They've done it - taken away the conker as well as the advert. How am I going to stop foaming?

Maybe I can track it down. It would look lovely in the garden at Barbansais.

I've been mildly following the case of The Hand of Frog in the French media. Opinions are split but a great many, including politicians, admit to being ashamed of qualifying for the World Cup in this manner. Raymond Domenech, the manager, comes in for a lot of stick; what football manager doesn't? But this time as well as being castigated for poor management he's accused of teaching his players that a win at any cost is what counts.

I've heard players (not just in France) say that of course they would do something similar but in the expectation of being sanctioned by the referee. So it's his fault for not spotting the infringement. Other commentators lay the blame on football's move from sport to big money business.

I commend them all to take a lesson or two from professional golf. That's a big money business if ever there was but the players don't rely on being spotted by a referee for an infringement of the rules. They don't deliberately break the rules in the first place of course but a golfer who accidentally moves his ball in a situation in which a penalty would be imposed acts as his own referee and reports the fact, even if it makes a difference of a million dollars or so.

I thought Health and Safety had been up to their mollycoddling tricks when I noticed that a barrier had been erected around the giant conker that I had caught sight of recently from my passing bus.

So today I got off to investigate, foaming at the mouth at the stupidity of what I presumed to be over-protection of the public.
It turns out that it's an advertisement. So now I'm foaming at the mouth at the desecration of the newly public space in St Andrew's Square by the forces of Mammon who are already well represented in the surrounding buildings.

I will only cease to foam if they take the advertising fence away and leave the lovely conker.

I'm not sure if Friday 13th has really been unlucky for me. After all I came across the beard trimmer that I was sure I must have left in France. There it was wrapped in a facecloth and tucked neatly into a little corner of the bookcase in the hall. Why there for God's sake?

Maybe Thursday 5th is the new Friday 13th because that's when I bought a replacement.

Where today was definitely not unlucky was at the Traverse lunchtime show - The Moira Monologues written and performed by Alan Bisset. It was sheer dead brilliant. In the first story he played two dogs, two women and a man - effortlessly, convincingly and hilariously. And unbelievably the show got better and better.

The public face of the National Library of Scotland has changed out of all recognition since I used to occasionally broach its forbidding portals as a student. I expect the staff were just as nice people in those days as they are today, but the atmosphere of serious and silent scholarship that was, with its overtones of exclusion, has since been lightened. They have welcomed the general public with open arms to their exhibitions and talks for some years now and they have a super website but they have topped it all with the installation of a bright and cheerful visitor reception point cum cafe cum shop. There is even a pavement section to their cafe.

Perhaps the reading room maintains a more dour tradition but I am unlikely ever to find myself poring over a dusty volume therein in place of watching the world go by on George IVth Bridge while sipping a coffee.

Last night the Scottish Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Anne Glover was at the NLS delivering an entertaining and stimulating talk about what had inspired her to become a scientist in the first place and had kept her at it. From stories of prodding earthworms as a toddler, seeing The Fantastic Voyage at ten (I remember the trailer though I never saw the film) and watching a school mate have his trousers whipped off his hurdies when they burst into flames as a result of his having pocketed some sodium in a science class, to being captivated by bio-luminescence during a midnight swim, her enthusiasm for science was catching.

I left the talk thinking that if I were 50 years younger and a girl there would be no stopping me.

It was gratifying to see a Kirkcaldy man doing well on University Challenge last night. One of the subjects he knew all about was Machiavelli. Perhaps he should offer some advice to that other Langtonian who is struggling down south.

If you ever have occasion to be looking for Glasgow University Concert Hall be aware that's it's a wee bit tricky.

I went over a few days ago to attend a lunchtime concert and when I got to the university I dutifully followed the signs that led me round a few corners, up a stair, round a few more corners, through their pretty cloisters (you've probably seen them on the telly cos it's a great academic location) and through an opening where a grand staircase carpeted in royal blue led upwards.

