By this time the grannies were a little tipsy and I must still be as I can't get rid of this line.....

Grandson was groaning at the traditionally awful cracker joke.

I'll never make a wildlife photographer. The birds are so timid they seem to know when I'm looking at them even when I'm behind double glazing and sitting really still, but I do like trying.

After three Christmas Concerts, several trips into the Big(er) Town for pressies, and four trips to the Post Office with parcels, I still hadn't really got the Christmas spirit until this morning when I gave the birds their breakfast and sat watching them enjoying their peanuts. Suddenly I felt all warm, full of goodwill and in a mood to enjoy being with people - in short I felt how we're supposed to feel, Christian, Pagan, pantheist or whatever, on this mid-winter festival day.

It may have had something to do with not being responsible for the cooking.

Thrilling nws of union!!

Oh my goodness! While I've been in limbo the others thave been getting out and about, taking beautiful photos and, in one case Getting MARIED!!!!! Congratulations Gillian and your very fortunate DJ. He's got himself a Good Woman. I'm thrilled.

Home at last.

This sequence does something to mark the progress of the last month - good grief is it that long since I moved? The house seemed totally sterile and Trust House Forte to begin with,with its new floor and nw paint and the aura of the last obsessively clean occupant (my daughter) but when the spice cupboard (it has been with me since I got married in 1966) arrived things started to improve and now there is even sluts wool under the bed. I feel much more at home! The horrible week of snow, during which I couldn't see my car, only its snowcar form on the front parking, also had an odd way of grounding me - birds arrivd in flocks for the nuts and crumbs offered, and, let's face it, I was VERY pleased to be completely warm and completely alone once I got home instead of a bit chilly in a drafty flat above the shop! I have ordered half-curtains so I shan't be able to see the boring rooftops and discovered that the neighbours are all very nice. Things have therefore improved in my world. I think I'm back!

Much Whinging.

Grandson and I have been reprising Harry Potter so that we’re in the mood for the next film when it comes out. As I can’t get to sleep at night for thinking of all the things I should be doing toward moving, the stories got mixed with present situation and in hynopompic state one morning it came to me that I am moving in to 6, Privet Drive, Little Whinging (or in my case , Much Whinging) just up the street from the Dursleys. Not that any of my new neighbours bear any resemblance to the Dursleys, either in looks of habits as far as I can tell, but for dramatic licence, to express my feelings, that is what I am calling the poor little house.

It now has a wooden floor in the living room and looks quite smart, though sadly the silly proportions haven’t changed. The living room will be, for me, mainly a dining room with a v. small après manger seating area, and my personal living space will be upstairs in what is a largish bedroom. The television, Mac, desk, couch and silly posters will gravitate there. Five large bookcases from the shop will fit around the ground floor space, one in the kitchen that will be adapted into a dresser. I’ve earmarked some cool half-curtains in the Gudrun Sjödén catalogue for upstairs windows to help eliminate the rooftop views.

So that’s that. Isn’t it?

If only it were that simple and a magic wand could be waved. I just know I’ll get in a panic trying to resituate the TV and get the plugs back in the right holes, then the computer - ditto panic and ill temper. All that unpacking, emptying and flattening cardboard, boxes, finding places for stuff. It will take weeks to settle.
What a fuss I’m making! How many times has Walled Garden moved in the last couple of years without making a fuss? I’m just out of practice.

Old age (or the end of middle age) is making itself painfully felt in the joints. There are two birthdays in Cornwall next week , son and youngest grandson. Then of course the four year old can’t be entirely forgotten. The Ex would (does) send them all money and lets the parents buy the children what they want. I can’t do that of course because I like the idea of them getting excited over parcels (yes, I know my son is 30+ but I still like to think I might warm his heart with proof of motherly love for a moment.) My daughter is too busy to get presents so hers have to be shopped for and then wrapped. Birthday paper and brown parcel paper had to be bought, spellotape located, the right size and shape of boxes, and lots of bubble-wrap (happily there is no shortage of either cardboard boxes or b-wrap here above the shop.) Wednesday afternoon saw me crawling about on the floor fighting a large fruit cake, a bottle of local whisky, a Gruffalo-faced Trunki (into which the other toys wouldn’t quite fit, naturally) touchy-feely books, sticker books for older child, craft stuff for older child, a drawing pad that needs no ink (you remember the sort except it’s all more high-tech these days and does different colours) a car that lights up and squeals, and - oh god, I hope I’ve got them in the right boxes or there are going to be some surprised faces in Hayle come All Saints day.

What with this crawling about and fighting and making five cakes I have been forced to drink quite a lot of whisky myself to keep me sweet.

Unfortunately the therapeutic whisky drinking was interfered with by a crisis over BP medication. Again. Another accompaniment to old age I suppose. Boots pharmacy handed me the usual box of Istin, one of the three drugs I take for the condition but - quelle horreur! - these were of foreign manufacture. My ankles blew up, my BP rose and I felt nauseous. I’m already the only person in the area who hasn’t managed to make do with the generic version of amlodipine, or so I’m told, and the brand my body likes is much more expensive. Now it seems I can only tolerate the British-made pill which is even dearer. Most embarrassing.I'm obviously bringing the country to its knees.

Also time consuming when I’ve got so much important worrying to be doing.

Axed

I put this in the wrong blog so it's a bit out of date:

The axe has fallen on our local RAF base. Chaos and confusion, not to mention despair, despondancy, dejection, gloom and doom on every face today I expect. I brace myself.

Personally whilst feeling sorry for the civilians who will lose their jobs I can't help celebrating the decline of the military in the UK.

I'd better keep that to myself.

The real bad news is that the base may still be used - by the army as barracks for the troops returning from Germany. Yikes! More pub brawls. Big old army vehicles trying to barrel along these inadequate roads. Khaki instead of blue marching up the High Street on Remembrance Sunday.... not good.

There was a nice rumour going round that Richard Branson had shown an interest in buying the land with its facilities (a weather station, hangars etc. ) as a base for realising his dream of putting a UK rocket into space. Now that would be fun. I suppose it was a joke. How sad.

Wisdom from the X Files

Scully: God has his reasons.
Mulder: He may have his reasons but he seems to employ a bunch of psychotics to carry out his job orders.

Uneasy lies the head here.

From writing nothing I’ve gone to scribbling screeds on the backs of bills, old paper bags, and finally a notebook dug out from the pile of ‘pending’ junk in my bedroom. I feel better for it so Chillsider, who brought me back from the brink, was right - blogging is good for the health. The writer's block was caused by a mind-freeze moment. One of those crashes old computers used to do when internet things happened too fast for them.

Two weeks to go before I move and, though in some ways it should, if all goes smoothly, be the easiest of the many, many moves I’ve made, I’m finding it unexpectedly traumatic. Probably the thought that it might be my final move before the Last Great Removal to the Hereafter isn’t making me more cheerful. Some folk seem to like the idea that they will settle into a house and never move again. I don’t. It is in my genes to want to keep moving. My maternal grandfather was a Mover. He sold one house on the same day they took possession of it and before my grandmother had had time to unpack. He went to the pub whilst she was emptying tea chests (women’s work in those days was it?) returned after an hour or two, a bit tipsy, and told her to reverse into packing mode because he'd sold the house and farm to a bloke he'd met at the bar. No need for HIPS or Estate Agents in those days, they just shook on it.

