and...

I tried to add this to the picture of the shredded tickets, but it wouldn't work. So here goes - two blogs within two minutes. I should go to bed. It's after 1 am.

Another slightly mad tale about my generally quite sensible family.


Our son is a medical student and this week he’s been in Kirkcaldy, a town a bit north of here, living in at the hospital and having to get up at 6 am.

Yesterday at quarter to six in the evening he phoned me, sounding really terrible – groggy and worried.

He: Mum, can I ask you something?
Me: Yes. Are you ok?
He: No. What time is it?
Me: Quarter to six.
He: In the afternoon?
Me: Yes.
He: Oh no! I’ve slept for 24 hours and I’ve missed a whole day! I was supposed to meet my tutor this morning and….
Me: Oh dear. Are you ok, though?
He: I’ve got to go!

I then started worrying. How could that have happened? Had he got drunk the night before? (not that he ever has got drunk). Had a stroke? Gone into a diabetic coma?

One minute later the phone rang again.

He: It’s me again.
Me: Yes. Are you ok?
He: What day is it?
Me: Wednesday.
He: Not Thursday?
Me: No.
He: Oh, thank goodness. That means I only slept for 45 minutes!

He had come back from the hospital at 5, fallen asleep on the bed, woken up, seen it was 5.45, assumed it was the next morning, then looked outside and realised that it didn’t look like the morning, so assumed it was the next afternoon.

After the second phone call, he cheered up and decided to have his dinner.

Illustration to "Jigsaws in the morning" blog

I tried to add these pictures to the blog about my daughter and her shredded tickets - she took photos to amuse her friends in emails - but couldn't persuade Blogger to co-operate. Here they are, anyway. As you can see, we didn't get them quite perfect, but it wasn't bad work for 22 minutes, we felt.

Windows

Just for a change, here are a couple of photos of my sitting room. You can see that my beloved garden is really quite small, with the back wall at an angle to the back of the house. Nonetheless, I love the outlook from the sitting room windows. (The sofas and rug aren't actually such a bright blue as they look here.)

On another topic (though still window-related) I am very fond of my son-in-law. He suffers from depression sometimes, but when he's okay, he’s really good fun, very jolly and a generally lovely chap. And very very clever.

But he does like a bargain. This is an understatement.

He and Daughter 1 have recently moved into their own house. They’ve been furnishing it courtesy of Ikea, and have bought so much that they were awarded a £30-off voucher, to be redeemed by the end of August. At that point they had just bought two (more) bookcases – they have an enormous number of books, mainly Daughter 1’s – and couldn’t think of anything else that they needed immediately.

SIL therefore produced the idea of taking the most recent acquisition – one of the bookcases – back to Ikea and then buying it again, using the £30 voucher. We all derided this idea, suggesting that they just buy some sheets or something. We then forgot all about it.

Then today he phoned to ask if they could borrow our car (they don’t have one) to go to Ikea. That was fine. He duly came round and departed in the car. Some time later came another phone call. They had managed to crack the windscreen.

Yes, that’s right. He had decided to follow through with his cunning plan of taking the bookcase back and then buying a bookcase with the voucher. So, outside their house, they’d loaded it into the car and – well, into the windscreen.

Luckily our insurance company will pay for the repair, apart from the £60 excess.

So in the bid to save £30….

There’s very very clever and there’s sensible, and these are not always precisely the same thing, are they? Though of course, it's good to be thrifty, and thrift is the reason why they managed to buy themselves a house to fill with books.

I’d like to point out that he’s not Scottish, but English – just in case anyone was musing on the thrifty--Scot stereotype.

Ah well. I still love him.

The deserted garden

Well, this is the garden, and where do I have to spend my days? In a rather dark office, proofreading correspondence courses, answering the phone, marking work that's been sent in, doing various bits of paperwork, and preparing for classes. And the garden once more belongs to the birds.

And also, potentially, to Daughter 2, finishing off her architecture project, and her aspiring actor boyfriend, who's keeping her company and sending his details off to theatre companies and agents.

Ah well.

Clematis and hand

Well, pride comes before a fall: Gina tells me that she and her husband ripped out lots of agapanthuses in their garden because they grow like weeds in Australia. Hmm.

