The best laid plans of mice and men…sometimes work. If mine do, I will be leaving Scotland at the end of the month to go home to family and friends in the U.S.

Scotland is a lovely country with lovely people. There are things about Scotland that I will miss. Fourteen of my 51 books are set in Scotland. These include the two most recent, “The Moss Murders,” “Body in a Bush Murder,” four Fog Buster mysteries featuring older amateur sleuths with age-related disabilities, “Body From the Scottish Castle Mystery,” three Texas Miz Mike mysteries, a stand-alone one-of-a-kind mystery, “Killer Conversations,” and one of the funniest, “Lost For Murder.”

Living in Scotland has enriched my life. Not all enriching experiences are positive. Learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, navigate roundabouts, drive a big car on narrow roads lined with stone fences, and “hold it” on road trips because there are few public bathrooms have all been challenging. The hardest challenge has been learning to live with nearly daily rain, grey skies, cool to cold temperatures “summer” to winter and all seasonal variations in between—these have been teeth-gritting challenges. As I write this blog at 10 a.m. in the morning, half of Savannah’s towels are already wet and are hanging around the house on every protrusion that sticks out far enough to hold them while they dry.

Scottish words are lovely and it’s been fun to learn them and use them. Feeling blue? Call up a friend for a blether. Angry? Don’t be glaikit. Control your temper and don’t cause a stooshie. Day dreaming? Don’t haver the day away. Fence a bit shoogly? Reinforce it. Sick? Are you peely wally (physical illness) or scunnered (fed up)? Someone invite you to tea? Find out if they are serving hot tea and biscuits (cookies), or if they are serving the evening meal. If you make a mistake about this, they will think you are numpty.

The fourteen books I’ve written with a Scottish background take advantage of the richness of Scottish words. The most recent one, “The Moss Murders,” perhaps more than the others. To me it’s a lovely, almost poetic book, in spite of being a murder mystery. And if you read it and are “blown away” by whodunit, you are not alone. I didn’t know myself until the last couple of chapters. I had a different culprit in mind when I started writing, but the characters took over and wrote their own baddie—which left me scrambling to go back into the front of the book to plant clues for readers.

As I walked Savannah in the rain this morning and watched the advancing army of umbrellas of different heights as children headed for school, I thought about things (besides family and friends) that will delight me to see again. Joining the list were amphibians and reptiles; frogs, tadpoles, turtles, lizards, snakes. They must have frogs here in Scotland because they have a marvelous word for them—puddocks, but for nearly 15 years, I have searched burn after burn (streams or creeks in the U.S.) without ever finding one. It is too cold for lizards and turtles although some people keep tortoises as house pets.

Leaving Scotland will be a sad time and I will dearly miss the friends I’ve made. It will be a happy time, too, because I haven’t seen my family in nine years—nor have I seen a lizard, snake, or turtle. And when I attempt to explain some of the common wildlife we have in the U.S.—raccoons, skunks, armadillos—to our children’s church class, they are as bamboozled as I was when I met my very first roundabout and drove around, and around, and around, and around, because I didn’t know how to get out of it. I fear the children think I’m clyping.

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1.

It’s time for me to get back to my wonderful family. And to a land of warm temperatures, and amphibians, and reptiles.

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