Cleopatra

Littlest Granddaughter had a wear-your-own-clothes day (as opposed to school uniform) to raise money for Children In Need. So she decided to go as Cleopatra. "They're my own clothes," she reasoned. Well, true. 

On Saturday, we had a lovely walk with our walking friends. One of us always takes a photo of us on any available bridge, so I took a photo of her taking a photo of us. 

It was the walk along the river that Mr Life and I did the recce for a few weeks ago. Mr Heron was there this time. 

It wasn't so pretty as when we did it before, because most of the leaves are now off the trees. 

But we had a great time anyway. Good company, beautiful day and lots of laughs, so the 6 miles passed easily. And then we had coffee at the Visitor Centre. 

Tomorrow I'm back off down to London to spend time with Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter while Son-in-Law 2 appears at the Birmingham Rep. 
 

Drawings

It's been a fairly uneventful week. I've mainly been hand-quilting my rainbow quilt, which is to cover a single bed and is thus, by my standards, quite large - certainly the largest I've done. I'm having fun, though, just quilting it to please myself, not to any particular pattern. 

But we did go to an exhibition of Renaissance drawings at the King's Gallery - everything here is from the royal collections. (Why does one family have so much? Hmm.) First, we had coffee in the cafe, which has nice views out on to the hill behind. Sustenance and then art. 

The drawings were amazing, not least because they were on paper and had survived 500 years. (I don't imagine that anything I do will survive me by 50 years, let alone 500.) Mainly they were sketches for later paintings, some of which are now lost (or, who knows? maybe on someone's wall somewhere). The one below is by Battista Franco. He lived from 1510-1561; not all that long. This is the flagellation of Christ, so not exactly cheery. But doesn't it have movement? And aren't the expressions of the two chaps on the right interesting? One just dogged, the other somewhat horrified, as one might well be if Jesus was looking so intently into one's face. 

This is St Jerome by Bartolomeo Passarotti, who lived quite a bit longer: 1529-1592. 

And this head of a man is by the Circle of Cristoforo Canozzi da Lendinara, c 1427- after 1477. So possibly not even by Cristoforo himself. It's thought that it was a design for intarsia, in which pieces of differently toned wood are inlaid - hence the sort of contour lines. 

Now, this is a sad one. Parmigianino (1503-1540) was commissioned to decorate the vault of Santa Maria della Steccata, and this is his sketch for the middle of it. It's the coronation of the Virgin. But he was jailed for a while for his lack of progress, and then he died - at 37. Oh dear. 

All these chaps were so much cleverer than I am and I'd never heard of any of them. I'm glad that their work is still around, though. So thanks, King Charles, I suppose, for letting us see them. 

 

Season of mists and all that

I've been back at Daughter 2's in London, trying to help out a bit while her husband's in Birmingham rehearsing for a Christmas musical play about Sherlock Holmes. It was Littlest Granddaughter's October week's holiday, so I looked after her for a few days. Here, a black cat and I went to a pottery painting place not far away from where they live. 

This was fun. 

For Hallowe'en, Littlest designed, and Daughter 2 cut, two fierce pumpkins. 

Here they are in the house window. 

On Saturday we went to a children's farm / play place, where we had more fun. 

There was a huge marquee filled with big building blocks, so she and her mum built a palace with a stable for a donkey (which was also there, for some reason). This took quite a long time. 

The Essex countryside is rather pretty. 

At home, Littlest built a Lego shop that sold potions. See all the bottles on the shelf? 

And this was a blindfold guess-the-taste session. 

So it was lovely to be there. But now I'm home again. 

We went to the Botanics yesterday. Here's my favourite tree, the bald cypress, with my favourite old chap standing beside it. 

Everything was looking lovely in the autumn colours. 

Pity that winter's on its way...

Look at this liquidamber - beautiful.

It's autumn in my garden too - not surprisingly. I should get out there and do some tidying up. Maybe tomorrow. 

 

Flowers and decisions

It's definitely autumn now, but there's still a lot of colour in the garden. Here's a nerine. I've tried to grow them for years and had given up, when suddenly, this year, two appeared in the front garden and this one in the back. They've clearly been sulking for ages and just decided to flower now. The ones in the front must be a different variety, because they're a bit peely-wally, ie pale, and are now more or less over. But this one is lovely. I hope it acquires some offspring. 

I don't even know what this is. Looking on the internet, I wonder if it may be an argyranthemum. Anyway, I bought it somewhere or other and it's been flowering for months. 

This bed has a variety of things: verbena, begonia, busy Lizzie. And the garden refuse bin in the background... And of course there are a lot of plants that are way past their best, but I didn't point the camera in their direction. Don't believe all you see on the internet!

Cosmos - lots and lots of pink ones too, 

nicotiana in many hues - can't believe I didn't grow them for the first time till I was 74! I love them.

And even the last of the sweet peas. I haven't deadheaded them much recently but they're still flowering. 

The trees in the streets near us are very autumnal too.