I still remember the exotic smell of tea chests. It helped to give each move a promise of faraway places and adventure, but they could also deliver nasty cuts from strips of metal round the edges.

Every move I have made since I left the family home to go to college felt like a step along the way to something better. Wishful thinking it may have been , but I’ve not been good at living in the NOW. I am the personification of divine discontent (Who first used that phrase? Sometimes Wikipedia just lets you down totally. When I tried to find the source of it Wiki came up with some American band.) Misguided I may have been but moving does bring with it welcome fresh air to life. It’s not a bad substitute for travel when travel isn’t a viable option.

In search of the indefinable, possibly the ineffable, I have moved my children 12 times since we left Brussels in 1987. It’s a wonder they are the relatively stable beings they are today. My eldest daughter, when she was very young, hated moving, she was even disturbed by a trip back to England to see grandparents. Once she knew it was about to happen she would pack her own little suitcase and sit on it in the hallway, as if we might forget her. Possibly the repeated experience desensitised her - or showed her she could cope. Not a bad result that.

We gyrated around their school so they didn't have the nightmare of new classmates to face each time, with one exception when I attempted to get them a more formal education than the local Steiner school was offering. We headed off into the unknown to start them as day pupils in the very prep. school the g’son is now attending (in those days it was up in the hills on its own instead of being, as it is now, on the same campus as the main school.) That didn’t work out and we had to retreat back down to sea level because they drooped like cut tulips after just a few short weeks.

Though most of the moves were probably quite unnecessary, a product of my restlessness and VERY wasteful of resources, I remember some quite fondly. The very repetitive nature of the event meant rituals developed. Sophie, the quietest child, took on the role of cat comforter. The cat, who was a huge, wise, and loving tabby tom, accepted the comforting gracefully, knowing it comforted the little girl to be cuddling and cosseting him. The other two were more physically involved with unpacking, walking the dog, exploring the new area, stopping the dog from chasing cows in nearby fields, or dragging furniture around until it was where I wanted it. They were also tearingly anxious to get their own rooms organised once rooms had been allotted to everyone’s satisfaction. At the end of the day we always sat down to a meal together which usually I cooked, because that’s what I liked to do, but on Moving Day there had to be a treat, and though there were few takeaways locally in those days, fish n’chips, pizza or a Chinese meal (the ultimate in sophistication) did feature if we were close enough to an outlet. As it was the first meal in the new house a bottle of wine was opened from which the three of them had small glasses to celebrate our arrival and I had a large glass (or two) to buck me up. Then I read rather more chapters than usual of some already well-known story until we were all falling asleep against each other in my bed. ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ or ‘The Five Children and It’ were cosy favourites. Harry Potter would have been wonderful but wasn’t even a twinkle in his progenitor’s eye.

One move proved to me that the money spent on Playmobile over the years hadn’t been wasted. We had several pieces of flat-packed furniture delivered and after an brief pretence at reading instructions and managing operations I withdrew to read a book whilst they put together a wardrobe, high-rise bed and a desk by themselves. When they had finished all that was left was for me to check the nuts and bolts and graciously congratulate them on their efforts.

Possibly these moves helped to unite and bond us, rather like those corporate team building activity weekends that companies force their personnel to go on.

And maybe that’s what this move is missing. It’s just for me. On the other hand it didn’t feel like that when I came to this place, although none of the children were living at home then either. Somehow I didn’t notice it was just for me. I had the distraction of the recently discovered second-hand book trade and its apputernance, the weird quasi-relationship with the bookman. An interesting interlude that.

I suppose there’s no buzz to this move. Sad to admit, but I still need a buzz - though not one that involves either a man or a pet.

What’s left?

What comes next?

Evidently my psyche is disturbed. Bad dreams are waking me and intruding into my days.

Eldest daughter and her partner came by one weekend to clear out the garden shed. It hasn’t been cleared since I arrived eight years ago when I found I had inherited stuff from the last owner (some of it quite nice actually. An antique cache pot and other pretty flower pots for instance.) I’ve been bunging half-empty paint cans and oddments I can’t quite throw away, on top of her leavings in a deep litter sort of way ever since. The daughter likes a clear palette to work with and had determined to empty the shed out before she owns it so she arrived with sleeves rolled high and directed me to stay indoors whilst they dragged everything out into the light of day. They asked me to check the pile over before it got taken to the recycling yard.

Boxes of fibre glass for repairing surf boards; bamboo shelving; old coat hooks; dozens and dozens of plastic flower pots; bags of material collected for collage-making; a rusty iron barbecue; a trolley used once in the shop until the wheel dropped off; an old table used in the shop until there was no room for it; the bookshop swing sign; stone vinegar bottles bought at the auction rooms in a distracted moment; a couple of oil paintings bought at the same place in the same sort of moment; dozens of jam jars for jam I don’t bother to make any more and I had forgotten about them anyway; a saucepan stand (I saved that for plants); broken tools; pieces of wood that might be useful; boxes that might be useful; a comfy, once pretty chair that unfolds into a bed but the cat sharpened its claws on it till the stuffing started to show and then the rabbit ate bits of it away whilst it was holidaying with me (I can’t bear to see animals caged so I let the rabbit loose in the sun room where it ate through the electric wiring of two lamps, dug into the earth of the plants it could reach and chewed up this chair. I think it enjoyed its holiday.) More wood. A couple of broken shovels, one for snow - should have kept that - garden tools with rotting wooden handles; more boxes; more wood; another barbecue; charcoal; half-empty packets of potting compost; a broken tool box; one of those gizmos for storing lots of different screws and bits in little drawers; a metal filing box, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.

How had it all fitted into the little shed? I watched it being loaded onto the trailer and driven away and felt - bereft.

That night I dreamt the shed was collapsing because without the contents there was nothing to hold it up. Worse still, I found myself inside the shed trying to convince everyone to get out before it buried us, then, when I looked outside, I saw a concrete yard with a great hole just where I was about to step and the hole went down and down and down ..... I woke sweating.

Like I said, I’m finding this move unexpectedly traumatic.

Half term concert at the school last night. It began, as is customary, with the pipes. Eight young pipers and their leader marched into a gloomy auditorium lit by a single light and full of atmospheric grey smoke, to play ‘MacPherson’s Lament’ in front of a screen on which was projected a lonely grey seascape. Very effective, but I was sneezing and wheezing because of the smoke. (For details on MacPherson, poor chap, and the dirty deed done to him, see note below)

It was a good, varied, programme and slickly presented with recorded music in the intervals for chair arranging, suitable images on the screen during the performance and a nice mix of classical, celtic and modern (-ish 'Octupuses Garden, Yellow Submarine, ones I could silently sing along to..) It all hung together beautifully. ‘Panis Angelicus’ sung by well-scrubbed eight year olds with sweet, clear voices and grave upturned faces is always a winner. A twelve year old girl with a voice to rival Charlotte Church sang ‘O Danny Boy’ - you’d have to be totally soulless not to be moved. The g’son, now a first string in the senior strings, loves his violin but loves rugby more and the rehearsal had clashed with rugby practice so he lost the plot a bit during the ‘Ode to Joy’ He had the wit to stop until he could start again and I don't think anyone but us noticed!

