I find this suggestion that we are only five degrees away from each other quite fascinating.
To explain: it's about two complete strangers, wherever they are in the world, never having more than five "friend of a friend" links between them. As the online social networking service Facebook puts it: "When considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rainforest, a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend."
Facebook has conducted a careful analysis of 721 million of its users (over 10 per cent of the world's population!) talking to each other online, and has concluded that 90 per cent of them are separated by five degrees, or even less, from each other.
But the suggestion that we are all a lot closer to each other in terms of friendships and relationships is not at all new.
As long ago as 1929, the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy suggested in his short story "Chains" that all of humanity was probably no more six degrees apart.
At the time it was a pretty astonishing notion, and not everyone took it seriously, yet today he has almost certainly been proved right.
While today the internet and mobile phones make near-instant global communication between individuals an everyday reality, and therefore make the five degrees of separation more understandable, you cannot help but wonder how Karinthy worked out his hypothesis back in 1929. Truly he was before his time.
In passing it is worth noting that Karinthy is also famous for his translation of A A Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh into Hungarian ("Micimack").
This established the book's cult status in the country - one which leads to generations of Hungarians knowing and loving Eeyore (Fles) rather better than they do the six degrees of separation theory...
Anyway - all of this would be a gentle ramble, but for the Halkirk Games when I was a parliamentary candidate back in the summer of 1998.
It was my business to try to meet as many locals as possible. After all, I am not from Caithness and I could hardly expect people to give me their vote unless they had got to know me a little bit.
Thus I entered the joint Clan Gunn and Clan Sinclair tent, where Lord Caithness and the Commander of Clan Gunn were doing their chieftains' bit, and happily accepted a proffered dram.
As I sipped the Old Pulteney, I introduced myself to the people around me, one of whom was sporting extremely smart Sinclair trews.
He told me that he was Nick Sinclair and that he came from Edinburgh; and this was where, technically speaking, I rather blundered.
You see Nick was black - and in response to his saying that he came from Edinburgh, I said what I shouldn't have, and asked him where he came from originally.
Luckily he didn't mind a bit, and answered "Jamaica".
"Oh goodness yes, ha ha!" Realising my clumsiness, I was now prattling: "Yes, yes, you know I had Sinclair cousins in Jamaica. Nice people, I see them from time to time, er..."
Nick smiled indulgently; he wasn't terribly interested in my cousins, but by way of good manners he asked if they still lived in Jamaica. Oh my no, that was generations back - I told him that they farmed in Perthshire.
Nick looked directly at me. "Ah, now would that be Donald Sinclair at Balmalcolm farm near Balbeggie?"
Startled, I confirmed that this was indeed the family. Nick beamed at me.
"Donald is my cousin - so you are my cousin! I am very pleased to meet you!"
"Typical," I could hear John Thurso muttering behind me. "Jamie's now got the ethnic vote."
So while global communications make us five degrees away from each other - and will probably further reduce this to four, or even three, as time passes - the fact remains that, for whatever reason, there are links out there that have been in place for many years, and my cousin Nick is the living proof of it.
Alas, though we subsequently met up in Edinburgh during my time as an MSP, we eventually lost touch.
In fact I haven't seen him for a long time. But perhaps, taking an interest in Clan Sinclair and the North of Scotland, he reads The Northern Times.
Are you out there, Nick? I hope that we can stay in touch in future - not one or two degrees apart, but directly.
In closing, one last thing about Winnie-the-Pooh.
When I learnt Latin at Tain Academy, our teacher Ross Napier (father of Judith Napier, writer of the splendid "Jude's Food" cookery column that used to be in this paper) used to quote from Winnie Ille Pu, the Latin translation of Winnie the Pooh.
And who carried out the translation of this book into Latin in 1958? Step forward one Alexander Lenard - or Sndor Lénrd, to give him his proper name - and guess what, like our six-degrees man Frigyes Karinthy, he was a Hungarian.
Two Hungarians, then: one took the children's classic into Hungarian, the other took it further on to Latin.
Too bad that Judith Napier has stopped writing Jude's Food - otherwise I'd have asked her to write a goulash recipe for next week. In Latin.
Still, you can always buy her recipe book. It too is called Jude's Food.
It would make a lovely Christmas present, and you can buy it from The Northern Times, Golspie, or in local shops.
