Jacquetta

Well, Sunday 24th February was the most brilliant birthday ever: helium balloons, banners, presents, champagne, cake and singing, even a flashing badge (!) - but above all about eight of my closest family and friends making a ridiculous fuss of me. Totally undeserved, but perhaps once in 60 years the delight is somewhat excusable? I was particularly pleased to be able to inhale the helium from the balloons so as to hear the very silly high-pitched voice that results. Must find out how to upload MP3s to this blog so you can share this giggle.

My wonderful son gave me the most generous presents: an iPod shuffle, which I had no idea I wanted but now realise that I can't live without, and a voucher for an hour-long microlight flight. Having reached an age when I am much more interested in collecting experiences than belongings, I can really appreciate what Experience Ecosse, his gift voucher website, has to offer. My resourceful daughter and amazing grand-daughter gave me thoughtful, personal and feminine presents. And my endlessly creative husband has given me a voucher for a Mystery Trip in late March: so far I don't even know which continent, only the dates ... more idc. But I'm hoping that the stunning book of David Doubilet photos is a hint that there'll be some diving ...

And the following Sunday, when I didn't think it could get any better, there was this truly wonderful party for grand-daughter Amy's second birthday. About 7 toddlers and 11 assorted adults all gathered in daughter Helen's flat, and had a ball for a couple of hours. Despite what they say about the Terrible Twos there were surprisingly few tears or tantrums, and we all enjoyed it thoroughly. I'll never forget Amy blowing out the candle on Sheila's and Celia's incredible birthday cake:

Tomorrow I'm off to the Independent Publishers Guild conference in Brighton, which usually makes me feel more like a publisher again. Hope it still works this year!

Today I am 60 years old, and proud of it. It's a pleasingly round number, I'm lucky enough still to have my own teeth, robust good health and at least most of my faculties. And my whole family and four of my closest friends are joining me for a celebration lunch at the Sheriffmuir Inn, my favourite watering-hole near the site of the battle. It's a pub I've been walking to with dogs for over ten years, and we'll walk both ways today.

I don't, however, feel a day older and am getting fed up with the way officialdom has started to talk to me as if all pensioners are doddering, pathetic or faintly imbecile. TransportScotland tells you its bus pass is for "older and disabled people": older than whom? And don't they mean "or" and not "and"? Various letters have been arriving from schemes into which I paid trivial sums many decades ago (having turned self-employed when I was 30) demanding obscure choices to be made, screeching "you are retiring in X days": wrong, I'm not. Actually I've no intention of retiring now, nor in 5 years' time, nor perhaps at all unless my health breaks down. My father finalised his last book when he was 95 years old, and I'm enormously proud of that.

I really love my job, and as long as people go on using our guidebooks I intend to continue publishing them. I suppose I ought to apply for the bus pass and I shall definitely spend any "pension" windfalls (probably on diving kit or a new digital camera). But please, no more talk of retirement as if it's axiomatic. I'm off to Ireland tomorrow to check out changes to the Wicklow Way, one of several new titles we'll be announcing this year: much more fun than retiring. Rant over!

Last Friday, my Apple laser printer stopped working. No reproaches, I've only hammered it daily since 1989, but since my best friend and computer guru Bob Tennent was due next day, I waited to get his confirmation of its death. On Monday I ordered an Epson (6200N) on next-day delivery and spent Tuesday chasing up why it never reached us: we live in the wilds and I was desperate, with our next Rucksack Reader at a printout-demanding stage. On Wednesday it arrived, and thanks to the simplicity of Mac, it was unpacked, installed and working inside 10 minutes ... and then I became uneasy about the landfill angle.

Having recently installed a new, full cartridge in the old Apple printer, I thought I'd offer it back to the lovely people at Supercharge who have been providing my refills all these years. Bill McCormick sounded kindly, but amused. Seems I'm the last customer they have left using this antiquated printer. Oh well, it was worth asking. Before saying goodbye, however, I mentioned that felt from the fixing roller cleaner had wrapped itself around the roller, could that have caused a problem? Like Bob, he thought that impossible, but said it should work without one. So I tried removing it anyway, reconnected everything and was stunned when it sprang into life again: does this presage another 18 years??

