Fifty years ago we all admired the new Forth road bridge – a modern, elegant addition to a proud Scotland.
Today it’s out of service until the new year, owing to structural failures. So commiserations to Embra drivers, thousands of whom will have to find a new route to work, or take the train or a temporary ferry.
Come on, Nicola! Get it sorted!
It looks as if the EU’s Shengen days are numbered. 
Thank goodness, I hear you say. Sanity returns.
But be careful what you wish for. I remember well the queues of stinking lorries at border crossings, waiting interminably for the cynical attention of the customs crews, who now and then threw a sickie or struck in the name of solidarity with something or other. Train drivers, air-traffic controllers, farmers…..
And if you were unlucky enough to be carrying goods requiring their attention, it was ‘back of the line for you, my lad, car or no car’. I have spent whole half-days between Belgium and France, Holland and Germany. Friday afternoons in summer were always particularly unpleasant among short-tempered drivers eager to get home and short-tempered customs officers reluctant to let them.
Ho hum.