I talk to mine daily; water it; get excited at its every bud; point it out to every passer-by as if I’d given birth to it; practically take it to bed with me.

Truly things are very various in this world.

Actually, I have noticed before that on “Neighbours”, which I’m ashamed to say that I watch while making the evening meal, there are lots of agapanthuses in the gardens. But I didn’t realise that this reflected the true Australia, since if this were so, I would also have to believe that Australian houses have only one room (called, intriguingly, “the lounge room”), that all their windows have sort of tropical jungles immediately outside them, and that Australians’ lives are packed with near-death experiences and affairs with the (beautiful) folk next door.

Above you will see a clematis. I like it, too, though I never realised that I had a wrinkly wrist. How disturbing.

Agapanthus

The holiday went very well, thank you Els. It was quite energetic – all that tennis and badminton (once a day each), though I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that we’re a sporty family. Quite the reverse – we’re all very bad at these games – but we have fun hurling ourselves around, swiping madly and laughing hysterically. Also we walked quite a lot and danced (at the Hydro) some evenings and so on.

It was great being with the whole family (except my poor boy – see two blogs ago) and it was especially nice for my 84-year-old, but still slim and glamorous, mum to have all the kids around (except my son). My brother and sister-in-law were there too, with my niece (22) and nephew (17), and all the young ones get on very well, as if they were all siblings.

The only fly in the ointment was my dad. (Gosh, I hope none of my kids ever think of me with that particular metaphor.) He’s always been choleric and unreasonable – not all the time, but enough for him to be very hard to live with - and now that he’s 86, very deaf, hardly able to walk and beginning to be slightly slow on the uptake, he hasn’t had a personality change. Sweet old man? – I don’t think so.

However, to be more cheerful – but without wishing to brag – what do you think of the photo of my agapanthus? You can’t see its full glory in the picture – each flower head is the size of a football - though a much prettier colour. The plant is just outside my kitchen window and I admire it as I do the washing up. Lovely!

Ho hum

There are few people more gloomy than a teacher in the last week of her holidays. It’s bad enough when you’re a pupil, but at least (as I remember it anyway) you have the excitement of seeing all your friends again, of getting new jotters (I always liked stationery), of hoping that you’d get one of the decent teachers this year. But for the teachers… there’s just the prospect of lots of marking.

Actually, it’s not that bad. I do know that I’ll quite enjoy it once it starts. I like the teaching, most of the time. I like almost all the students. They’re almost universally sweet. It’s just that I like not teaching even better. And I hate all the bureaucracy and meddling from above. Also, some of my colleagues can be very difficult.

Why can I not lose weight? I’m ashamed even to mention it, but I’m not losing. I’m not gaining either: I lost a paltry amount about a year ago (10 pounds or something) and then stuck. I keep reading other people’s blogs and being inspired and then I forget the inspiration and absentmindedly put things in my mouth. Not six packets of crisps or anything, but the odd biscuit and the occasional bit of ice cream on my strawberries, and there’s no point in telling myself that I don’t eat vast amounts of calories, because the point is that I eat too many to lose weight. This is so obvious. And this blog is not keeping me accountable because I don’t write about it. AAARRRGGGHHH. Part of the trouble is my age: I hate being overweight but I don’t hate it quite as much as I did when I was young because… well, I suppose because my function is to do things for other people now, not to be attractive.

Oh dear, I don't really mean that anyone's actual FUNCTION is to be attractive. And I'd rather not make small children squeal and run away at the sight of me, even now. But I have no aspirations to be alluring. Unlike the lady of my age who claimed in a comment on “Half of Me” that she was "hot", I feel this would be a bit delusional. Certainly for me. I’d just like not to be wobbly and silly-looking.

Ah well, I’m off to garden. That should burn off a few of my Bite Size Shreddies and skimmed milk. Maybe today will be the day that I’m firmer with myself.

