Membership of Scotland's oldest naturist club is shrinking ... is it any wonder?

The Scottish Outdoor Club, which is based at Inchmurrin Island in the middle of Loch Lomond, has seen its membership plummet, apparently because 21st-century naturists are wimps, preferring sunnier climes to the more bracing conditions in Scotia.

Hence the announcement of a membership drive in the hope that the club, which has a mere 30 members, will revivify. New recruits can look forward to indoor darts and table tennis when the weather turns nasty, although there are obvious perils involved with the former.

In another existence I once despatched a young, female reporter to Barnton on the outskirts of Embra where, on a dark November night in an unmemorable bungalow, a gaggle of naturists gathered to chew the fat and swig beer. The reporter, who was an antipodean (What's that got to do with it? Ed), was given only one instruction: on no account take off your togs.

This she achieved but, she confessed, with some difficulty, especially when all around were starkers. I am reminded of that HG Wells story about the sighted man in the country of the blind.

THERE are those, I'm told, who think that my dear friend Cardinal Keith O'Brien is a bit saft in the heid. I am not of their ilk. Indeed, His Cardinalship is a man after my own heart, who says what he thinks and does not give a damn about the consequences, be it gay marriage, abortion or contraception.

His latest intervention concerns Posh Davy Cameron whose fiscal policies His Cardinalship says are "immoral". Quite why anyone thinks he ought not say such patently obvious things is a mystery to me. But, then, so is much of modern life.

What does truly bemuse me, however, is why, when His Cardinalship is happy to make such utterances, other church leaders appear to be struck dumb. Take the Kirk, for instance. What does it think? About anything? Does it have any views or is it simply pretending to be dead and hoping that no-one will notice? If so, it ought to be relieved of its misery.

ANENT – etcetera!!! – phone hacking. Where will it all end? With one's savings earning a pittance in a bank account, it seems the best chance one has of acquiring a nest egg is to be a victim of News Corp's snoops.

The latest winners of the jackpot could well be my old chums Jocky McConnell, erstwhile first meenister, and Joanie McAlpine, Gnat EmSPee, both of whom have been told by PC Plod that their numbers were found in the notebook of Glenn Mulcaire, the Noos of the Screws' hacker-in-chief.

Ms McAlpine, of course, worked for Noos Corp, at the Sunday Times's Teuchter supplement, which Loopy Rupe wisely decided to close with handsome redundancy cheques going to those and such as those. Now Ms McAlpine may be in line for another fat cheque from the godfaither of Wapping. How's that for luck!

IT never rains but it pours. By all accounts Ingerland is as wet as a wean's sponge. Weather forecasters, who one month ago were bemoaning the drought, are today predicting a flood of biblical proportions and are telling the same householders they told to stop hosing their dahlias to start building boats.

Meanwhile, civil strife is feared as neighbours turn upon each other, not simply for using precious water on their lawns but for concreting gardens to provide spaces for cars. It's estimated that thousands of gardens are being lost every year in this manner which, needless to say, I deplore.

In ye olden days, a garden was both a larder and a gallery, a feast for the stomach and the eyes. My grandfather grew everything in his, including, exotically, carrots. Ever mindful of the fact that the water supply was irregular, he arranged for any excess to run off his shed's roof and into a butt, a contraption which looked like something Bateman could have imagined.

To illustrate the preciousness of water, my grandpa made us stand outside in the rain with our tongues hanging out which, he said, is what they did in the Sahara. I was always gullible.

TO London where, one gathers, the cost of living is so high you have to be a Russian oligarch, Greek shipowner or Chelsea footballer to get by. According to my dear amigo, Libby Purves, "a shoddy one-bed flat on the gloomier side of a new block is £325,000 at least, and snapped up in no time".

Apparently, London is so popular because it's not Athens, Moscow or Kabul where rioters throw bricks at banks and a suicide bomber could be behind you in the queue for sausage rolls.

On a recent visit I dropped into a Waitrose. It was early evening and smartly dressed people were madly foraging for dinner, of which pink vintage champagne appeared to be an essential ingredient. How different from my sojourn there in the 1970s when one had £72 to pay the rent, buy a season ticket for the Tube and keep oneself fed and lubricated. Mainly, I ate black pudding and baked beans and much good it has done me.

INSPIRED by Keep Scotland Beautiful's injunction to give this peedie plook a spring clean, I dragged the Home Secretary to a verdant part of the kingdom which of late has become despoiled by detritus. Perhaps because I was carrying a litter picker-upper, the HS at first opted to walk a few paces behind me. Such is the lot of those of us who are trying to save the planet. But, doubtless stricken by conscience, she soon embraced the cause and between us we filled two black bags with assorted rubbish. If everyone did the same we could fill five million bags in no time.

We refused, however, to remove the wee green plastic bags that dog owners leave dangling from trees like Christmas decorations. What's all that about?

Cardinal O'Brien is an evangelist for speaking your mind

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