There are some amazingly talented children. The solo violinist comes from a musical family (enviable) and plays two other instruments. The piece he played even I could tell was complicated with finger plucking and sliding and loads of twiddly bits - I don't remember the title. He made it all look so easy.

The rock band did a number too late for me to ever have heard of (I stopped listening to pop music after 1973) The lyrics, such as they were, were sung by the next Lady Gaga. Glad I don’t teach her!!

The evening ended with the unfortunate choice (considering yesterday's news about the air base closing) of the jolly gospel song 'I'll Fly Away.' They sang it with gusto.


MacPherson's Lament. Composed by James MacPherson himself in Prison on the eve of his execution for cattle rustling. Born in 1675, the son of a gypsy woman and a highland laird. James, a fine fiddler, became the Leader of an unlawful gypsy gang plundering the North East of Scotland living off their spoils and sharing them out with the less fortunate. He was eventually caught in the town of Keith while being chased through the streets by the bailiffs where a woman threw a blanket out of a window trapping James. He was tried in Banff, found guilty and was sentenced to hang by the magistrates. On the day of his execution in Banff the magistrates knew there was a reprieve coming from Aberdeen and put the town clock forward by 20 minutes so James could be hanged before the specified time. On the gallows he played this tune then offered his fiddle to anyone in his clan who would play it at his wake. When no one came forward to take the fiddle, he broke it then threw it into the crowd. The broken fiddle now lies in a folk museum near Newtonmore. The Magistrates were punished for this and the town clock was kept 20 minutes behind the correct time for many years. Even to this day the town of Macduff has its west facing town clock covered so the people of Banff can't see the correct time!

White Poppy time again.

The White Poppy symbolises the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflicts than killing strangers. Our work, primarily educational, draws attention to many of our social values and habits which make continuing violence a likely outcome.
From economic reliance on arms sales (Britain is the world's second largest arms exporter) to maintaining manifestly useless nuclear weapons Britain contributes significantly to international instability. The outcome of the recent military adventures highlights their ineffectiveness in today's complex world.
Now 90 years after the end of the ‘war to end all wars’ we still have a long way to go to put an end to a social institution, which in the last decade alone killed over 10 million children.

If we really want to abolish the military and all that goes with it, we must first abolish the last remaining justification for it in the eyes of the general public.

http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/

http://www.ppu.org.uk/peacematters/peacematters/2008/2008c03.html

The above is all from the Peace Poppy site and I put up it here years ago. This year I'm frustrated and upset at not being able to wear a peace poppy because my daughter is afraid it will offend her many RAF patients and customers who probably wouldn't stop to have the principles explained to them they'd just take umbrage. It's her shop so I don't feel I can rebel but I shan't be wearing a red one.

A friend and I went to Cawdor Castle which was hosting a 'Living Food' event, by which I think it meant local and organic where possible. It was like a big Farmer's Market. There were none of the crafts my friend had promised, unless jam-making counts. Once again I forgot my camera but probably would only have captured people with their mouths full of pork pie or beef burger and hands full of biodegradeable 'glasses' (made from corn starch) holding local ale. There was also a local distillery offering taster tots of whisky. I'm not a beer drinker but my friend is and she is converting me. These smelled wonderful and tasted deliciously smooth, not at all gassy. Sadly I had to leave the whisky untasted because I was the only driver. It would have gone down so well as a chaser too.

For the first time I tasted wild venison carpaccio. I ate a whole pack when I got home. The advantage of living on one's own is freedom for total greed with no sharing.

Slightly better photos of daughter's chapbook. Info for interested parties about to break into the creative writing world: these publishers publish work they like well enough absolutely for free (happily that included Sophie's)

No, it isn't a delicious lemon jelly with bits of fruit in, it's an orgone generator, 4" high, full of copper coils and crystals, and sits behind me in the shop. I think I feel a tiny bit more libidinous...

One year the lakes at Tervuren, just outside Brussels, froze over so deeply that people could skate and some idiot drove a Mini onto one of them. I think the son was still a babe in arms so just his sisters slithered on with me.

I'll bet my son isn't going to be glad I found this photo!!

He has changd a lot and doesn't wear scarves any more. He was about eleven, it was a Robin Hood phase with bows and arrows made of hazel, and neckerchiefs for the band of merry men.

Silence is golden.

The great Victorian agnostic Thomas Huxley in one of the last things that he wrote before he died asked "Is it not better to keep silence about matters which speech is incompetent to express; to be content with revolving in the deeps of the mind the infinite possibilities of the unknown?"

I agree wholeheartedly, but I don't think I can promise to shut up,

Something old, something new.

In the space of 36 hours I’ve sampled the best technology the NHS can provide hereabouts, and one of the oldest treatments in the world, possibly dating back to the Stone Age. The modern machine was a bone density scanner. Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry or DEXA to its friends. That was painless and unfreaky, a nice nice lady put me through it, and it was free. The only thing it will do however is tell me if I’m crumbling, which I expect I am since I ‘ve lost 2” in height somewhere along the road.

The acupuncture was, on the other hand, the most painful thing that has happened to me for a long time and I had to pay for it. I have a high pain threshold. I’m proud of the fact that I don’t yell or cry out in extremis. In the face of my shearers I am dumb. Usually. Today I yelled, and loud. Needles in my ankles sent really agonising tremors through other bits of my feet shooting down to several toes, making me think of tasers and Guatanamo Bay. Then there was a smell of burning and something hot clamped itself to my abdomen where it went on burning for much longer than I liked.

I do feel better though.

New books and old gripes.

I thought I’d break new ground for myself and order books that got good reviews in the Independent. Not entirely a successful exercise. The ‘mystery’ I chose, by D.J.Taylor ‘At the Chime of a City Clock’ I didn’t like at all though it was set in the 1930’s an era that usually interests me. Frankly I was bored. The characters were’t interesting enough and the story dull. The writing is good but there is a wealth of difference between mere style and sparkling entertainment. I do like the cover design though.

The other novel is so far producing more pleasure pheromones, though I feared for it to begin with. “The Still Point” by Amy Sackville. The young (woefully young from my point of view... younger than my youngest child...) writer is acclaimed in the blurb as a sister to Virginia Woolf with a passion for icebergs. For the first two pages I was disposed to dislike it. Too many adjectives I thought. Emperor Joseph II criticised Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro for having too many notes and that has often come to my mind when I’m reading pretentious, poorly written, literature.

Eventually I changed my mind. A narrative began to emerge like patterns of raindrops on a rain-spattered window (see - style is catching!). I was pulled in and now I am enjoying it.

This journal is full of lists of things that annoy me. In my own defence I want to say that I am equally easily delighted by people and happenings. Now I’m going to add to the list. Just as I was getting hooked into the storyline, Amy uses ‘devouring’ where ‘eating’ would have done perfectly well. Devouring is a good word but its place is in figurative usage in my opinion, not in a simple sentence talking abut a child eating a sandwich.