I'm off

We’re off on holiday for a week, as from tomorrow. We’re going with the extended family to two lodges in the grounds of Crieff Hydro (see above) – one lodge for the oldies and one for the young

Crieff is a pretty, small town about an hour north of here, at the beginning of the Highlands. My family holidayed at Crieff Hydro from 1953 (when I was 3) till 1961, and then intermittently since then. My husband and I went there for our honeymoon, and we’ve had various holidays with the kids and other family members over the years. Once the kids grew up, it became rather expensive (they were no longer allowed to share our room) so we’ve tended to take the self-catering lodges since then. We’ve done the extended family thing before too. We’re all going (our lot and beloveds, my parents, my brother and his family) except that Son can come only for the weekend, and his girlfriend not at all, because they’re back at uni and she’s on placement in the south-west at the moment.

So our poor son (check out the hardship):

1) can’t have the holiday
2) can’t have our second car, which is normally his to use, but which will be at Crieff
3) and most importantly – will have to spend all the weekdays WITHOUT SEEING GIRLFRIEND FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS (reunited at weekends)

He’s being stoical about it, but he's suffering in anticipation. Ah, love. I hate leaving him behind, too (also love, of a different kind) and she’s a really nice girl, so it would have been good to have her along.

We have good fun at Crieff. We do our own thing during the day, though with frequent visits to and fro between the lodges, and then all eat together at night in one lodge. There’s plenty to do: tennis and badminton and squash and table tennis and swimming and hills to climb and so on. The only thing is that it’s really been too hot for strenuous activity recently, so we’re hoping for a bit more typically Scottish weather.

Better go. We had some Ugandan people to stay the night before last – Watoto Children’s Choir members (the children are Aids orphans or similar, and came to sing at our church). We had 3 children and their “auntie” here. They were really lovely kids – beautiful and giggly. So yesterday I had to unmake their beds and wash the bedding, and now must make two of them up again for Daughter 2 and her boyfriend, who arrive tonight, having been at his sister’s wedding. Then I must go and buy enough food for 13 people for the first two days of our holiday, to save going to the supermarket when we arrive. And I have to prepare dinner for those 13, or certainly 11 of them, for this evening (they came last night as well). And pack. And stuff like that. At least I’ve caught up with the ironing – not a fun activity for this weather.

You know how the compensation for middle age is supposed to be that you’ll have more time to yourself?

Jigsaws in the morning

My two daughters are very different from each other, though they get on very well.

Daughter 1 is dreamy and rather disorganised. Or at least, she was very disorganised when she was a child. As a little girl, she was forever getting lost. Well, not strictly lost. She knew where she was. It was just that I didn’t. I can’t count the number of times I agreed to meet her in a certain place at a certain time, and she would forget and wait somewhere else, or wander off home by herself. I attribute all my grey hairs to her. However, she’s also very good-natured, loves books passionately and is probably the world’s quickest reader. Her first degree was in English and French; her Master’s in Shakespeare Studies.

Daughter 2 is very efficient and can always be relied on to be prepared. She tends to be elected as secretary of school or university organisations and her room is usually a model of neatness. Her degrees are in architecture, and while she likes reading, she’s mildly dyslexic and doesn’t read particularly quickly. She’s also a lovely person and has a wide circle of friends with whom she keeps in constant touch by text message and email.

Which one would you expect to lose her train ticket?

Daughter 2 was going down south at 12.05 pm today to attend her boyfriend’s sister’s wedding on Wednesday. She bought the ticket a few weeks ago, packed her case last night and this morning gave her room a final tidy, since it’s being used by a visitor in her absence. At 10.30, she checked that her ticket was in her wallet.

It wasn’t.

Panic. Old tickets were there, but not today’s one.

She looked everywhere she could think, but no luck. Because she’s tidy, there were no horrible heaps of paperwork sludge as tends to accrue in her sister’s room, so there weren’t that many places to look.

“I must have thrown it out, “ she mourned.

I got ready to leap into motherly action by raking through the rubbish bags in the dustbin. “When do you think you threw it out?” I asked.

“Oh, a week or two ago. Remember when I was throwing out various bits of paper from my handbag?”

Not worth dustbin raking, then.

“You can get another ticket,” I suggested.

She went online. There were none available.

A later train? Same story.

“I’m such a fool,” she said. “Don’t you remember me saying that you should always shred airline boarding passes because criminals can find out all about you from them? Well, I thought I might as well shred these old train tickets, too.”