So I phoned Bill again, whom I've never met, but who now seems more like a friend than a supplier. He has promised to send free replacement cleaners, and actually seemed happy about the renaissance. Perhaps he thinks we may go for the Guinness Book of Records. So obviously I'll go on buying cartridge refills from him. And after a slight struggle with temptation, I am keeping the elderly Apple printer and letting my husband have the superlative new Epson. OK, the Apple hasn't got anything like the resolution, but for long-service it surely deserves some loyalty. How many Windows users can be using the same printer as 18 years ago?

So my printer is not dead, but resurrected, and recycling has paid off with a knowledge of its innards that I woudn't otherwise have gained. And as for saving the printer after experts thought it was fit only for landfill, I am astounded, but I rejoice.

In this Caribbean paradise, it's still a shock to recognise that today is the haunted "9/11", the day when everybody remembers exactly where they were when that first, deeply shocking footage of suicidal aeroplanes ploughing into the Twin Towers was broadcast repeatedly, almost obsessively. We are still finding out all that it means.

For me, it was the day before my first visit to South America, specifically to Peru to hike three Inca Trails in 10 days. So being deprived of cameras and film at Edinburgh airport seemed a major setback (we publish very visual books which need 70+ photos each). EDI wasn't allowing ANY hand baggage, not even one camera. Two weeks later, after needless worry about X-ray fogged film, I was delighted to find that I had plenty of good shots for our Explore the Inca Trail. Six years on, I am (escapist, perhaps) relieved to be away from television, newspapers and anniversary reminiscences. Like the images of floral tributes, I'm not sure that all that stuff helps us to learn, to regroup and to move on.

Before leaving Scotland, I mentioned to a friend the forthcoming diving on St Lucia , and got a weird "Jetta, don't you ever just chill?" kind of reaction. But I've never known such depths of relaxation as when diving. Today's dive featured a large, friendly turtle, maybe one-metre across, on the wreck of the very photogenic Lesleen M at 21 metres depth (and the water so warm I don't need a wet suit). I'm diving with Island Divers, who combine sea-level relaxation with deep-water professionalism: highly recommended. Can there be anything more deeply chilled-out than swimming with a turtle, stroking a turtle, not even trying to keep up with a turtle?

On arrival in St Lucia, my watch battery packed up. Soon after, I noticed that my travel alarm battery had also succumbed. I already knew that my dive computer battery was sinking too low to be viable (so I borrowed a depth gauge from Island Divers). At home, all this time-uncertainty would have driven me demented, but in St Lucia it simply didn't matter. And the village resort Ti Kaye was just wonderful: once you've stayed there, you'll never want to take a shower indoors again!

We went to a stunning performance of Monteverdi's Vespers yesterday at the Usher Hall. In a world seemingly obsessed with fleeting fashions and newness, it's heart-warming to find that a work composed almost four centuries ago (1610), performed on authentic period instruments, can speak so strongly and directly to its audience in 2007. Conducted by Jordi Savall, the Catalunyan singers were memorable, the baroque ensemble (La Capella Reial de Catalunya) and surprised us all by performing an encore by Arvo Pärt (2004), movingly introduced by Savall.

Before the concert, waiting in line to buy a programme, we were stunned to recognise the bloke just in front, after he turned round, as Alfred Brendel. Some conversational greeting seemed inevitable. Fortunately we had heard him play the previous evening in this very place, so were not too overawed to mumble something about how much we had enjoyed his concert, only to be told, in his self-deprecating way, that it wasn't a terribly daring programme. (It had been a masterly performance of Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart piano sonatas, plus two Schubert impromptus.) Now you don't want to impose on the world's most famous living pianist, especially not in a programme queue, but we couldn't quite let that pass. Only at the Edinburgh Festival does this kind of encounter take place!

Yesterday was the start of the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, and the most memorable day I have spent there. We began in the Queen's Hall with Jane Irwin and the Hebrides Ensemble. Jane Irwin used to be famous for singing like Janet Baker, but now she's famous for singing like Jane Irwin. Her performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder was so moving that the audience was silent and still for a full ten seconds after the sound of its final bars died, before bursting into inevitable applause. Harper's lean arrangement of Mahler's orchestral score for 8 instruments was intriguing and fresh: less is more.