Choice of language exposes people. Women who refer to their uterus as their ‘womb’ annoy me. I haven’t analysed my reaction, I leave others to do that, but to me it sounds sort of coy, earth-motherish and biblical, all of which are euphemisms for dimwittedness in my book. Oh dear.

Then there are the ones who say someone has ‘collapsed.’ Buildings collapse when the contractors use poor cement. Sandcastles collapse; a house of cards collapses; financial institutions collapse. People have heart attacks or strokes, suffer from anaphylactic shock, are traumatised by events or prostrated by grief. They don’t collapse.

It’s not the imprecision that grates, it’s melodramatic and that is never as convincing as more controlled wording.

UFO’s have been sighted above us here. The photo in the local paper was, as tradition dictates for these sightings, grainy, and the kite-shaped object looked to me rather like a - kite; with a tail. The chap who video’d it phoned the RAF later to ask if they had seen it too or could shed any light on the object, and was told that nothing had been reported. Later however he received a phone message, a recorded voice from the RAF station, suggesting that if he spread this around his B&B business would suffer. Who are they trying to kid? I imagine that the B&B’s in Bonnybridge, a small town in the Borders, have been living large on its UFO connections.

A sensible and credible customer told me a couple of months back she had seen something that she had no explanation for when she was walking home one day. With two RAF stations in the area we are very used to planes and helicopters and no-one is going to be mistaking them for UFO’s.

It’s a bit late for crop circles but maybe they are scoping us out so they can make some really good ones next year!

Sinead O'Connor

The best thing the papal visit has done for me is to alert me to this woman who is now on my personal list for beatification! There was an interview with her on BBC 2 between the various appearances of the pope and she spoke so eloquently she even silenced the interviewer!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/sinead-oconnor-pope-visit

Voices, size nine.

Daughter Sophie has just had her first book of poetry published: 'Strange Longing for a Monday' and for all those who, unlike me, have the up-to-date version of adobe whatever, it can be viewed at: htp://www.erbacce-press.com/#/sophia-argyris/4543556207

Very thrilling. I’m waiting for my complimentary copy.

No trips to Brittany or Swaledale for me but a very pleasant week-long visit from our Sophs distracted me from making the usual jottings that find their way here. We did things like walking on the beach, visiting the river and sitting about in cafe’s, pastimes that I don’t usually find time for, or simply forget are possible. It was lovely. We even got to visit an archaeological dig which happens once a year after harvest. Over a ten year period the field has yielded several iron-age round houses from different eras, the oldest one was very large and evidently sheltered the beasts as well as the people, the others smaller, probably post-Roman, showing the change in family or social structure that Roman influence brought about. Two coin ‘hordes’ came to light , and evidence of a greater Roman presence in the area than had been expected. The team have recently discovered remains of the elusive Picts who, unlike the earlier inhabitants, built houses without foundations so left very little trace of themselves in the landscape. My camera failed me on that occasion much to my chagrin - or I failed it by not charging the battery soon enough.

Back home and holding the fort behind the counter I began to reread ‘Justine’ by Lawrence Durrell, the first of the Alexandrian Quartet. I can’t remember what effect it had on me the first time through. I was much much younger and disposed to explore novels for style, character and atmosphere, for new departures in technique, for experiments with the novel form - and to find that enough. Nowadays I want a linear story, preferably an unfolding mystery. I find it hard to reconcile myself to reading for a different experience, the unfolding of the characters for instance. Perhaps I am becoming shallow, perhaps I’ve had enough of pretension. Perhaps I’m less interested in people. This time I found it depressed me almost from the first page. Durrell writes so well, so beautifully, his characters walk off the pages, and he describes the city of Alexandria so I can smell the dust and the dirt, feel the lice, and see an old, sick camel hacked to pieces alive.

That was when I stopped reading. I can’t deal with so much reality.

I did note down a few words that I needed to look up and a couple of glorious phrases:

"her phthisic hands' (phthisic = tubercular - not so poetic really, but a wonderful word)

“... dry palpitant air harsh with static.’

‘Her aniline beauty.’ (I’m not at all sure what he intends here but ‘anil’ means indigo in French, from Arabic and Sanskrit. Again, it has a musical sound so maybe it’s unnecessary to question further.)

“... meaningless dead level of things, entering no climate, leading us nowhere... trapped in the gravitational field of Alexandria.’

It’s hard not to be affected by a writer’s style, especially one like Durrell. If I have something I want to write I have to be sure not to be in the middle of reading anything by authors with such a strong stylistic flavour or it overpowers my own weak attempt to find a voice.

I looked for some light relief with Le Carré, read ‘A Most Wanted Man’ which wasn’t exactly a jolly romp but was linear and unfolded as required.

Today it was Saki, and the social witticisms of the 1900’s.

“To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.’

“Her frocks were built in Paris but she wore them with an English accent.”

“Miriam takes nines in voices.”

Nines in voices. I know people like that. It really embarrasses me being in a restaurant or on public transport with someone who takes size nines in voices.

Finally, I am thoroughly enjoying the hooha of the Popes visit. He has covered himsef with glory again by likening atheists to the Nazis. A quick sorti to Wikkipedia would have reminded him that Hitler was a Catholic until he died - he was never excommunicated. That Adolph claimed, when it suited him, to be Christian, believed in an ‘Aryan Christ’ and in a statement about the National Government 1933 said: “It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.” Ratzinger mght also remember that the RC Church in Italy, and other countries, handed Jews over to the Nazis.

I suppose he has to get in a few low blows as his church has such an attrocious record of immorality over the millennia ,and more recently it’s visible failure to follow the words of the man they revere as God about never harming children.

I’m truly sorry for the hurt and the disillusioned, but I do think it’s good that the hypocrisy, so often hiding in self-righteous religious garb, is exposed. It will cut the churches down to size, pull their teeth and along with them the teeth of horrors like Sarah Palin and her chimpanzees' Tea Party in the dangerous hotbed of religious nuttery that is the USA.

Later: Well, I have to add that I spent the last hour watching the Pope take Mass in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow and I was, as always, moved to tears by the ceremony, the singing, and the ages old tradition which has accumulated so much power. Sometimes I can't think why I'm not a fully signed-up member of the oldest church in the world.

Because I am SO strongly against religion but enjoy the emotion I found myself deciding to align with Buddhism which is not a religion in the restrictive, proscriptive, dogmatic sense of that word, is a Way which can guide ones path through life, and which also has centuries old, deeply moving ceremonies full of emotional, transformative power that can temporarily overcome the mind.

Finally I have to admit that my head is stronger than my heart. I always imagined myself to be ruled by my emotions but it isn't the whole story. I can't be convinced by something that is fundamentally unconvincing on a wave of emotional manifestations alone. I've had a few experiences in my life that for many would count as mystical or oceanic, or even spiritual, but they haven't convinced me for one moment that there is a monad at work out there. And maybe that is how it should be. I have the capacity to understand how people get aroused by great events and by the deep, real, emotions shared by thousands, millions, at the same moment, inspired by some event, but not be swayed by it myself except briefly. It's an upsurge of feeling that can be caused by good or evil and has to be tempered by eventual rationality. What the Buddhists might call Equanimity. The crowds at Nurembourg felt the same ecstasy as the Catholic saints.