“You shredded them?” I said. “Well, they might still be in the shredder. Maybe we could …”

Even as I suggested it, I knew it was silly. But we took the shredder from the study into the kitchen, poured the large spaghettified heap of paper on to the table, and started sorting through it. It was now 11 am. We always allow about 40 minutes from leaving the house to stepping on the train. The train, you will remember, was at 12.05.

It helped that train tickets have orange bits on them and are printed on thin card, whereas most of the rest of the paper bolognaise was on white paper. Still, it took a long time to find all the bits of ticket and to separate the strips of today’s one from the fragments of the old ones that she also shredded. She needed her seat reservation card, too. But by 11.28 we’d got them both. We stuck all the slices on to a piece of cellophane so that the backs were visible as well, and tore out of the house.

The ticket-checker on the train had a good laugh, as did the lady in the seat beside my daughter. The chap didn’t punch the ticket. As he pointed out, it had enough holes in it already.

I think we need a new shredder, though. If we can do it, so could a master criminal desperate to steal our identities.

PS. Since writing this post, I've been on the phone to Daughter 1 in her new house, arranging to meet her at 10.30 tomorrow morning at a big department store, in the furniture department, which is at the entrance to the restaurant. I then told her the saga of her sister's ticket and as I was about to ring off, said, "Now when and where are we meeting tomorrow?" I know her of old.

"10.30," she said triumphantly. "But I don't think we arranged where - unless - was it the china department?"

See what I mean?

The Island of Bute

My husband and I have just returned from a few days on the island of Bute, which is off the west coast of Scotland. We'd never been there before, though we love the island of Arran, which is quite close to Bute - indeed, the mountains of Arran loom in the distance when you're on one side of Bute. Bute is less hilly than Arran, and indeed generally less inhabited, apart from in the (only) town of Rothesay. Rothesay has six thousandish out of Bute's total of seven thousandish inhabitants. The rest of the island is very peaceful: mainly just seabirds, cattle, sheep, sand and rustling grass.

These photos are views from our bedroom window over to the mainland. The weather was hot - it crept up to about 80F, 27C (or something) in some parts of Scotland, which is about as hot as it ever gets here. Our first morning there, however, we woke up to mist, which gradually lifted to reveal the ferry coming into Rothesay bay - above.
And this was the sun setting behind the hills. It made us glad to be alive.

Our bed and breakfast place was lovely. Most B & Bs I've visited have been heavily into frilly curtains and collections of horse brasses or novelty teapots. This one had neutral colours and furniture with clean lines and etched glass - all very stylish. It made me want to come home and throw all my old stuff away.

However, their garden was mainly paving and gravel. It was good to come home to my flowers.

Heatwave and snacks

The city from Arthur's Seat (a hill).

It's sunny and warm today, as it was yesterday. Don't know the temperature, but it must be about - oh, maybe 75 Fahrenheit or somewhere in the 20s Centigrade... Celsius... never really got the hang of these modern versions of temperature. Anyway, it's too hot to garden.

The cafe (don't know how to do accents, sorry) round the corner from us has a lovely engraved-effect slogan at the bottom of its window declaring that it sells "Coffee's". Ouch. And now it's sprouted a notice advertising "Scrumy snacks". Is it me, or does that sound rather revolting? Green and somewhat furry.

I'm wondering if I'm alone in not feeling like writing a post unless I've got at least one comment. It's strange, since I'm quite happy to write my handwritten diary for no one. Indeed, I very much hope that no one has ever read it, in its 40 year history. I now don't know why I go on writing it, but can't stop. (I don't write every day.) That diary may be pointless. But somehow it would seem even more so to do this blog to no audience at all.

Except that it's quite fun. Certainly more fun than most of the useful tasks I should be doing and am going to start on right now...

First chicken leaves the nest

At last I got round to taking Daughter 1's wedding dress to the dry cleaner's last week, and collected it yesterday. It's not the place I normally use but someone told me that it was good for delicate things. I was writing a cheque to pay for it, made out to the shop by name, and had the feeling that, although this name was "Prestige", it was spelt as a pun above the door.

"Is 'Prestige' just spelt the usual way?" I asked the lady.

"Yes," she said. "P-R-E-S-S-T-I-G-E."

Well, it probably seems usual to her.

