What’s going on with the weather? In London last week I was suited and booted to go before the cameras and my wardrobe was very much fire and forget because of what I was doing.

However, had I more time, I would certainly have packed my shorts and Runrig t-shirt to inflict my base flesh on the innocent lieges of the great city.

At one point it was so hot, I had to duck for cover in one of the main railway stations of the metropolis. I returned to the flood plains of the Millig no longer peely-wally, rather a hue of mature chestnut.

And last Saturday I ventured along the Riviera to Dumbarton to take in the big match between my home town team, Inverness Caledonian Thistle (although there was never any mention of Thistle in my house) and my home team Dumbarton, at the theatre of dreams that is the Marbill Coaches Stadium.

It’s a moniker that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like the Maracanã, does it? And as I sat there bedecked in boots, jeans, fleece, parka, hat and gloves, there were supporters there in shorts. Shorts! You expect shorts on posties because they’re well hard. But football fans on the foreshore of the Clyde delta?

The wee thermometer gauge in my car reads well into the high teens, the skies are blue and there is nary a breath of wind. I am flummoxed.

But this is good news because the central heating won’t be going on in Schloss Edwards any time soon and certainly not before I can see my breath.

Georgia is one of those places I have always wanted to visit but probably never will now.

We should all be paying very close attention to what’s going on in the Caucuses because while it is a long way away, it is something of a litmus test.

Recent elections in Tblisi were narrowly won by the pro-Russian governing party, amid loud claims of vote-rigging by the Europe-aligned opposition.

Earlier, the people of Moldova narrowly voted to turn west rather than east and commit to joining the EU. The latter result is one we should welcome, the former should be eyed with suspicion if not fear.

The last thing we need is for Russia’s President Putin to increase his power base and further destabilise the world.

The only event worse for us all, thousands of miles away or not, is for Donald Trump to be re-elected.

Kamala Harris has to be the next US President, or we are all in a very bad place.

My social media feed is full of pet owners going on about the impact of fireworks on Sparky and Tiddles as we approach bonfire night.

Yes, pets are nice, and very important to some people and it’s a shame if they are impacted by noise.

However, I am more concerned about old people who are terrified of sudden bangs and flashes and military veterans for whom the next few days will be a living, waking, breathing, pulsing nightmare which may result in a flashback to some hideous experience years ago, suddenly brought straight to the here and now.

Fireworks take me back to my time soldiering in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the noises and flashes I encountered were not to be celebrated, rather dreaded, because they meant something far more deadly.

And I know, particularly in a military town like Helensburgh, that I am not alone in that view.