First world problem: our downstairs bathroom is... oh, probably 30 years old. It's still mainly fine, but the vanity unit is getting past its best and needs to be replaced. I really like the tiles I chose 30 years ago, and am reluctant to junk a perfectly good loo, washbasin, bath and shower - and spend a lot of money in the process - to get an entirely new bathroom. But on the other hand, will we be able to get another vanity unit that fits in the space, and would we be better to get a more modern-looking bathroom anyway, to make the house look more desirable to someone viewing the house when we sell it? Not that we have any plans to sell it any time soon, but who knows what the future holds? 

With the kitchen, which is only slightly younger, we decided a year or two ago to have it repainted and leave it at that. A new kitchen - ours is fairly big and has a lot of units - would cost a fortune, and any new people would probably have different tastes. And it's fine - not falling to bits at all; just not a currently fashionable style. 

When we had some redecoration done in several rooms a few years ago, I said just to paint everything white - partly just because it was easy - but also because it's neutral, with these same imaginary house-buyers in mind. And the painter said to me that one should never decorate with the future inhabitants in mind, because who knows what they'll like? Which was a good point. And now I'm a bit bored with the white. 

There you are, Daughter 2 - I did manage to waffle another post out before going down to hold the fort in London tomorrow. For you, anything. See you soon! 

SO busy

It's been a while since I last posted, though I don't suppose anyone has really noticed except our London daughter, who reads this for scraps of home, I think. 

It's been BUSY. You wouldn't think that the retired life would be full of things to do, but somehow it is. It's entirely, or at least almost entirely my own fault, since I could in theory sit at home all day and read books. And sometimes that sounds quite tempting... But, though I'm very much not out there saving the world, I don't seem to have a lot of time for thumb-twiddling. Being chair of one of my choirs generates quite a lot of work, though frankly it would be easier just to do it all myself than to negotiate decisions with the 6 other people on the committee, who all have helpful but varying opinions. And then there's gardening and quilting and meeting up with chums and singing in two choirs and learning the music for said choirs and editing the church magazine. 

On days that I'm not doing other things, I'm getting on with various tasks such as - oh, here we go - Blogger's put the photos in reverse order again. Well, the list at the bottom shows some of the jobs that I had to do the day before going down to Daughter 2's house in London to try to help a bit while her actor husband is away for some months, working. 

And then, in reverse time order: 

we had a lovely walk in the Botanics with the Edinburgh Two and their dad on Monday. Look at how tall Big Grandson and Big Granddaughter are getting! Big Grandson towers over me and his sister looks down a good couple of inches on me too. 

Then on Saturday, we went for a walk with the walking gang around West Linton.

We had perfect autumn weather, with not a leaf moving. 

If one ignores the symbolism of the dying of the year being like one's own (and others') death, autumn can be lovely. 

Especially when spent with good friends. 6ish miles that day.

This is Littlest Granddaughter opening her birthday presents. She's 8! How time flies, etc.

This list was just to rationalise the fact that I'd spent a whole day pottering around. I did more after I'd given up writing the list. The foost bin, by the way, is the little kitchen bin that we put stuff in for the compost heap. Foost is a Scottish word for mould, but I don't actually leave it long enough before emptying for it to get mouldy. Foosty. Daughter 2 named her similar bin thus, and it seemed apt. 

Better go and do some Duolingo before bed. That's another thing. Why am I polishing up my French and German and trying to learn Gaelic? Am I going to use any of these? Most unlikely, to any extent. Is it saving me from dementia? Well, let's hope. 

Edited to add: the first sentence in the German lesson I've just started was -

Ich habe die Maultaschen mit Pilzen noch nicht 

.

which means, I haven't yet tried the dumplings with mushrooms. I can't imagine using this. Though I do quite like mushrooms. 

Balerno to Slateford

We went up to see Son and family the other day. Here are the children feeding deer at a deer centre. 

I'm sure the deer are perfectly well fed, but they were all very keen to eat the pellets, cunningly sold to us by the centre. 

It was a lovely day. 

Today we did the recce for a walk we're leading with the walking chums in November. It was a perfect autumn day. 

We walked along the river path from Balerno to Slateford. It's all in the city, but feels like the country. 

It's mostly along a former railway line. Here, a tunnel has been painted inside, much of it illustrating the poem "From a Railway Carriage" by Robert Louis Stevenson, who often visited Colinton (on the route of our walk) because his grandfather was the minister there. It's a poem that, in my youth anyway, was much anthologised for children, and we learnt it off by heart. 

From a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson Next

Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; And charging along like troops in a battle All through the meadows the horses and cattle: All of the sights of the hill and the plain Fly as thick as driving rain; And ever again, in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles, All by himself and gathering brambles; Here is a tramp who stands and gazes; And here is the green for stringing the daisies! Here is a cart runaway in the road Lumping along with man and load; And here is a mill, and there is a river: Each a glimpse and gone forever!

It's a good poem, full of rhythmic energy, and the painting was splendid.

Here's RLS himself in the tunnel. 

And here's the rather pretty church. 

The path was mainly very easy and the weather beautiful. This is through the window of a grotto along the way. 

Still, by the end of the 6+ miles we were quite tired, and glad to reach the Water of Leith Visitors' Centre for a sit-down and a cup of tea. We're 77 and 75, after all. It was a wonderful day, though.