Stream of consciousness?

There hasn’t been much on TV lately but last Saturday I happened upon the ‘Sword of Honour’ dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh’s semi-autobiographical trilogy by the BBC. It was so good I missed most of Saturday watching it. The weather was bad I think, so not much loss there. BBC's series of 20th century British novelists included an interview with the hideously reactionary old goat, Evelyn Waugh, but it didn't put me off his books. They gave my ex and I much pleasure and amusement back in the 60’s and I’d had it in mind to look out for some early editions to add to my library (the greatest pleasure of being a retired secondhand bookseller is being able to buy exactly what I want for myself with no thought to resale potential!) Saturday evening I ordered the DVD and shelved the book project for another day.

Amazon have this way of landing suitable flies on the water to tempt the prized catch and their automated fly for me was Anthony Powell’s ‘Dance to the Music of Time’ so I bought that too.

I will still buy the books - honest!

The other new DVD in my collection (not tickled up by the previous searches needless to say) was ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.’ I’ve watched it twice already and am puzzled by the need for an american version. This seems to be a faithful rendering of the novel and the casting is excellent. I like hearing the original Swedish language though and I know some folk can’t be bothered with subtitles. I’m ready to be scathing about the Hollywood effort - bet it’s sanitised, that Salander is merely pretty (the actress looks that way) that they entirely miss the subtleties of her character.

Neither of my daughters will watch it because of the violent rape scenes. I completely understand their feelings; although the scenes are not more than a minute long there is no mistake about what is happening. They aren’t for titillation alone - the criticism of most who haven’t read the novels or seen the film. They are essential to the story (the whole story, not the first novel/film alone) and very necessary to the creation and revelation of the complex character of Lisbeth Salander who has been badly damaged, has developed a hard shell, but remains somewhere quite able to tell good from evil and is, in her own way soft hearted, unlike some anti-heroes who become merely harsh, ugly and unlikeable. Because she’s who she is she gets her own back in wonderful ways that have me out of my seat cheering.

What is and is not acceptable reading or viewing for one person and not for another is interesting in itself. I can’t abide ‘action’ films with lots of gratuitous, cheerful, even funny, violent deaths and virtually no story. I hate romantic comedy - it makes me squirm. I couldn’t watch ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ knowing the truth to be so much worse. I dislike jane Austen. Now there’s a thing. Our Jane? What’s to dislike? Well, it’s the spiteful women. They give me the creeps, the shivers and the nightmares. I consider them so much worse than rapists. They ruined other women’s lives in a way that a rapist could only do if the raped woman had to return to the cruelty of her judgemental sisters (it’s not only men that condemn such women). Jane A shows the very tip of the hideousness that was a woman’s lot in her day and it gives me asthma just to think about it.

I hated one film so much I’ve forgotten it’s title. It’s the only film I can ever remember not watching to the end. One of my daughters can watch it with interest and it got good reviews. It starts quite pleasantly with a child’s fantasy world in which she meets the usual characters, then suddenly becomes the real world in which her mother dies and her stepfather is revealed as a Fascist.. I think that’s how it goes. A freedom fighter was imprisoned then killed in cold blood along with his mother who had tried to hide him ... and I switched off.

So, to go back to my defence of the Millennium trilogy (or myself) I like to be able to identify with a character who is going to get retribution, as Salander does in spades. It isn’t pretty but I need justice to be done, and if possible to be seen to be done. If I were to identify with any of the Greek Olympians it would be the Eumenides, the Furies, who follow wrongdoers until such time as they pay for their evil one way or another. In my fantasies I might hunt down those who prey on the innocent. Salander is a brilliant creation. Without her weirdness and courage and focused intelligence Blomkvist’s story would be good but it would lack all the fire that makes it individual and unrepeatable.
.

How many shop assistants.....

..... have been asked to check if their oatcakes are orang-utan friendly today?

....... for the comparative sizes of the carbon footprint of the shampoos on their shelves today?

..... if their cinnamon is REAL cinnamon and not cassia....

And finally .... how many lucky shop assitants met someone who is hoping to make mini orgone energy accumulators*, ‘squeezing’ crystals to milk the energy into layers of - something, I’ve forgotten what - which will filter it into the atmosphere.

* For those who need reminding about orgone accumulators look up the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, who once moved in the same circles as Freud and believed, along with Freud, that a “healthy psychological state derived from uninhibited libidinal flow.” (Wikkipedia)

No man for mere theories Reich got out there and did something about it, building contraptions to conduct and direct this universal energy into people and also into clouds to make rain. He may have been onto something because the FDA banned him and all his works, and eventually threw him into prison. A sure sign of success I would have thought.

Quotes for the Day:

“The two leaders have certainly proved revolutionary in their use of buffoonery as a weapon of mass distraction” ... of Gadafi and Berlusconi.


“After a certain age my dear, a little lipstick is a kindness to others.”
Attributed to an unknown eccentric Cambridge academic (female - I think).


*******************************************************************************

Creating an impression

I watched, for want of any better entertainment, the BBC cut-and-paste highlights the Edinburgh Military tattoo and rather enjoyed it. I like military music if not the reason for it. A few thoughts, random and unwonted struck me. In the way that some National Anthems fail miserably to be regal and imposing (often the Eastern European ones in which the words probably count more than the tune) so the style of marching and the choice of instrument can belittle a regiment.

The Austrians - or the Swiss, not sure which, have lot of flutes which make a pretty sound but aren’t martial. The Poles have long "trombity beskidzkie" which look like Alpenhorns, sound pleasingly like mellow bass trumpets but obviously weren’t meant for carrying into battle. The same regiment did some fancy footwork and Russian style on-and-off your knees kicking but it was all a bit Ballet Rambert. The Regiment from Carolina boogied to jazz and blues for heavens’ sake - the chap with a ring of drums round his waist is to be commended for keeping up the swing!! But would you take any of that seriously when on the field of battle? I know there aren’t battlefields any more and the enemy doesn’t have to be cowed by your Haka, but the regiments that looked the most as if they mean business were the Scottish Black Watch, Scots Dragoons and so forth with their big stompy boots, swinging sporrans, Skean Dhu’s and -most of all the lusty bagpipes yowling and thundering fit to blow you off the hillside.

There was a desert regiment. impressive in their thobes, shemagh scarves and headrings, all looking romantically like Lawrence of Arabia but the marching style was a tad mincing and I felt they missed their camels. Wishful thinking of course - they have much harsher steeds these days.

Signs and Portents.

A framed Posy Simmonds cartoon about the various incarnations of a book shop fell 7’ down to a wooden floor yesterday. Miraculously the glass didn’t break. I put it alongside other homeless pictures to await the next move. It had hung in the same spot since the bookshop opened and for no apparent reason - no traffic vibration or mini earthquake (there was one in this area recently but not yesterday) decided the time had come to vacate. if that isn’t a Deeply Significant event I’m a monkey’s uncle.

Cupboard love.

