Miss Crichton and other beautiful things

The decluttering continues, haltingly. Why did I ever keep this project on Mary Queen of Scots from my history class in 1962? 

The teacher who got us to do this project was one of the several eccentrics at my school - which was an all-girls, private one. She was called Miss Crichton and was known among us as Granny Crichton because she was so ancient - though I would be amazed if she were actually a granny. In those days, the retiral age for women teachers was 60, so this old, old lady was presumably about 55. She was always cold, and in winter and summer wore a tweed suit - often a cherry red one - with a scarf. In our school the teachers rather than the girls moved classrooms, and she would come into ours carrying a travel rug, climb on to the slightly raised platform at the front of the class, sit down at the desk, turn the chair towards the radiator, cover her legs with the rug and teach from that position, looking at us sideways. If the windows were open, she would direct us to close them. 

This would not have worked in the secondary school in which I taught. Fortunately we were very well-behaved.  

Her hair was suspiciously black and it was rumoured that it was a wig. It was certainly very shiny, though I think it probably looked wig-like mainly because she wore a hairnet over it, so it was bunched up at the ends. Her face was very round and flat and white - and, as I remember, wrinkled (though see above). 

In the two years that we had her, Miss Crichton gave us three projects that I can remember - the one above, one on the voyages of Christopher Columbus and one on the battle of Blenheim. I think I threw the others out some years ago but the M Q of S one somehow survived. It was long before the internet or even readily available photocopiers, so quite a lot of research went into these projects and we all travelled to museums and so on to acquire postcards as illustrations. There were about 15 handwritten pages in each and they took a long time. On the back of this one, Granny C has written VG+. That's all. Not a single comment anywhere else in the project. Which I now think is absolutely disgraceful! I wonder if she even read them. 

Ah well, this work of research has now been decluttered, along with all my school reports, a good number of my missionary aunt's photos of people unknown to us, all my school magazines and various other bits of paper which I don't want the children to feel that they need to keep once I'm no longer here.

At the Botanics, spring is in full gallop

And so it is, on a smaller scale, in our garden. 

Mr L, Big Grandson's other grandfather and Big Grandson had a grand day out in Glasgow at a model railway exhibition. I think this is an exhibit rather than the view from the train on the way there. 

And Daughter 2 has finished the stool she made at a stool-making class. It's lovely!

 

Roads taken

Yes, Anna, we did lead our walk along the shore one Saturday in the middle of August. Can't now remember what the visitors were doing, but we had a few hours off. 

It's a lovely walk, through woods

and fields

before getting to the water. 

Daughter 2 and her husband and little one are safely home, though their grass needs cutting after a month away! 

Today we went for another 6 miles with the group, up one of our city hills and round and down. 

It was another lovely day out. We're so lucky to have these friends; the miles speed past as we natter. My sore leg, fortunately, doesn't seem to get much sorer after six miles than it is just pottering around the house. This is just as well, since there's a long wait for hip replacement surgery. 

There's north Edinburgh in the distance, with the distinctive shape of Arthur's Seat. 

We ended up walking through a park where there was a (plastic) duck race for charity. 

Last night I was browsing the internet, as you do, and found a website with lots of photos of pupils and staff dating from my days of teaching at a particular school. And I found myself in about 1974. I'm in the gym, holding a table tennis bat - no idea why. I was convinced in those days that I was a bit fat. Sadly, I am now fatter. I still have the beads, though, and I'm happy to report that they still fit fine. 

Decisions...

What an uncommenty world Blogland is nowadays, and indeed how few of the blogs that I used to read still exist, alas. In several cases I'm now Facebook friends of these ex-bloggers, but I don't think that Facebook is the equal of blogging, though I do like FB as well. Ah well.  

I've uploaded these pictures from Google photos, unlike my usual habit, and I can't get them to go in the right order. I started at the bottom of the ones I wanted on Google photos, and they came backwards on to the blog, so I tried again by starting at the top and the same happened. Anyway, we've had our smaller living room sofas recovered and I've been looking at cushions, worthy of the new covers, in John Lewis, where I was horrified to find that they cost £40 or £45 each. The one above might match quite well but I'm not sure it's really my style. But hey, I thought, I can make cushions. 

For example, I like these fabrics. But it turns out that they're £35 a metre, which makes the £45 cushions seem not so bad. 

So I bought this one and will consider my options. 

