Autumn activities

On Sunday, Daughter 1 and I took the children to The Yard. It's such a great place and such a privilege to be there with those lovely little people.

And then the other day, Mr Life and I went to the exhibition of some of Her Majesty's Canalettos at The Queen's Gallery at Holyrood Palace. Lucky Queen, is what I say. I hadn't ever seen so many Canalettos so close up and I have to report that they're amazing. So much detail. I didn't like to enquire if HM would allow her subjects to take photos, so I took one of this advert when we went to have a coffee afterwards.

We went to Florence and Venice two years ago and the only problem is that it's kind of spoiled the rest of the world for me. Edinburgh is also beautiful as far as cities go, and if you're brought up here you have a tendency to feel slightly meh about other cities, but Venice!!!

Even in this photo under perspex taken by my phone in the cafe (imagine the accent) you can see the beauty of Venice and the detail in the painting. Though of course Canaletto messed around with the position of the buildings to get more of the best ones in each painting.

This is the view from the cafe, with Salisbury Crags behind the trees.

Venice, you don't have a lovely hill in the middle of your city or a very peculiar parliament building opposite one of your many palaces, do you? Still, you do win the most beautiful city (that I've been to) prize, though you're probably not a very convenient city to live in.

I don't want to boast, but look. A border of half-square triangles! And they have points. And reasonably sensible corners. They did take me a long time and quite  a bit of arithmetic... .