More Novembery things

My life is so thrilling that I'm a day behind in recounting our amazing doings: these are photos that I took from the car on our way to church yesterday. They're not perhaps of prizewinning quality, but then we were tootling along at 30 miles an hour. This park is known as The Meadows and I really love it, even though this bit is just a flat green space with trees. But even flat green spaces are so welcome in the middle of cities. This is in the student area and in warm weather it's always full of young people having fun, which is so nice. Yesterday, though beautiful, was chillyish - Edinburgh's weather has suddenly changed from unseasonably warm to a more normal November temperature, though with more than usual sun.

The trees are briskly shedding their leaves and the shadows are long, even late in the morning.

I wonder if the architect of that horrible building is still alive and if he or she ever wakes in the night and wonders whether he or she got it right. I expect the university, which owned the building, didn't let him do what he/she really wanted. It somewhat mars the view of Arthur's Seat, our mini-mountain.

And this is a slightly better view of the hill, though the street furniture doesn't improve the scene.

When we arrived at Daughter 2's house on the way to church, Mr Life remembered that the shoe box which I'd carefully covered with Christmas paper and filled with gifts for someone in Eastern Europe was still on the dining room sideboard seven miles away. The church collection for the shoeboxes was happening that day. I must take it to another collection point tomorrow. Silly me.

Mum, though greatly improved, is still in hospital.

I imagine that it's the sort of story that may have gone round the world as an end-of-dire-financial-collapse-television-news humorous filler item, but if you haven't heard about it: in a little Scottish town called Oban, they had a Guy Fawkes fireworks display at the weekend that went a bit wrong. It was a professional show, and the townfolks had paid their money and gathered to watch it. The fireworks were set off electronically, but the timer didn't work properly and all the 30-minutes' worth of fireworks went off in 50 seconds. It was quite spectacular, if a trifle brief:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6QtigLJD_4