We've got decorators in at the moment, which seemed like a good idea some months ago. Annoyingly, they came on Tuesday, said that they couldn't come for the next two days and then the boss left, leaving a Lithuanian chap to strip the paper as above. He worked hard and tidied up after himself but I hope they're going to be here from now on. They're doing the kitchen, a bathroom and, argh, our bedroom. 

Earlier in the year, when sorting out Stuff, I put all postcards, other cards and letters in a big box, unsorted. I am now doing the sorting and finding all sorts of things such as this card from my parents on my 40th birthday. I'm now 71. How I would love to look 40 now! - or indeed to be 40. Life is fleeting. 

That's my lovely mum's handwriting. Can't throw this away - indeed I can throw almost none of it away. It's all very nostalgic and a mixture of heartwarming and sad. 

There are lots of home-made cards, such as this from Daughter 2 when she was very small. She's mildly dyslexic but extremely nice! 

Before the decorators came (see, this is backwards) we took down all these blue plates from the back hall. I've had them more or less all our married life - they were originally acquired to hide a bumpy wall we had in the previous house, bought in 1976. Will I put them up again? Ironically, Daughter 2 (who knows such things) tells me that plates on the wall are fashionable again. 

And here's a more modern drawing, which I found around the place - Biggest Granddaughter doodled this. Rather sweet! 

 

Blowing in the wind

I recently made Big Grandson, at his request, a floor cushion, and then Biggest Granddaughter wanted one too. His cover was from a single fabric but she wanted a patchwork one with fabrics of her choosing from my stash. The first ones she choose were these red and mainly green ones. I do not like red and green together (well, apart from at Christmas) and said, "Ooh, these don't really go together." She looked at me severely.

"It's my cushion, Granny," she said. Quite right. Then she picked lots of others, with reasons every time ("I love reading so I have to have these book fabrics", "I've got to have bunnies", "Who doesn't like balloons?") and I thought, hmm. How do I make something tasteful from this lot? 

I considered putting banding between them or doing something a bit fancy and then I decided just to go for it with simple squares, to get the full effect of her chosen fabrics. And actually the combination of patterns wasn't as bad as I expected. 

The other day, we went to the museum (first time since lockdown) to see the Galloway Hoard, a large collection of items buried about 9000AD and discovered by a metal detector a few years ago, in southern Scotland. It was so interesting. 

This is one of the intricately-made brooches, but there were many others, with armlets and ingots - mainly in silver, but some in gold, both from far-off countries - buried in a silver pot made  in Central Asia possibly 300 years earlier still. They were clever and adventurous people, our ancestors. The pot was wrapped in various pieces of cloth, which has been partially preserved by being buried and is currently being analysed. So interesting to see weaving done by people over 1000 years ago. 

The most fascinating thing, of course, would be to know why the items were buried, and by whom, and why they never came back for them - and I don't suppose we'll ever know that. Was it for fear of marauding Vikings, who then duly marauded? Did some old chap bury them to keep them safe from his neighbours, and then die without mentioning the location to his family? Did they come and look and were they frustratingly unable to find them? 

Meanwhile - though flowers bloom on and it's still warm -

there are definite signs of autumn. Rose-bay-willowherb is spreading its fluffy seeds, 

while rowan berries 

and rose hips are brightening the hedgerows

and you can see why this is called thistledown. It's pretty, but don't blow near my garden, seeds. 

 

Mats

I came across these the other day. They used to belong to my lovely grandmother and were made by her friend, Nell Wallace. Nell was from Shetland and was a wonderful knitter and crocheter. She was one of those people who always had some knitting or crochet on the go and would sit there, chatting away and barely looking at her work - never using a printed pattern, just making it up. She and her husband were a very sweet couple - very smiley and kind. 

The Wallaces, Nell and Bill, were my grandparents' best friends. They used to be neighbours when my grandparents first came to Edinburgh. Then, in the early 1930s, the Wallaces bought a newly-built house and urged my grandparents to buy one in the same street, so they did. My grandparents lived there all the rest of their lives. They had only had one child - my mother - and the Wallaces had two, both a bit younger than Mum: Margaret and young Bill. The families grew up together.

