HOME from the Hebrides, glorious in its haste-ye-back improbability and welcoming in its autumn embrace. They kept the severe weather warnings until we'd returned.

Holiday reading included Andrew Marr's autobiography, in which the former BBC political correspondent writes of his journalistic head wetting in Newcastle. The training centre was run by John Brownlee, a "larger than life cigar chewing newspaper musketeer". Brownlee believed, says Andy - and believed correctly - that to be a journalist was the greatest luck in the world.

Clearly the young Marr was well taught. Columnists, he concludes, are the trade's aristocracy. "The fall of the editorial and the rise of the columnist is like the collapse of the late medieval Catholic dogma before the rag-tag collection of itinerant roadside preachers."

Itinerant roadside preachers? The highways and byways stretch cheerfully onward...

THERE is, of course, writing and handwriting. Other holiday reading included a confession in The Guardian from former Downing Street media adviser Tim Allan, he who dropped poor John Humphrys in the Corporate clarts.

After the 1997 election, said Allan, Tony Blair's father sent a letter of congratulation signed "Your loving pa." Unable to read it, Downing Street replied to Mr L Pa and suggested that he contact his MP or Citizens' Advice Bureau.

Readers, alas, complain similarly about Gadfly's always-hand-written replies. Despite the best possible tuition from Tom Coates at Timothy Hackworth juniors, copperplate remains something from which the polliss eats his sausages; the cheap ballpoint has much for which to answer.

AMONG those things which make the Hebrides different is that Sunday still remains special, and not some sort of commercial seventh heaven.

Many ferry services still don't operate on the Sabbath, many tourist attractions remain Sunday shuttered. The influence of the Free Church of Scotland - known as the Wee Frees and not (honestly) to be confused with the Wee Wee Frees - remains strong.

Women wear bonnets to church, the readings are from the King James bible, the singing from metrical psalm book. The Stornoway Gazette has recently had a spirited correspondence over whether it is scripturally acceptable for women to wear trousers.

We did manage a Sunday evening drink at the Stein Inn on Skye, but only to the radio accompaniment of One Hundred Hymns for Today.

Nearer My God To Thee? Well, possibly.

AT Dunvegan, on Skye's west coast, a thatched museum is dedicated to the Giant MacAskill, a local lad whose growth to 6ft 9ins tall was said to have something to do with his insistence on a bowl of crowdie - oats and water - with every meal.

Museum owner Peter MacAskill insists upon opening seven days a week, the charge of flagrant disrespect for the Sabbath also levelled at the Queen and Prince Philip for attending an equestrian event after church.

The rather smaller MacAskill is unmoved. "If I go to hell I go in good company," he writes. "I suppose the Queen will go in through the front door, and I'll have to go round the back."

THE other problem's midges, particularly about now. They are not, of course, to be confused with gadflies which are generally harmless little creatures, especially as the wings droop a bit.

At Glenfinnan, on the road to the isles, a shop sells candles which it swears ("Ask the locals") keep the pesky little things at bay.

In the window of Mallaig Co-op, Calor advertises an omnivorous device - www.midgeater.co.uk - claimed to devour them like a bairn eating popcorn.

At Tarbert, on the Isle of Harris, they sell postcards headed "The Bane of Scotland" and depicting, grotesquely enlarged, the head of a female midge. Scientists studying them, the card adds, have been bitten between 2,000-3,000 times every hour.

We spent an agreeable couple of nights at the Tables Hotel in Dunvegan, run since April by Ian and Nicky Henderson from Stockton.

Ian, computer buff, helped design the observatory at Thorpe Thewles, near Stockton, and hopes to create a niche market for astronomers. Skye at night, as it were.

An expert in five months, he reckons it's the female midge which causes the trouble and that it's exhaled carbon dioxide which attracts them. Once bitten, however, there may be an even simpler explanation.

While the lady of this house was chewed like a toffee bar at a threepenny matinee, the column remained altogether unscathed.

Like gentlemen, midges prefer blondes.

THE Ashes regained and Richie Benaud's British television career apparently over, David Armstrong in Barnard Castle recalls travels a little further afield.

Between Vic le Comte and Billom in the south-east of Clermont Ferrand in France, lies the hamlet of Benaud. ("I've been through it, but unfortunately haven't a photograph.")

It was from there, says David, that a 19th century farm worker travelled to Bordeaux to join the navy. His name was Jean, he told them; asked his surname, he replied with that of his native village.

In Australia, Jean jumped ship, prospered and is the revered commentator's great great grandfather. Richie is mayor of the village and president of the French Cricket Association (not, presumably, to be confused with the French cricket association.)

David, retired head of Deerness Valley comprehensive in Ushaw Moor, does have a photograph of the village of Beaurepaire in the Rhone valley - which in vain he tried to have twinned with the former mining village of Bearpark, originally Beaurepaire, west of Durham.

For some reason, the French didn't want to know.

ANOTHER sobering note from Alan Archbold in Sunderland. "At a recent meeting of OSHABOT, the biggest club in the world, the conversation turned to beer prices. When I was 18 a pint cost 1/8d, exactly 12 for a quid. Forty years on, you're lucky to get one for £2 - up 24 times. Another 40 years and it'll be £50 a pint. Pensions department, please note."

OSHABOT? Old Sods Having a Beer or Two.

....and finally, a riddle. Heading back over the border on Saturday we spotted near Berwick-upon-Tweed a large road sign to Conundrum, on the Northumberland side.

The Oxford English Dictionary supposes the word's origin to be "lost", but supposes that it could have been a classical joke by students at Oxford University.

Alternatively, says the OED, a conundrum is "A thing that one is puzzled over the name, a what d'ye call it."

What d'ye call it? Border line theories much welcomed.

Published: 14/09/2005