I was vastly overconfident about the clearing out needed. I may not have accumulated much myself but I’d forgotten that I still live with the earlier lives of two of my children. Today I opened the door of a tiny corner cupboard and began to pull stuff out left here by Cossie. This cupboard has all the extraterrestrial physical properties of the Tardis it seems. I pulled stuff out, and pulled stuff out, and pulled stuff out, and still there seemed to be as much as when I started.

I never like to throw away other people’s property even if they haven’t needed or shown any interest in it for eight years, so I had already asked if I could chuck out the pile of magazines which I thought more or less filled the space. The pile extracted will make a difference, but not much. It took me two hours to sort the rest into ‘must keep,’ ‘must throw,’ and ‘must wash’ piles, but that was because I found hundreds (literally) of photos and went for a sentimental walk through his carefree youth. C is a well-organised chap, always has been, so many of the photos were in albums, but as many or more weren’t because, I suspect, of the sheer volume. In the albums were the photos his early childhood that he had been given by us, then there were the ones he started to take himself of family pets, his sisters, sailing in the bay, expeditions with the school, hill-walking and climbing in the Cairngorms, skiing holidays with his dad, those seen above taken on a Tall Ship voyage to the Baltic, the places he lived during his various training's with clusters of tousled-haired youths as tanned and fit as himself (often in various states of inebriation at a guess.) During the summer water-sports season they are either dressed in long baggy shorts held up just above the Mary Whitehouse Line by their skinny hips, or else they're in drag. At the end of each week the residents of the centres had to devise an entertainment for the home-going holidaymakers so there was much panto-style horsing about, silly competitions and fancy dress, for which the lads usually wore grass skirts and bikini tops stuffed with balloons, the girls became Tridents with seaweed beards etc. (the ones who didn’t try for the mermaid look). One anti-people person turned up as a Darlek. In the winter the dress code was ski-suit and goggles and it’s difficult to tell one from the other. In both there are many sun-kissed blonde groupies of the female kind. The fun continued even when he began to earn money from his chosen life and there are the same - or more - number of blondes (are brunettes more academic? Do they eschew the surf-heads?) gazing up with starry eyes at the virile young gods of the slopes.

The magazines were of surfing, snow-boarding, skiing and windsurfing and there wasn’t a soft porn pic amongst them, but as I had suspected the Pirelli girls had been pinned to the walls of the various bachelor pads he lived in between 16 and 26 in Ireland, Greece, Turkey, France (coastal, in land lakes and mountain regions) Lanzerote, Andorra - have I remembered them all? If I were his wife I might feel a tad grumpy about the twining limbs of the bronzed blondes but as she is a ravishing blonde in her own right maybe she is more sensible than me....

I’m so glad he had so much fun. Wild oats sown he was more than ready to settle down when he proposed marriage, and though they are passing through the most exhausting years with two little boys, three properties and money not overabundant, I think he’s steady enough not to be looking back, feeling he’s left youth too far behind or wishing for his freedom again.

Whilst we were in the time-share I kept calling my g’son ‘Costa.’ Yes, it’s a sign of age, but it’s also the sign of the affinity between the two of them that isn’t easy to overlook. Xander is very much the same physical type, tending right now to chubbiness (but with big puppy feet so we suppose he will be tall) and is of much the same mind about preferring the outdoors to the in. There’s nothing more the Xandman likes than to bivvy under the stars in the pouring rain. He can put up with any amount of discomfort in the blister department, get cold and wet without complaining, bitten by insects, feel his muscles screaming from hard mucking out, or paddling his canoe for hours, but put him in an itchy kilt or in front of a maths test and meltdown occurs instantly. His grandfather and I look fruitlessly into our lineage to find the genes that produced these two anomalies.

Mish-mash

Good gracious another week has passed and I've added nothing to my journal here. If I had a computer in the shop that would be a whole different story. The sad fact is that by the time I get upstairs after my stint in the shop all I want to do is nothing, which means I eat too much and watch 'Murder She Wrote.' Shameful. I'm trying to beat myself into some discipline here, gear up to writing first thing in the morning since I wake so early anyway, or at least go for a healthy walk. So far the bad twin is winning.

Little of note has happened this week apart from removals quotes, and the annoying absence of quotes for essential work like putting in wooden floors - so much easier to clean up than the white carpet now lining the living space in the next house. The french windows into the garden make egress and ingress of mud-spattered grandchildren almost inevitable.

Out in the world the plight of the poor Chilean miners gives me the claustrophobic horrors and certainly pales the artificial Big Brother situation into insignificance as an opportunity for observing human beings trapped together under duress. No prizes except their lives for these men. Although I hope they all live to sell their stories for millions..

The world is running out of helium. Now there's a thing. I'd been wondering why it has become so difficult to get helium-filled party balloons, had no idea that it's an unsustainable - un-replaceable - resource which took millions of years to accumulate and which we have squandered over the last 100 years. Divers breath it in their mix of gases to prevent the 'bends.' It's used for cooling superconducting magnets in MRI scanners and the Large Hadron Collider, for neon signs, arc welding, advertising and weather balloons, also for growing silicon wafers (eh?) It's the second most abundant gas in the universe but almost the rarest on earth now because once puffed into a balloon and let loose it eventually evaporates and disappears for ever.

What else caught my eye in the daily trawl through the Independent? The obituary of the piper who wheezed and skurled away on the order of Lord Lovat as their ship ploughed across the Channel to land in Normandy. After the event a German gunner claimed he only refrained from shooting him because he thought the poor fellow had lost his marbles. Once they landed he was asked to keep playing and did so, marching up and down the beach in the customary fashion as well as he could through the shells and over the fallen. Some said he raised their spirits, some were less complimentary in the moment.

They don't make'em like that any more! The aristocracy don't dare to be so outrageous either, or don't have the opportunity to be without incurring almost puritanical judgement and dislike. Life has gone from black and white to colour in film and TV, but in reality I think it has gone a bit grey.

And finally, my own judgemental nature reared and bolted when told about the latest conceit of the founder of the local Art Centre, who I had been disposed to admire for getting such a huge project off the ground and making a success of it thus far. Now, I'm sorry to report, he is talking of changing its name to 'The International Institute for Research into Beauty' or something equally fatuous. When I heard this I remembered selling off the art books from the shop to him, via a mutual friend. As she sorted through what she would and would not take for inclusion in the Art Centre library I noticed she had left a couple of large books, one of them photos of a performance artist Franko B who chained himself naked in a small room in the - Tate? - and had folk visit him one at a time to ask him questions or watch him cut himself and syphon take blood from himself. Not pretty but - he was making a point about AIDS and my daughter, who met him, tells me he is a gentle, warm genuinne sort of chap. She really felt he had something to say. When I asked my friend why these books where being left behind I was told R wouldn't like them because they weren't 'beautiful' and therefore not real art. Oh my! That sort of thinking eliminates Francis Bacon from the galleries immediately. And others. I might gripe about Tracey Emin but I wouldn't deny her her place in the art world, as it goes through turns of the wheel and experimentation, without which it would stagnate and die.

Does this mean that chocolate box scenes are 'real art'? I shall await education.

Moving on.

