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Our editor, Cornelia Hohenlohe, writes:

'Hojotoho!'
That's Brunnhilde's battle-cry.  Wagner, 'The Ring' cycle.

Birgit Nilsson did it best, to my ear.  Where others might ululate, she managed a blood-curling yodel.

'Hojo-toho!'

I like to think she practised it on that Swedish farm of hers where she grew up, imagining herself doing it on some opera stage one day - and then, once she was on the opera stage, make-believing she was back under that vast Swedish sky, calling way up to the Arctic Circle.

Yet again, in this morning's post, notification that I once again have failed to be successful in the lottery for tickets at Bayreuth.  That's seven years I've been waiting.  Nothing like disappointment to whet your appetite.

My mind's been wandering.  Could we put on one of the operas here at the Ca'd'Oro?  A sung-through version?

On radio somebody was talking about a famous Brunnhilde, years ago, who didn't just lead her white horse limply into the wings as she exited.  So rapt in the music as she was, she spontaneously jumped on to her very live mount, and - as conductor and director and fellow singers stared in abject horror - rode into the on-stage flames of Valhalla, preparing to save this world.

Should Brunnhilde not be on this editorial page, instead of the woodcut of a parish-pump I commissioned in Edinburgh in 1972?  Back then I wished to be ironic, but not 100% so, which was why I went to a very good engraver.  No, I like that pump.

Or might Brunnhilde go riding across the front page, flag held aloft, on which flutters the single word Days?

Would that have to be Tagen?

My mind meanders.  I recall reading somewhere that the Nazis had plans to team up with the Nationalists here in Scotland.  There used to be stories of German voices being heard in the vicinity, both just before WW2 and during it.  Nobody could tell who was being entertained in those big houses tucked up the glens.  A rumour went around that Rudolf Hess has been on his way to these parts when he was obliged to parachute into a field outside Glasgow.  (Another irony: Carnbeg housed an internment camp from 1941 onwards.  Memories from readers - and internees - welcomed.)

It's taken three generations for Germanness to get a good press in Carnbeg.  This year we celebrate ten years of being twinned with Urwald in Bavaria, and a very good thing too.  What about exchanging our correspondents for a single edition, getting the German slant on our quaint customs?   Hmm.  I'll think about it, and - of course - come to a very democratic decision: on your behalf, dear readers.

Meanwhile, I have four more hours of Wagner to wallow in.  (The version by Von Karajan, whom I once encountered at the Edinburgh Festival.  Of which, more in another blog.)  As I listen, I shall be planning how to save the world, beginning with Carnbeg.

'Hojotoho!'