Prompted by these enquiries I checked up on the site myself only to find that the usual rubbish on the homepage had been replaced by a photography website.

As JT readers already know, your editor unfailingly, er, fails, to keep up with the zeitgeist but more, I’d failed to keep up with the fact that our Webmistress had experimented with the site the better to display Tarquin’s dalliances in the medium of photography.

In other words, she made an arse of it, replacing the priceless musings of Scotland’s premier satirist with a gallery of snaps what Tarquin done took wiv his camera.

Apologies all round and special thanks to those readers who took the time to write in.

It might surprise readers to learn that I never look at the site from update to update mainly because, having written the words thereon, I know what they say, thus liberating me from the need to look at the thing.

With the benefit of software I do occasionally click on a link from our counter account to see what readers have been reading, if that makes any sense. What’s slightly worrying from a synaptic point of view is the number of times I re-read something from the archive and I can’t remember having written it. As my late Granny was prone to say at every available opportunity, "auld age disnae come by its’sel."   Meaning, I think, that the advance of years brings with it physical and mental infirmity.

On the physical front, I’m certainly well-ahead on the deepening decrepitude score. Unaccountably, I can no longer stay up ‘til dawn dancing and drinking like a fool, neither can I effortlessly complete a 10k in record-beating time. Actually, I’ve just lied about one of those past achievements, but I’ll leave it to you to work it out.

On matters mental, I think I can confidently report that I’m ahead of the game on that front as well. I’ve noticed over the last few years, that my previously comprehensive vocabulary has shrunk somewhat, to be replaced, when required, by recourse to that one great Scottish contribution to the English language,

I refer of course to "Hingmy".

By way of example, I may wish to enquire of my SO, "Dearest, where, pray tell, is the remote control for the TV?"

That’s what I want to say, what comes out is : " Erm, have you seen the hingmy fur the hingmy?"

It's only by drawing on her past experience, teaching English as a foreign language to a troop of chimpanzees, that she is able to intuit the implicit meaning and reply : "It's on the coffee table, in front of you, where you left it."