Normal service

 

I'm not going to say much about the preceding discussion except that, like Molly, I felt very sad for Mary/Megan; and I didn't mean to make her feel upset. Also like Molly, I wish she had a blog since she writes so well. (And thank you, Mary/Megan, for the very nice things you said about my blog.) And now, back to posts about walks and Grandson. On Monday, we took some things to a charity shop in Stockbridge and then walked along to the Water of Leith to the Dean Village. Above, you see where we left the road...

 

 

... and below, the view standing in the same place but looking in the other direction. Very different.

 

 

Here's our friend the heron (or possibly his friend). Sorry about the horrible photo. This was me testing out the zoom on my phone camera. (Not very good.) Again, he's yards from that crossroads.

 

 

Along the river a bit, there's this display of the Dean Village as it was in a drawing of 1693. Those fields between it and the Castle in the background are now built over by the New Town (begun in 1780-something). I tend to prefer fields. On the other hand, I also like flushing toilets, central heating and washing machines so don't really want to live in 1693, thanks.

 

 

Mr Life obligingly poses in the Dean Village.

 

 

Above, you can see the backs of some New Town houses up the hill. They have less fancy stone on the backs than on the fronts. That's quite characteristic of Edinburgh, which is proverbially described as "fur coat and nae knickers" - ie looks posh on the outside (like a woman with a fur coat but no undergarments).

 

 

Then today we had Grandson again. He's very partial to climbing the stairs.

 

 

He's also very fond of the car keys, especially the button on them that locks and unlocks the car. This works even through the front door - you can hear the muffled click-click. Try explaining that to the insurance company when the car is stolen... . I think we need to put these keys somewhere less accessible to him before we find that he's posted both sets down the back of  a sofa or somewhere else known only to him. Since at the moment his vocabulary consists mainly of Mum, Da-da, Ga-ga, pussy, num-num, bye-bye, hello and such like, it might be a while before he told us where they were.