On the landing to the right was the entrance to the Hunterian museum (I'm not sure if that's Hunter author of The anatomy of the human gravid uterus or his wee brother, but one day I'll find out). Opposite was an imposing set of double doors that I breeched. Within stood a trio of chaps and chapesses of whom I enquired whether this was the Concert Hall. They replied to a (wo)man that indeed twere so but that it was in use for a function. They expressed astonishment at my belief that there was a concert scheduled for ten past one. Was there another concert hall I asked. They shook their heads in acknowledgement of their lack of knowledge and suggested I try reception.

Well the man at the gatehouse knew nothing and in the way of janitors everywhere was short on customer service skills so I found my own way to the music department where after some battering on doors I roused the staff. They were helpfulness personified and after some discussion realised that the hall that I had been informed was the Concert Hall by the chap(ess) trio was not. It was they believed a hall called the Bute Hall which sits atop the Concert Hall.

So I scurried back and found that if you duck behind the imposing, blue-carpeted staircase there is a hidden hall: a very gracious hall: a concert hall: in fact THE Concert Hall.

And the concert? Well it was splendid. Bill Clinton loved Sax Ecosse and so did I.

My Amazon tale is now on Caramel's website in both English and French. You can also read the accounts written by other crew members of earlier stages in the rally or just look at their pictures if your French is a bit shaky.

Your French is probably not as shaky as the newsreader's English who in reporting yesterday the death of a soldier in Afghanistan announced that he was from the Royal Logistical Corps and pronounced the last word as corpse. A bit ghoulish I thought.

At quite a few of the golf events I go to the starter hands you a little gift of some sort as you prepare to play; a ball, some tees, a pitch repairer or suchlike bearing the sponsor's logo. I was a bit surprised though to see a pressie on the table in front of me as I took my place at the Ministry of Justice's consultation exercise.

It looked like a whiteboard marker that you could clip on to your shirt pocket. It was logo free but should perhaps have had NHS stamped on it, being a handy alcohol free hand sanitizer allegedly effective against H1N1. I suppose with 100 or so people milling around the conference centre at the Pollock Halls, any one of whom could have been consorting with pigs, it was a wise protection. I'd have felt happier if I'd had it on Wednesday when my neighbour in the Spanish class declared that he had just risen from his bed of swine flu.

The other nifty gadget we were issued with, but not for keeps, was an electronic voting tablet to hang round our necks. The crowd were split into tables of about ten for discussion which a young person armed with a laptop tried valiantly to keep pace with. These sessions were skilfully led and were generally preceded by a video to set the scene. At various times slides of multi-choice polling questions appeared for light relief. We all then pushed our favoured tablet button and the poll result rolled onto the screen. The man in charge invariably thought the result interesting. It's a shame he couldn't have found a few different ways of saying so. Why don't they send us all one of these gadgets instead of a polling card and we could get a general election over with in five minutes.

With the rain pelting down outside this afternoon I turned to television instead of doing something outdoors and virile. I watched the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Despite having been a cheering bystander at the East African Safari Rally, having been to Ingliston on occasion and having regularly attended the Beveridge Park road races as a first-aider in my youth I'm not really a motor racing fan. There's a lot of hanging about hoping you won't go deaf, catching sight every so often of you're not sure who flashing past and not having a clue who's winning.

Television changes all that. You see the race overall. You are in the cockpit. You are backstage in the pit lane. You meet the rich and famous as they mill around on the grid before the start. Someone tells you what's going on. I really enjoyed it and the tussle for second place in the last couple of laps was nearly as exciting for the viewer as it was for the drivers.

I don't know what it takes to be a good racing driver but from one thing I saw you don't have to be too bright. When they pull into the pits and the team swarm around the car changing wheels and filling it up in seconds there is always a man who holds out a large lollipop in front of the car. He takes it away when everything is done. I saw one that read BRAKE - NO THROTTLE when the car pulled up and was turned over as the operation neared its end to read 1ST GEAR - THROTTLE. He must have been the guy who drove off in an earlier race with the fuel pipe still attached.

But what about the circuit! Magnificent. Built from scratch in 22 months. Get that project team over here and we could have the trams for Christmas.