Brothers betrayed by toilet paper

A decade ago rational members of the wider Bonden family urged me and my two brothers to see more of each other. It was, they said, what normal relations did. Thus began a series of orgies at Good Food Guide restaurants all over the country leading to enormous credit-card debt. Last weekend we spent three nights at the remote lodge of a lairdish castle south-west of Oban (ie, in Scotland)

We self-catered our dinners, or rather Sir Hugh did while Brother X (who is not of the blogging community) and I washed up. The place names alone suggest what an alien part of the British Isles we had strayed into: close to an exhilarating cart-track short cut we passed through Ardanstur, Brother X (a long-time yachtist) looked fondly at a Rassy 29 at the Craobh Haven marina, we contemplated but rejected using the ferry to the island of Luing.

We did take the 150 m ferry crossing to a tiny island with the disappointingly anglicised name of Easdale but the disappointment was purely linguistic. In the pub a half-lobster salad cost £13.95 and a salad based on five giant crab claws £6.95.

There were downsides. To Brother X’s outrage we were vouchsafed a mere four or five sheets of toilet paper each – the potential for a genuine anti-social crisis since none of us had brought this normally ignored but ultimately vital commodity. Also Brother X was never able to rest easy about the quality of wine he’d brought. He castigated his Bordeaux as “similar” and refused to be comforted by the excellence of a Meursault and a 2001 Bordeaux with a volatile bouquet that suggested a genuinely mature claret.

More on Prague (its food, beer, text messages, trams, etc) to follow.