Years later, when my parents got married, the Wallaces moved across town to look after an elderly relative, and Mum and Dad rented, and later bought, the Wallaces' house. I grew up there till I was 12, with Granny and Grandpa living just over the road, which was great.  The Wallaces and my grandparents remained the best of friends, and visited often; and my mum stayed in touch with young Bill and Margaret too till the end. Young Bill was a keen mountaineer and died in his 70s,  of a heart attack as he reached the top of a mountain. Appropriate, if a bit early for someone so apparently fit. Margaret died in her eighties, a few years ago. I kept in touch with her after Mum died. 

There's a very sad aspect to this story. The Wallaces' son, young Bill, married and had two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter had multiple physical handicaps and also learning difficulties and died a few years ago, and the son tragically killed himself years before, as very young man, by stepping in front of a train. Margaret never married and had no children. So, alas, Nell and her husband have no living descendants. 

Nell made lots of these mats and my granny used these ones (there were more) on her dining table. The bigger ones are the size of dinner plates. When Granny died, my mum must have kept them and then they came down to me. I never use them. My children will never use them. And yet I cherish them because of the lovely Wallaces. I hope I'm not the only person who remembers them.

We've had beautiful weather this week, and I've spent some time sitting in the shade, reading

and looking down the garden at the new bit of lawn where there used to be a big hedge. 

 

Families and friends

It's been an uneventful week, as far as I can remember. Well, it's featured a visit from a decorator to estimate for painting various rooms (that's going to be expensive, I fear), a visit to the dentist (ditto) and a mammogram (routine). So, not fun, though I've also had some friends round for coffee and a catch up, which was much better. One friend, much younger than me, is starting a new romance (while unhappily married) so that was rather startling. Rather her than me, but she's so happy!

Quite a few years ago I bought a book about childhood in Glasgow in the early years of last century. I read the beginning (on a train, maybe?) and then for some reason never got round to reading the rest until last week. It was written in 1987 and the writer interviewed lots of old people to get their memories. And when I got to the bit above, I was struck by the name Noble Boyd, because one of my father's many cousins was called Noble Boyd (actually Thomas Noble, but always called Noble to differentiate him from his father Thomas)  and he lived near the White Cart River in Glasgow. To translate the above: he was fishing for tadpoles, fell in, got very smelly and then was smacked when he got home. On the other occasion he went stealing apples (probably just the fallen ones) and got all wet again. 

Here he is near the bottom of my dad's carefully-compiled family tree. I never met him but now wish that I could ask him some of the questions that one wants to ask after there's no longer anyone there to answer them. It looks as if he had no children. 

Here he is again: 

He sounds quite a character. His father deaved him and his siblings about cribbage - there's no adequate English word for "deaved" but it means something like "pestered" - but with a real feeling of weariness. It's from the same root as "deafened" - but metaphorically. It hasn't anything to do with being loud. 

Here he is with various other cousins and their spouses at a golden wedding party. Luckily I know who most of them are because my dad left a key to the photo. My grandmother is on the far left in the second front row and my grandfather in the same row, but third from the right. I wonder why they didn't stand together. 

 This is Noble in the back row, middle, as a young man. 

We used to visit my aunt, my dad's sister, in Norfolk, and one year I got her to dictate her family memories. This is what she said about Noble's parents: 

Uncle Tom (Clarkston Tom) - (1872-1957) 

We thought of Uncle Tom as very posh – maybe he married above his station? He had a maid called Jean Ross. One time, when my mother was staying, they went to visit some friends who served dainty sandwiches and had finger bowls, which my sister Jean had never seen before. My mother very seldom made derogatory comments but this time she said that she thought they were showing off. Uncle Tom’s wife was called Ann(ie) McKendrick (1869-1936) . He worked as a traveller for suiting and gave my mother out-of-date books of pattern samples, out of which she made patchwork bedcovers [two of which I now have]. He came to Edinburgh in the course of his work and he had a car! He used to bring us a big box of chocolates. We children had Sunday clothes, including coats, made by Uncle Tom’s firm. They were beautifully cut. When we were older, Jean and I used to go to his house – which seemed posh - for holidays. It was right by the River Cart. We used to climb over the wall, scramble down the banks and explore the river.

 Uncle Tom was a Justice of the Peace, which increased our sense of his poshness!

And here are the quilts that my aunt gave me, made from Noble's father's out-of-date pattern samples about 100 years ago. Not fancy, but serviceable and warm. 

Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter are coming on Monday to stay for almost two weeks. Won't that be lovely?