Gulls are also having trouble getting their offspring to leave home and stand on their own two feet these days. The couple who raised the usual two-egg family on the roof opposite have still to coax one into the big bad world. I thought both had flown until this morning when I heard anxious peeping from the hungry, fully grown, child coming from the chimney pot. Mother is trying hard to ignore it - I think it's a she as the other was larger and started to stretch its wings earlier.

Suddenly I am very appreciative of my roof top views. I had hoped to end my days in a nice little house overlooking the ocean - or at least the Bay, but the next move will be into a decidely unromantic new build in what my daughter calls a 'housing development' and I call an estate. No views there, not even nice old tiled roof-tops. Ah me. Still, I will be getting three proper bedrooms, a place to put my dining table, plus acres of cupboard and wardrobe space which has been sadly lacking here, so it's not all bad. If it isn't eccentric and interesting on the outside I can do my best to make it so on the inside. It'll just take a bit more creative effort. It's certainly quieter there and I think I'll be glad of that now.

I've started clearing out cupboards and am happy to see not much has accumulated. I'm really good at getting rid of stuff. When I moved here I remember my ex saying firmly that I would have to stay eight years to make the improvements worth while. I thought 'Ho! That'll never happen.' The longest I'd lived anywhere in Scotland up till then was four years - in fact I'm not sure that's not the longest I'd ever stayed in a house since childhood. So it's with some surprise that I find I have been here the eight years and even more possibly, I just can't remember which year I moved. It has served me well and been very adaptable, now it will do the same for daughter as she adds more therapists to her stable to supplement income from the shop and her own osteopathy.

I know very little - make that nothing - about house plants but have always accumulated them and they always grow. Mostly more than I want them to. This morning I've had to spend a couple of hours juggling the current cast of characters around into new pots. A lemon-scented geranium, unfondly known as 'droopy drawers' for its tendency to wilt if not watered almost daily, was only a tiny cutting at the beginning of the summer and grown purely for culinery purposes - a couple of leaves at the bottom of a madeira cake make it smell and taste wonderful and cook into a pretty impression of themselves so the bottom can become the top. I really didn't need the burgeoning abundance that is now three feet high and a couple of feet wide. A spider plant, once the tiny off-spring of an older plant, now is much too big for it's situation and has grandchildren. This I don't understand. I gave another baby spider to my daughter at the same time, hers is still a reasonable size and hasn't reproduced. The plants in her house seem to know their place. I evidently lack discipline in this area as in all things.

My mother liked flower arranging, preferably dried flowers which don't wither, fall, die. The joke was always that anything or anyone coming into our house, if it stood still long enough, would soon have a tasteful arrangement coming out of one or two orifices.

The Fall

It's taken me a week to recover from an intense time of togetherness in the family time-share at Ballater. The weather was wet, wet, wet, wet but did we care - no we did not. There is plenty to do for those who need real activity; everyone except the grandparents swam and the ankle-biters came on by leaps and bounds, I'm told. Son and eldest g'son played tennis in the rain, squash in their own sweat, and walking around lochs can be nice in the rain apparently. There was plenty of cooking for me to do (and oh how I miss the good food shops in that little town.) Also I played catch-the-grandson as the youngest climbs onto everything in sight and attempts to throw himself off. He looks like Boris Johnson (of whom I am quite fond for his humour and a certain panache, so no rude comments please.) Theo has the blonde floppy hair, squashy face, the winning smile and is rather the same build, so has been renamed BoJo.

No photos - well a few but so poor as to be useless probably because no-one stood still for long. A blurry one of the squirrel who came into the living room.

I felt sad and bereft when they went back south. The subtle change into autumn happened for me this week. I'm never sure what actually alters, the scents, the light, the colours, but something definately signals a turning of the tide and begins to carry us toward the end of the year. One clue was the appearance of the Academy students back in the High street at lunch time to buy their bridies and bags of chips, so maybe it's a prosaic as that.

I travelled south for the funeral of a very sweet man, my daughter-in-law's father. A sad occasion but the family were brave enough to turn it into a celebration and there are many beautiful moments to remember. This pretty church, St. Mary's, Swaffham Bulbeck, is where Bridget and John have worshipped for nearly all their married life. John was a bell-ringer and, because he was such a positive chap always in his outlook, the ringers didn't muffle the bells for his funeral. They rang a quarterpeel and then, of course, as we left the church, the Nine Tailors and one note for every year of his life. I think that touched me as much as anything else about the service. There aren't many churches with bells this end of the country. The huge church opposite has bells, but they must be attached to some sort of machine because they ring 'Frere Jacques' and other odd tunes on a Sunday sometimes but very, very, softly as if they are rather ashamed of themselves. Odd.

It was an intense couple of days. I'm sure John would be glad to hear that I enjoyed much of it, specifically the warmth and welcome from his family, seeing my grandsons and their cousins and, of course, seeing my own son. Daughter Sophie also joined me in London so we travelled together and shared an unexpectedly luxurious hotel room overnight.

All in all, a reminder of mortality and of the importance of appreciating each other whilst we can!

Refreshment

It's been one of those relatively peaceful interludes with lots and nothing happening - that's to say, nothing chatworthy. A few decisions made, life reviewed, bullets bitten, forward planning considered, nothing firmed up.

But something momentous did occur - a new brand of morning coffee. I persuaded Madame La Propriétaire to buy in a new brand simply because I liked the packaging and, even more, I liked the name, which sums up precisely how I feel when I wake these days. Not the most professional of reasons, there should have been actual taste tests, much rolling around the palate, searching for suitably evocative imagery and sassy adverbs, spitting into buckets (or is that only wine?) but it turns out to have been an excellent choice. Very mellow.

The blood pressure crisis (made worse by NHS cutbacks which meant I was given a cheap substitute brand for one of the drugs which didn't work so there's to be no future economising on this woman) had cut me back to one cup of the essential nectar a day followed by an endless succession of teas, which wasn't such a trial as we now have a selection. In fact tea has become a bit of a ceremony here. Daughter Sophie gave me the cute tea pot and cups along with some subtle Chinese blends and a bag of Ayurvedic spices which my grandson and I have enjoyed trying. (I enjoy, he makes polite noises. He likes the little cups though and takes one up to bed with him.) That is for special moments. For the working day there are tea bags; Rose (very delicate and perfumed, Ginsemg (flavourless but wholesome) Lemon and Ginger (nice and a bit spritzy) Breathe Deep (a bit worthy) Chocolate (surprising) and so on and so on. Japanese twig tea and Dandelion Coffee which really should be called tea because it doesn't have much body to it but makes a change...

The fact is we could have a whole roomful of teas and there would still be someone come in casting an eye around and sighing 'Oh, what a shame. You don't have the one I like ...' Echoes from the bookshop.

There are similarities in all retail trades I suppose.

The Yogi Teas have little tags with sayings on, rather like Fortune Cookies and I've been collecting them for customers to pick a thought for their day. Sometimes I pay attention to my own. Tonight I got: To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach. which I thought was - meaningful and possibly I should listen to it. Not the teaching bit though. Been there. Became master of nothing.

