a zero in it.

Today, Iain Smith, the Liberal Democrat MSP for NE Fife is 50. Now, I think on balance he would probably prefer that the election disrupted his birthday than his watching of the Test Match series, but even so, when he should be feted with champagne, basking in the adoring affection of his many friends from all over the world, he's more than likely out there on the doorsteps of Largo, or Elie, or Pittenweem or Anstruther or Cupar campaigning for the re-election of Ming Campbell.

He's one of my favourite people. I've worked with him on basically every other election so far this millennium when I was involved in and then chaired the Scottish Lib Dems Campaigns and Candidates Committee and he was in charge of the last two Westminster elections. He's great fun - he's one of those people who can come up with something really hilarious to say in any of the pitfalls that befall any campaign at some point or to cheer up and motivate tired staff. He's so good at thinking of really sharply astute analyses of opponents' policies on the spot - especially when he has the SNP in his sights.

Anyway, Iain, hope you have a fantastic Golden Jubilee. I'm sad that I can't be there with chocolate cake but we'll raise a glass of a decent red to you later.