After the interval, the Hebrides Ensemble played Osborne's Balkan Dances and Laments, which they had recently commissioned. It draws on his interest in folk and popular music from the South Balkans, as well as his rigorous classical training, and features a new method of playing the piano: a string is bowed with horsehair, which sounds gimmicky but was very effective. Sandwiched between Mahler and Berio, Nigel Osborne was in good company, musically speaking, and the audience obviously liked the fact that the composer was not only present, but also shook hands with the performers.

Even better, because husband Keir works with Nigel Osborne through the Tapestry Partnership, we had lunch with him in a nearby restaurant, so I got to ask him the questions that had been building up in my head. The conversation ranged widely over Balkan history, James Joyce, his pioneering work in music therapy for child victims of war, his music school in Austria, the Robert Winston conference in Glasgow in September and a dozen other topics. He speaks about a dozen foreign languages more fluently than I'll ever speak a single one, and if he weren't such a modest chap, I'd almost resent so much musical and linguistic talent in just one person.

After lunch, we went to some Fringe theatre, and finally to On Danse, the most eclectic and athletic dance programme I've ever seen. Montalvo-Hervieu is a blazingly creative Spanish-French partnership, and their company marries creative video animations and multi-talented live dancers in an improbable but brilliant fusion. Hip-hop, classical ballet, break-dancing and trampolining all blend in this choreography, to a background of music by Rameau. The playful computer-based morphing and antics of the animals made us laugh out loud at times, with elephants pirouetting on tightropes and storks doing gymnastics. There was a subtle and surreal interplay between the live dancers and their filmed (naked) selves, via the catwalk, halfway up the massive upstage screen. It was utterly different from any other ballet.

On Sunday, I resumed my West Highland Way hike, starting from Crianlarich with the goal of hiking the 48+ miles to Fort William by Tuesday afternoon, taking the train back to the car back to Dunblane. Logistically, it all worked perfectly, with overnights at the Inveroran Hotel and in Kinlochleven. The weather, however, was something else. Remember that great forecast for August? Well, it didn't apply to those three days, at least not in the Western Highlands. Apart from the fact that trudging through soaking ground in horizontal rain isn't much fun, it certainly thwarted my hopes of getting photographs for the new edition of my book. Of course I could and did check the validity of the directions, but I suspect I'll end up having to go back in better weather. It's really frustrating, having climbed the Devil's Staircase, knowing that you are looking north over the splendid scenery of the Mamores, to see nothing but cloud, rain and mist!

On Monday morning I had walked from Inveroran to the King's House, where a nice thing happened over my lunchtime bowl of soup. Being in the business, I always look to see which guidebooks and maps people are using, and had been talking to some Danes with a really old Footprint map that they had used 9 years ago and were still finding good this time around. A guy from Paisley then told me about this neat guidebook he had, with drop-down map and signpost graphics and all waterproof. I waited until he got it out before producing mine and saying "snap", revealing myself as author and publisher. Even better, he too was using it second time around, it having rained both times, and although it wasn't pristine, it certainly didn't owe him anything. He thought this was an amazing coincidence. It certainly made my day.

On arrival in Kinlochleven, I fell into conversation with a fellow guest who clearly knew the Way rather well. I asked how often he had done it, but he couldn't remember "about 15 or 16 times" he thought. This underlines the fact that this walk has something special.

After my last hike, I took up the issue of how the official website recommends maps, by the way, and I am delighted to report that as a direct result it no longer lists the 10 OS Explorer maps. So if my friends Bees, Brad and Marc are reading, they can see that I listened, learned and acted - even though they had bought the wrong guidebook!

The West Highland Way was my very first long walk, in May 1998, and it was a revelation: I and three friends had a wonderful week. Indirectly (and via Kilimanjaro) it led to the creation of Rucksack Readers, the guidebook business that now more-or-less earns my keep. Naturally, the WHW was one of the first books that we produced (in 2000), and I updated it for a 2nd edition back in 2003. With stocks are running low, I thought I'd re-walk the entire Way for the next edition. The southern portion is accessible from Dunblane, so I'm doing it in stages: last week was Milngavie to Balmaha (20 miles), then Balmaha to Inversnaid ("only" 14 miles, but more tiring because of the terrain).

