Out and aboutery

Life continues - thankfully - and the garden blooms. 

We went for a walk through The Meadows the other day. The Meadows is a big park in central Edinburgh, but it was once, yes, a meadow, where sheep grazed. My grandfather grew up nearby, in a tenement flat, and used to play football here. Nowadays it's often full of students, since this is the student area. We'd never actually walked along this particular path before, and it was quite interesting seeing The Meadows from this angle. 

It's obvious that the tenement-dwellers who live around here still see it as their garden. 

There are some new student flats overlooking this path, and we liked Professor Polar Bear, keeping an eye on his territory. His mortar board has slipped somewhat. 

There's a little community garden. It's all rather nice.

Yesterday, we went up to visit Son and family. The journey was fairly horrible: it was raining, and there were quite a few lorries throwing up spray. I'm very phobic on motorways and never expect us to get to our destination alive. However, we did. On this occasion. 

Because of the weather, we went to a play place. Spectators have to sign a waiver, I suppose in case they decide to have a go on the equipment, injure themselves and sue. The girl in charge told Mr Life and me that we needed to sign the waiver, and then she hesitated, looked at us and said, "Oh, don't bother. I'll trust you not to go on the equipment. " What could she have been implying??? 

Mind you, Son did have a go...

 

Essex

We've been away again - do these people never stay at home? - this time down to Daughter 2's in London. We visited Forty House, a Jacobean (early 1600s) house in Enfield. The grounds haven't been built on, so there's a 273 acre estate with a pond, parklands, a big walled garden and so on. Amazingly, it's now owned by Enfield Borough Council and is open free to the public. The house itself is large by most people's standards but not uncomfortably huge - a lovely family home. Its most recent owners were the Parker Bowles family - Queen Camilla's former husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, grew up here. Lucky chap!

It's partly furnished, not with the original furniture, and this room has clothes for dressing up.

A very realistic elephant. 

The queen surveys her policies. (I've just looked up "policies", meaning the managed estate round a house, and discovered that this is a Scottish rather than a standard English use of the word. So I suppose it's wrong here, since the house is in England. But I like the grandeur that the word implies.)

The gardens are stunning, even at this time of year. 

Later, I drew a picture of Smallest Granddaughter and she drew one of me drawing her. I look encouragingly young and much smarter than in reality - though somewhat naked. (I was not.)

The next day we visited the little medieval town of Waltham Abbey. You can easily imagine what it was like 500, 600 years ago or more.

Small Granddaughter helpfully holds up this somewhat crooked house. She was dressed as a rabbit only temporarily; she became rather hot.

The town has a very pretty setting on a river

and a beautiful church, the remains of the abbey which was (inevitably) demolished by Henry VIII. I wish he hadn't.

Then we went to a children's farm, with lovely views over the Essex countryside. (Why do we live in a town?)

There were rabbits, guinea pigs, goats, meerkats etc. 

And many many pumpkins, and really good playparks. 

It was a lovely weekend. But now we're home again. 

Visiting

We've been down to London to visit Daughter 2. The trip didn't start well, since we arrived at the station to be greeted by this notice: all trains down the east coast - our route - were cancelled. However, after a couple of hours we were able to get a train down the west coast instead, with a different train company, which was a good deal since we could use the same tickets. The journey was considerably longer, but we got there. 

The following day we all went to visit my brother and his wife in their new house in Cambridge. This is not their new house; it's a bit of King's College. The bit to the left was covered in scaffolding, so looked less than usually elegant. We also met up with my niece, who already lives in Cambridge. Her parents' move (from Epsom, which is really some distance away) is so that she can look after them in their dotage (they are, however, still in reasonable fettle). It was very sensible of them to downsize, and of course we ought to, too, but it does seem a considerable faff. However, their new, smaller house is very nice, and think of all the decluttering they've done, and we haven't. 

On the Monday, Daughter 2 was at work and Littlest Granddaughter at school (so inconvenient). Mr L and I were to have met up with my best friend from school for lunch, but once we were on our way we got a message to say that her husband had been ambulanced to hospital with suspected deep vein thrombosis. (False alarm, fortunately.) It was pouring rain, so we proceeded to the Victoria and Albert Museum and had a wander round, choosing items for the house. (This, above, is the cafe. I like the huge sparkly lights as objects, but don't really think they go with the High Victorian architecture. I don't think they're just there for Christmas; but maybe.)

So this is one of the things I'd like for Christmas, please. It hasn't photographed at all well - what look like metal bits round the sides are actually just light, caught in the thick sides. It gives the impression of a very elegant crystal glass hand-sanitiser bottle, but it's actually...

Can you imagine some poor chap, 2000 years ago, carving that out of rock crystal??? It must have taken days. 

This would also be very acceptable. The colour is perhaps slightly dull, but I love the detail of the carving. 

It's much the same age - and look...

it had a baby one inside! They're for the ashes of distinguished teachers, so I kind of qualify. 

The next day we had a wander round Chingford, where Daughter 2 and family now live. It's quite pleasant. 

The weather was much improved. 

The English do cuter street names than we do, on the whole. 

We decided to walk home over Pole Hill. The obelisk on the left was built in 1824 to mark the meridian and is visible from the Greenwich Observatory, though a few years later they decided that the meridian was actually nineteen feet to the right, and built the smaller one to mark this. You can see why they didn't bother to lug another huge lump of stone up the hill.

It was a pleasant walk, though a trifle muddy in parts from all that rain. 

There were good views down to the reservoir near Daughter 2's new house. 

 and though it's not discernible in my photo, we could see the Thames in the distance. 

And then we came home and now I have a STINKING cold and cough. Most annoying. I'm hoping to be better tomorrow. I did test for Covid the day before yesterday and it was negative, but maybe I'll do it again. 

Grandchildren

On Saturday we went up to Angus to visit Son and family, which was lovely. The weather was beautiful. 

The children played in the big playpark not too far from where they live and then we went back to their house. 

This is the view from their garden in one direction. It's very peaceful. If only it weren't such a trail to get there from here.

Medium Granddaughter, who's a dear little thing, is very good at swinging from the monkey bars in their garden. She's strong and light - an excellent combination. 

On Sunday - also a sunny day - we walked in the local park with the Edinburgh Two and their parents. That was very nice too.

And today we were back up at Son's, looking after Small Grandson while Son worked on the backlog of work paperwork that has built up. 

We went to Dundee Botanic gardens. Small Grandson likes the fish in the glasshouse ponds. 

This is another view over their garden today, when it was sunny but rather chilly. 

This is all very mundane - though pleasant for us. But there seem to be so many things to worry about at the moment that I feel a constant sinking of the heart - Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan. Poor Ukraine. I taught a very nice Ukrainian student long ago. She was clever and wanted to do medicine, but hadn't been here very long and her written English wasn't good enough for her to get the requisite grade in Higher English. I always wondered what happened to her. I hope she managed to fulfil her potential in some way or another. She'd be in her 30s now. 

And, closer to home, various family members are moving/trying to move/thinking of moving house. No huge problems compared to those on other sides of the world, but - always something to think about in the stilly watches of the night.