Edinburgh and some knitted ghosts

On Friday night I said to Daughter 1, on the phone, "What are you doing tomorrow?"

"I'm going up town," she said.

"Oh yes? What for?"

"Well," she said, "I need a guitar E string, some cider apple vinegar, some syringes to feed vitamins to guinea pigs and some wool to knit ghosts."

I might be wrong but I rather think that she was the only person with that particular shopping list that weekend. Anyone know differently?

Earlier that day, Mr Life and I went up town too, to go to the Scottish National Gallery. Here's the view looking east. It wasn't so sunny as earlier in the week but it was a lot milder.

That's the Gallery at the end with, to the right, the Royal Scottish Academy. Edinburgh was going through its Athenian phase at the time they were built.

Looking over the fence towards the Old Town, with the lower slopes of Arthur's Seat just visible in the middle of the picture.

Princes Street Gardens - the park on one side of Princes Street, the main shopping street - with the Scott Monument like a mini Eiffel Tower behind the trees. The Monument was built as a memorial to Sir Walter Scott. Imagine someone proposing a huge thing like that nowadays in the middle of a capital city as a tribute to a writer. I don't think even J K Rowling would be honoured in that way. And who reads Scott these days? Not many, I wouldn't think.

Another view of the Old Town, with the Bank of Scotland bravely flying its flag. Banking crisis? What banking crisis?

The Gardens again with, in the distance, the clock of the Balmoral Hotel.

Back to work tomorrow. Hmm. It's possible that our original thought of going to Florence might have been more... foreign. And thus exciting. Still, we've achieved a lot this week. As well taking lots of stuff to the charity shops and the homeless place, we purged our books and took a huge box and two big sacks of them to a charity book shop (explain to me how the shelves are only a bit emptier than they were before?) and we did quite a bit of Freecycling. Thus we disposed of a desk, two desk chairs, a dressing table and two bedside tables, a chest of drawers and a lampshade - all to people who wanted them. Hooray!

Mind you, my mum has almost definitely - no, definitely - decided to move in with us. So we need to enjoy the fruits of our decluttering while we can. She has a lot of possessions....

What's that you say? Have I done the marking and preparation that I planned to do this week? Well, not yet. It's only 8.38 on Sunday night. Oh, you think I should stop bloggifying and get on with it? Ok, ok. You may have a point. Watch me go. Whoosh.