Searching for Hugh MacDiarmid

Oh, I do love bloggy meet-ups! Margaret, who's a retired French teacher from Washington State, came to stay for a couple of days before going up north on a group tour. It was such fun and she's so lovely - just as I was sure she would be, from her blog. Her grandfather was a first cousin to Christopher Murray Grieve, pen name Hugh MacDiarmid, who's a huge name among fans of Scottish poetry. He was born in Langholm, in the Border country, so Mr L kindly drove us down there on a pilgrimage. Firstly, we tracked down Hugh MacD's memorial - which wasn't quite where it was marked on the map. We drove up a single-track road for some distance - I hope Margaret didn't think this was an elaborate plan to kidnap her - until we spotted it. It's quite large once you get there!

Personally, I'd have put it in the village for ease of visiting - on the other hand, there are lovely views once you've found it.

Langholm itself is set among the hills.

We almost found his birth house - it's number 17 in a road which has numbers 15 and 19 and then in between, a sort of muddly building which appears to have a house at the front and another in the back. However, we paid homage to the general area.

We also followed signs to the library, having discovered that the family moved to a flat above this, where CMG/HMacD grew up. Having failed to locate the library, we then later happened to pass The Old Library, which was clearly the right vintage. So we waved to his shade in the windows above.

At that point we decided to have a cup of tea, and entered the only cafe open in the village. It's called Truly Scrumptious. It wasn't. The woman in charge somewhat grudgingly allowed us to sit down, saying, "You can have coffee, but not tea. I've switched the urn off. We close at 4." At that point, it was about 20 to 4. You'd have thought she might have managed to boil a kettle, even if it was too much bother to keep the urn on. However, coffee was all right. She didn't offer anything to eat, but luckily we weren't hungry.  Scottish hospitality at its best (though she did have a southern English accent... ). They probably don't get a huge number of tourists.

Which will be why the tourist office was shut (on a Saturday afternoon). But the cleaner was there, and when I asked her for directions to the cemetery, where CMG/HMacD is buried, she told us how to get there. "Is it walkable?" I asked, and she assured me that it was.

Well, she was right. It was quite a long walk, the kind where you go, "Do you think we're nearly there, or will we go back for the car?" and then you decide that it can't be much further. And it is. And then it's up quite a big hill.

But we got there. We knew that he was in plot F17 (or something - can't quite remember) but sadly none of the plots was marked, and there were a lot of gravestones. After we'd all searched for a considerable time and were about to give up, Margaret found it - hurray!

So that was a lovely, if slightly hilarious, day.

The countryside is very pretty.

After that we drove home, vaguely trying to find the cottage he lived in for much of his adult life, but this time we failed. But we got the general idea.

The next day, Margaret and I went to Holyrood Palace. The palace is nice enough but I really covet the garden. You wouldn't think it was in the middle of a city. That's our city hill in the background. The ruins to the left of the picture date from the abbey's founding in 1128, though the abbey church is in slightly better condition (though still ruined. It was plundered by English troops in the 16th century. But we forgive them. I'm sure the Scots did some plundering in England also).

The following day we went to the Botanics, where Margaret bravely sampled the iconic Scottish soft drink of Irn Bru (pronounced Iron Brew). I warned her that it wasn't my favourite. You can see what she thought of it. I couldn't quite think of how to describe it in advance but she identified the taste as like cough medicine, and I couldn't disagree. But she'd read about it in Rebus books and now she knows not to have it again.

And now she's off on her tour and I've started to think about my next quilt. A friend of Daughter 2 is having a long-awaited baby and she wants a cot quilt all in blue and all self-colour, which I shall find an interesting challenge.