Miss M

For us, as for most others, life is very eventless at the moment, but we usually go for a walk with Daughter 2 and her family at the weekend, which is our only opportunity to see her at any length. On Sunday we walked along the river to Stockbridge. The children had a happy time playing, whenever we stopped, as children always do. 

It was quite busy with others finding limited opportunities for recreation, but it's always pleasant down there.

You often see tourists here in normal times - there are clearly books on Edinburgh featuring this as a place to walk - and even on Sunday there were a few foreigners among the locals. 

So it was a nice afternoon. Then I gardened much of yesterday, when the weather was beautiful. There's quite a bit of spring tidying-up still to do. Spring and autumn are busy times for the gardener, or at least it is if you have our sort of garden, with lots of herbaceous perennials. Our new grass (where we got the hedge removed in the autumn) was looking great till the snow, which squashed it down and seems to have killed bits of it. But I expect it'll recover.

And then home-schooling started again for me yesterday afternoon. Big Granddaughter's been back at school for a week and a bit now, and seems happy. Big Grandson is due to go back on the 15th, so I'll have a bit more time to do other stuff after that (till the Easter holidays begin). 

The other day, I came across in a drawer the death announcement (from 2000) of my maths teacher. She was an absolutely horrible person - tyrannical and bullying and sarcastic. She was 85 when she died, and the announcement said she was the beloved aunt of some people (she was unmarried) and the beloved adopted "aunt" of another family. It seems really hard to believe that her family - and even some non-family - loved her! I just can't imagine her being anything but nasty. But presumably she was. I wonder what made her that way to us. Our class, anyway, was quite academic and very well-behaved - indeed, too terrified of her to be anything else. Aren't human beings strange? I wonder if she'd missed her chance at marriage because of the war - quite likely (she'd be 24 in 1939) - and was embittered because of this and thus jealous of us girls, with our lives before us. But then - she must have been nice at home: no one needs to use "beloved" twice in a death notice. It's a mystery... .

It's not really that I still bear a grudge, but I'm quite pleased to be alive in a world that doesn't contain her. 

 

Happy birthday, Dad; and things you might not have predicted

This begonia semperflorens has bloomed since last spring, which is very cheerful of it. It's a bit leggy but bright, at least. In a few weeks I'll chop it back for cuttings. 

I've been going through photos again. This is my father's mother, who - unusually for a lady in her eighties in the 1960s - lived in Pakistan for a few years with my aunt, her daughter - who was a doctor there. 

Today is my father's 101st birthday. Here he is in a natty velvet suit with his little sister (who became the doctor in Pakistan). 

One of the problems is this huge album, which contains souvenirs from my parents' Golden Wedding dinner in their rather posh club. It contains the guest list, the menu signed by the guests, all the many cards they received, photos of flowers they received and of the guests at the party, my dad's speech... and so on. I had just decided to be ruthless and fillet it for a few things when Mr L said he thought I ought to keep in intact. So I did. For the moment. It's all rather sad, since their friends were on the whole rather successful and confident people and now they're all gone. Again - not sad really - everyone has to die - but. You know. Tempus fugit and all that. 

There were lots of letters, many of the less relevant of which I've firmly thrown out, but I've kept family ones such as this to me from my dad, in 1970 when I was in America. I had to look up who the Chancellor who died was (Iain MacLeod - I remember him vaguely). Poor old Barber (only just remember him, I fear), wasting his time (as it turns out) on EU negotiations. And people indeed don't send so many Christmas cards now - young people, anyway - but not so much because of the postage as because of other methods of communication, I think, not easy to predict in 1970.

Imagine Sir John having an £8000 car in 1970!

It snowed a bit earlier in the week and then it snowed A LOT. 

Big Grandson came for the day yesterday and I was just about to take him home at 7.30pm but then looked outside. I hadn't done so for a couple of hours, and it had snowed rather a lot and was still snowing heavily. I decided not to risk an hour's drive there and back, so he stayed the night. 

And by the morning...

 

He and Grandpa did some manly snow-clearing

and then Son-in-Law 1 brought Biggest Granddaughter over for the afternoon and they played outside for a while (and also inside in the warm). I'm glad they're getting this snow experience but I hope it doesn't last too long. I'm ready, SO ready, for spring. And some good news. The media keep telling us that the vaccine that we got doesn't work too well for over 70s - though there are other voices who tell us not to worry about this, for various scientific reasons. What can we do - but plod on?