A tableless post

Well, I'm astonished. Not a single one of you owned up to possessing the world's most common cushion. Distressingly, various commenters have seen and rejected it. Surely I can't be the only person who fell for its convincing air of Granny-made-this-ness?  I suppose it's possible that the reason there are such piles of them in the Edinburgh Ikea is that no one has ever bought one but me.

Today has been slightly rubbish, though cheered by all your comments. We're still in the process of purging the paperwork and archives so that it doesn't all need to go back into the pristine (though sadly not quite as pristine as it was last week) study. The piles of things awaiting attention are diminishing from where we put them in what had been my mum's bedroom, so we decided to grit our teeth and get rid of some of the furniture that she'd brought down from her own house to furnish her bedroom here. We took some to the British Heart Foundation shop; but her favourite pink reclining chair and another pink velvet bedroom chair had to go to the tip because they predated the days of fireproof covering labelling so charities can't take them. I cannot tell you how terrible it felt, heaving up her chairs and dropping them into a skip. So sorry, Mum.

We cheered ourselves up on a further charity shop visit (where we got rid of some books and vinyl records, hurray for us) by having a walk in Inverleith Park. As you can see, it was a lovely sunny day but it was also rather chilly. The pond was partly iced up. I'm so glad I'm not a bird. My feet are cold enough without having to waddle around in icy water.

These were being fed bread by children. I don't think one is really supposed to feed bread to birds any more because it's not good for them - another innocent pleasure gone, alas. When we were little, we were allowed to feed animals in the Zoo, which seems amazing now. In our garden we had this green plant which we called King's Vegetable - it was sort of cabbagey but tall like a sprout plant. There was some family story that a relative had been a royal gardener and had crossed something with something - my brother, who reads this blog, will no doubt have the correct story. I think my father grew it every year from cuttings when we lived in our first house and he was going through a gardening phase. My mother used to put it in soup. Anyway, herbivorous animals at the Zoo loved it and we used to have a great time feeding elephants and monkeys and so on.

This is from the other side of the pond, looking towards the city. The right hand lump is the Castle and the one slightly to the left of the middle is Arthur's Seat. I like skylines with hills and spires and domes rather than skyscrapers but it's a matter of taste, I suppose. Like cushions.