Daughter 1 and her husband have moved out! Very exciting, though also a bit aarrgh. Unfortunately, not all their stuff has yet moved with them. They went on Sunday but have so far had all their evening meals back here, mainly, I think, to alleviate my separation anxiety. They're nice people. SIL is back at work, so that's good, at least till the next crisis.

Daughter 2 is on the train on the way home from Lisbon, via her aspiring-actor boyfriend's parents' (that's a lot of adjectives) home in Nottingham. Can't wait to see her. Of course, D1 and SIL have to come here to eat with us all this evening too. But tomorrow I'll let them eat at... home.

Toys back in pram

Many thanks to Dietgirl, Lainey, Anne and Gina for their kind words in comments about my previous, somewhat hissy-fit blog. They made me feel much better. I was just a bit overwhelmed with problems. The biggest one is the son-in-law's state of mind. He's a lovely chap, and very very clever, but is sometimes overcome with terrible depression which completely floors him. What he sometimes does, unless someone is around to catch him on the way down, is to go to the doctor, and since doctors don't have magic wands, they tend to sign him off. This hasn't happened much, and indeed this is the first time he's been signed off since he's had a proper, grown-up job. But he's had this job only since October, and he and Daughter 1 have just bought a house (not that they've moved into it yet) and he needs to keep this job, even though he says he hates it. Daughter 1's job, to add to the joys of the situation, was only ever a one-year contract and ends soon. But this isn't the main problem, since she'll get something else, though it may take her a while to get something in her chosen field.

This week, which is the first of my holidays and the only one for which I was expecting to be alone in the house (in blessed peace, able to please myself for once in my life) I've been jollying the SIL along, persuading him to get out from under the covers, leave the house and come for walks with me, and then taking him to their new house to do things such as construct their Ikea bed. He's really quite cheery once he gets going, or at least workably sanguine. And he can be great fun, though not necessarily this week. But it's hard work being relentlessly upbeat, especially when one doesn't really feel optimistic about the situation.

Plus the Daughter 2 Boyfriend's situation, plus the parent situation.

However, the diamond wedding party went well, and my parents liked their jug - see above. At the party, the slide show organised by Husband and Daughter 2 was a great talking point - pictures from all stages of my parents' lives - and the young people's songs went down a storm. We managed to borrow a good keyboard, which my brother or my niece played to accompany the singing.

Son and Daughter 2's boyfriend sang Flanders and Swann's "Hippopotamus Song" - which is a funny love song about two hippos. The boys both have lovely voices and are good friends, and the audience joined in the chorus, and it was great. Then D2's B (yes, I'm not above exploiting the lad even though I'm not sure that he's the right one for D2) sang a Stephen Sondheim song, "Marry me a little", and finally the five grandchildren sang words I'd written about my parents to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's (or in this case, just Sullivan's) "And now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navy" song from "HMS Pinafore".

I know this sounds rather toe-curling - children doing their party pieces - but they actually all sing well, and it was a great success. Much applause and laughter.

So life's not all bad. In fact, it's often good. One just has to get up each day and keep trying to be positive. And I've often found in the course of this life of mine that the things I worry about aren't the disasters that actually happen. Which is why I attempt to cover most possibilities in my spectrum of anxieties.

Sigh

Gosh, I'm exhausted.

It's my birthday. Not my most restful ever. Happy Independence Day, America.

Diamond wedding party: great success. But tiring.
Son-in-law: off work with depression.
Daughter 2: off to Lisbon for holiday with unsuitable (well, in as far as he's an aspiring actor)
boyfriend.
Parents: somewhat falling to bits, especially father.
Parents' relationship: pretty ropey.
Me: fat.

Light at end of tunnel: somewhat hard to distinguish.

Why am I writing a blog?

The picture shows me taking a picture of a clematis. I feel a bit like that shadow.

Mild panic on a Friday evening

Well. You know when you've had a bright idea and committed yourself to carrying it out, and then you hit snags and wish to goodness that you'd kept your mouth shut?

That's me.

The picture above, by the way, is Edinburgh again. It's a bit of a funny angle, but shows Arthur's Seat, which is a big hill, eccentrically in the middle - or at least slightly to the side of the middle - of Edinburgh. It's surrounded by parkland - just grass with a couple of man-made lochs (big ponds, really) - and I LOVE it.