Yesterday, with a good forecast, was Inversnaid to Crianlarich, so husband Keir kindly gave me a lift to Inveruglas (having dropped off my car at Crianlarich en route). That let me reach Inversnaid by ferry across Loch Lomond, which was a glorious start. A robin made my day by posing on a waymarker; I'm holding my breath while reaching for the camera. Then it was splendid walking along Loch Lomondside, noticeably easier than last time (in May 1999 I rewalked the whole way, with rain morning noon and night, but when you're charity-sponsored, giving up is not an option). It wasn't just better weather or that I'm more experienced, the Way actually has become easier, with bridges over burns and boardwalks over awkward bits. Some mixed feelings about the wildness tamed. Also, now that I'm using my poles properly, powering along using upper body strength, it's like having an extra gear.

From time to time I walked with three lovely guys from down south, who were doing it for the first time. Bees seemed very fit, and I think Brad and Marc were wondering why they had let Bees decide the important things like how many days to take (six is ambitious for first-timers with heavy packs)! I enjoyed the chat, and it's amazing how quickly the miles sped by. If they remember to email it, I'll add the photo I took of them. I was surprised (and indignant) that having read on the official website that a map is essential, they had assumed that they had to buy all ten OS Explorers (at £7.99 each)! I showed them my handy little Footprint map which costs £4.95, shows the whole route, is waterproof and fits your trouser pocket. Since they hadn't yet got their Explorers out of the rucksack, guess which is more useful? Tempted as I was to linger over lunch with them at Beinglas Farm, I knew I had to bash on to Crianlarich, from where I'll resume soon to complete the northern half.

Today is Friday the 13th, and the news is both sad, and predictable. A rare and beautiful bird of prey has been killed by the turning blade of the ugly, pointless wind farm on the Braes of Doune. Red kites were persecuted almost to extinction in the past by gamekeepers, although we now know that they mainly eat carrion. Various reintroduction projects, including the one at nearby Argaty, have worked hard to save the red kite. Now we are killing them in a different, 21st century way.

Like long-distance walking, the opportunity to see rare birds such as red kites and osprey is known to attract environmentally aware visitors. Wind farms are springing up in Scotland because of crazy government subsidies that make them attractive to landowners, while ruining our most precious asset: our scenery. Now we know that they not only could kill rare birds, but actually have done, will the tide of public opinion turn against them before it's too late for other skylines?

I'm not against renewable energy. We have plenty of water hereabouts, and schemes like Cruachan have proved that hydro power can provide electricity when the grid is under pressure without despoiling our countryside. Water power is controllable, unlike wind power which is notoriously fickle; wind power is least likely to be productive when power is most needed - in cold, high-pressure winter weather. So let's have more hydro power and save our scenery, as well as the red kites.

My husband, Keir Bloomer, retired yesterday from his job as Chief Executive for Clackmannanshire. The Council held a lovely presentation for him in the afternoon: it was terrific to hear how many other people think he's a great bloke too. Then we went on to dinner to celebrate, or at least those who hadn't been up all night with the General Election count did. Foregoing the pleasures of being Returning Officer, as at previous General Elections, on Thursday turned out to be one of his better decisions!

Tomorrow I set off for the Kintyre Way, having collected my co-author Sandra Bardwell from Perth today. The plan is to leave at 6 a.m. to drive to Tarbert, drop Sandy there, drive myself to Claonaig so that she walks Day 1 while I do Day 2, then taxi back to collect car and Sandy and write up our notes on the laptop. Working this way, we expect to cover the entire 89-mile route plus spurs and including a day-trip to Gigha by the end of Thursday. This should let us collect all the material and photos that we need for our forthcoming Rucksack Readers book The Kintyre Way.

It may sound ambitious, but at least it's an answer to all those prophets of doom who say that Keir's retirement will create a problem for me in having him around all day ... It looks like he too will be busy with freelance work, and it'll be at least a fortnight before we will coincide at Landrick on a weekday.