Groups last night in Aberdeen. The trip was enlivened by the closing of the Tay Bridge which meant a two and a half hour journey stretched to five hours via Glasgow. One poor chap who was clearly doing the same tortuous journey as me, did the whole thing with a giant wrapped Christmas present clasped in his arms. So it could have been worse.
I wound up the second group - 18-24 year old men - with a couple of charts they had to fill out. One chap filled his out super-efficiently, filling the tick boxes with random numbers fuelled by the three pints he'd poured down his throat during the hour and a half session. So he decided to make small talk.
First he turned his attention to The English and launched into a tirade about how useless they were. Various uncomplimentary descriptions of the English were shared with the table of Aberdonians - who focused ever harder on their worksheets. He then crowed about their unsuccessful football performance. "Even we got more points than they did." I nodded politely.
He turned to me. "What about you? Do you have to do these things down there (England) as well?" I smiled pleasantly: "yes, we cover the whole of the UK". "And how do they take to you? Is it a nightmare?" "Well I don't find it's too difficult, being English myself." He looked astonished and spluttered insincere apologies. The rest of the table chortled furtively.
I have rarely been mistaken for a Scot. Maybe never in fact. I am surprised that the one to mistake me spoke in almost the broadest Aberdonian accent that you could ever hope to find.
Still, the master ended up a train to Inverness yesterday opposite a woman who was (self-confessedly) being courted with encoded messages by a man who used to be a dragon.
As the master observed, "it's all part of a week in the life of a qualitative researcher".