G'son watched 'Invictus' with g'dad Monday and was very impressed. I didn't know he was impressed - or even that he'd seen it until he passed me a peace of paper folded the maximum number of times into a tiny wedge and said 'Read That!' It was the W.E.Henly poem:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


I was doubly touched; by the poem of which I knew only the last two famous lines, and much more deeply by the effect it has had on the Xandman. There's always something lump-in-the-throat-making when a child is truly moved to their core.

Saturday treat.

A quiet morning in the shop enlivened by a chap who lifted his tee shirt to show me the scars from recent triple bypass surgery - some stitches still in situ. Impressive. If he thought to shock me he was disappointed. I'm not in the least squeamish. Hardened by watching so many autopsies on CSI.

Then there was the person who wanted something to get rid of straw mites (that the doc told her she hadn't got but she didn't believe him.) Now that did leave me feeling discomfited.

Prejudice and pride.

Grandsons' prize-giving yesterday, with strawberry tarts to follow. His mother and I dutifully turned up though grumbling that there'd be no prize for our darling because all his vicissitudes have caused him to miss schooling, and ski-ing, and rugby, and impaired his ability to concentrate, and so on, and that They ought to recognise that he's done really well to get through it all but they don't, he's not appreciated enough.. etc. etc.

So imagine our shock when his name was called out and we found They had given him prize after all - for Progress! He was just as shocked, bursting with pride - lots of red-faced grins in our direction as he swung his kilt back to his seat - and he had grown at least a foot in height when we met up with him afterwards.

I could have kissed the Headmaster. Bet he's glad I didn't.

Away day.

Stand-ins came to help in the shop yesterday whilst I used my rail card to take what must be one of the most beautiful railway journeys in Britain, through mountains, lochs and glens to Ross-shire, the western seaboard, and the unfortunately named community of Plockton. Once fishing and crofting was its reason for existing but, though in its heyday it boasted 500 inhabitants, the numbers dropped to a handful when the fish changed their migratory patterns and the potato famine took its toll. In recent years it has reinvented itself as a tourist attraction and has an artists colony - so I'm told, but I didn't see much evidence of that. The series about the Scottish bobby fresh down from Glasgow, finding it hard adjusting to the West Coast ways - 'Hamish Macbeth' - played by Robert Carlyle - was located there. Also some of the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries. Nothing of this possible notoriety is visible in the village - no plaques or mementos, no signed photies of local lad RC... nothing.

It sits in a sheltered sweep of hills on the shores of Loch Carron. The Gulf Stream warms the waters and palm trees grow along the shoreline. It wasn't a sunny day but it was rather magnificent with cloud and patches of sun hitting here and there on the far shores.

What they're not good at is signposts. I jumped from the train (the platform is a long way beneath the trains'step) the train drew out and I was left in the middle of pretty much no-where. There was a school opposite but it didn't look approachable and no-one to be seen and - no sign posts. Which way to start walking? I chose downhill. Luckily that was the right choice because it was nearly a mile to the village and I'm not much of walker.

After a wander I felt like lunch. It's a longish, 2 hour journey from Inverness, maybe because it has to be taken slowly which is fine by me, especially as the train practically overhangs the edges of the land in a few places and all the passenger can see looking down are sharp black basalt rocks on the beaches below. I found lunch in a hotel served by a portly American and a young English student. Times are changing evidently. The fish cake was nouvelle cuisine, sparse and rather cold but freshly made and tasty.

Forgive all the details - I get out so little I have to make the most of everything when I do. Once I'd had my meal I went back into the village to look for a taxi to take me to Eileen Donan castle which proved unexpectedly hard. I'd asked i the hotel for a number that turned out to be wrong. I tried a craft shop and got another number. There is one taxi in Plockton and he was away to Skye. The lady on the end of the phone couldn't understand me, reception not great I suppose, and most of the natives are Gaelic speakers, but she also had a machine whirring in the background, sounded elderly - possibly as old as me - and unused to mobiles. She told me to 'ring the Kyle man, he'll do it' then she rang off. I didn't have the Kyle man's number and when I turned round to go back into the craft shop it had closed for lunch - and so had all the other shops. As if a gong had sounded. I rang back the first number and screeched into her ear that I wanted to be picked up when her man returned.

Vis a vis the craft shops, artists' colony it might have, but that wasn't evident in the shops. It was all the same stuff that shows up in every 'craft' shop in Scotland and probably England too. Very disappointing.

Whilst I waited for the taxi to get back from its expedition to Skye I mooched around and watched various tour buses disgorge elderly folk. The busload I was closest to was organised by an extremely well-spoken, well-dressed Englishman, tall, slim, greying and distinguished. None of these attributes was cutting any ice with his charges who were told they could go 'anywhere they liked' but should reassemble in half an hour. Good lord! They all looked as if they needed the toilet (none on the coach) and I didn't hold out much hope of them getting a meal served and downed in that time, let alone seeing anything of the pretty village. There were murmurs of discontent. Memo to self - no saga tours for me.

Whilst I was watching this play out, a big red people-carrier arrived and sat placidly in front of the bus. The driver was evidently waiting for something - or someone. He looked at me and I looked at him. Several times we exchanged looks. Finally, when he saw I wasn't with the tour, he stuck his head out of the window: 'Taxi?' 'You are the taxi?' I asked. He nodded, satisfied. I got in.

As I said, they aren't good at signs.

Eileen Donan was fun and the most castle-like castle I've come across in the north of Scotland, where they tend to be more like fortified houses. It felt much more business-like stuck out on what's an island for part of the day. It is peopled with waxworks disconcertingly realistically going about their business. I skipped the usual bloody history rapidly (though noting that our own Bonny Earl of Moray, a man renouned for his love of discipline, was honoured by 50 severed heads on the walls when he visited. Yeurk!) The recontructed kitchen was fun with such realistic stews and stockpots that I could almost smell them. The jellies and moulds were a bit dusty though. I wrote down a recipe for 'Scottish trifle' which involves a pint of raspberry jam, half a pint of medium sherry, 5 eggs, sugar, a quart of cream, and ratafia biscuits, which I haven't seen for years.

Then the taxi driver picked me up and I got back on the train. 'Maintenance work' meant getting bussed between Dingwall and Inverness. Public Transport is such a chancy affair. The first train, Forres to Inverness, was cramped and uncomfortable ( sadists designed those seats that came out where they need to go in and vice versa). The bus was a nightmare - seats so close my knees were round my ears. The train to Plockton was bliss and luckily the return from Kyle of Lochalsh to Inverness also bliss. The bus from Dingwall was luxurious with a TV we didn't need, and the train from Inverness to Forres was comfortable.

It's a lottery.

Hunter-Gatherer

My vegetarian/ piscetarian g'son helped catch 200+ mackerel in the Moray Firth today. Two hours after their demise a brace or two were in my frying pan. Happily g'son doesn't mind gutting and beheading them! He even supervised the cooking, as every hunter must.

Very very tasty and well worth having the kitchen looking like an abbatoir. Some will be soused to eat cold.

For Tigger

Whilst I was at the gallery I bought postcards (I have to! It's part of the Art Exhibition Experience.) These cheetahs are by followers of Giovannino de' Grassi. c.1400