Back to my brilliant plan. I thought it would be nice to have my parents' five grandchildren - who're all musical - singing something at the Diamond Wedding dinner that's happening in the New Club in Princes Street a week tomorrow. You may have spotted the flaw in the idea, or at least the execution of the idea: it's quite soon. Especially as the choosing of the songs is not entirely complete (understatement) and the grandchildren are currently situated in 1) Arran 2) Sheffield 3) Austria 4) Cambridge 5) Epsom, which is near London. They won't all be together till the day of the Do. Also my niece and my brother will have to accompany said songs on our rather rudimentary electronic keyboard: four octaves and no sustain pedal; there is no piano available.

I've rewritten a Gilbert and Sullivan song - well, the Gilbert bit - to be appropriate to my parents' lives (It's the "And now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navy" one, if anyone knows this) - that was the easy bit, and the grandchildren are going to sing it unison, with perhaps some bits girls and some bits boys or whatever. But then I thought it would be nice if Daughter 2's boyfriend, who, you may remember, has been studying musical theatre in New York for 2 years, could sing a solo, and then maybe he and Son could sing a duet.

I shall not detail the complications, but basically D's B had views about what he could appropriately sing and what he couldn't, my brother had views about the rubbishness of our keyboard and the unsuitability of the sheet music accompaniment for playing on this keyboard and also for playing at all with virtually no time to practise - all of these feelings being quite reasonable, I would have to admit, but not convenient - and there have been many phone calls, and I'm feeling that maybe I should just have kept my ideas to myself. Unfortunately I mentioned them to my mum, who was delighted at the idea. So it's got to happen. And I'm sure it will. Son, in Austria, knows nothing about the fact that he's going to sing Flanders and Swann's Hippopotamus Song with D2's B as a duet, some verses solo and some together. But he'll do it. He has a lovely voice and is an obliging lad. And D2's B is going to come up with something to sing which somebody's going to accompany, with hardly any practice, on the keyboard which, my brother says darkly, is going to "sound like a xylophone".

And of course I've agreed to make a speech - no, not a clue as to what I'm going to say, but I'll think of something. I made one at the Golden Wedding and have little memory what I said, so with luck neither will anyone else. Quite a lot of the 100 people who were at that are no longer with us, alas.

And now I must go and find lots of photos for the computer slide show that I've also promised to provide, and that my dear, good husband is going to scan in and organise. Deep breathing. In, out, in, out...

Edinburgh Castle

I thought I would post a picture of Edinburgh, for anyone who reads this and doesn't know the city at all. This is Edinburgh Castle, which is in the middle of the city on an ancient volcanic rock. The photographer must be standing in the main shopping street, Princes Street, which has buildings on only one side, and between Princes Street and the Castle are Princes Street Gardens. These form quite a big park with trees and flowers - yes, that's right, just like most parks, I suppose. But it's all rather scenic. The weather, I would be forced to admit, isn't always quite this sunny.

All our children are away. This has hardly ever happened before, and certainly not for more than a day or two at a time. Daughter 1 and her husband are on Arran; Daughter 2 is still in Sheffield and her aspiring-actor boyfriend, now home from America, is with her for a few days; Son and his girlfriend left for Austria this morning. So it's just my husband and I till D1 and SIL return on Saturday, D2 on Monday and Son a week tomorrow. The house is alarmingly quiet.

Sigh.

Home alone

Frilly columbines, or aquilegia - rather jolly and not appealing to slugs or snails - which I should perhaps drop as such a constant theme.

I'm in the house by myself: Husband is down in Sheffield, collecting Daughter 2's possessions from her student house (though D2 herself is staying down there for another week or two, so will retain some underwear and socks and so on). Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law departed this morning with his parents for a week's holiday to the (wonderful) island of Arran off the west coast of Scotland. Son is visiting his girlfriend and family in a town a bit north of here. And I'm here. Not for long: I spent this morning with my mother and will depart in an hour or so to my book group. But still, it's quite odd.

Quite heady, really, being alone in the house with no one to cook for and no one apart from myself to make a mess - though in fact I seem to have made quite a competent job of this task, repotting plants and stripping beds. I wouldn't like to live alone for ever but I'm quite enjoying the peace for the moment.

D1 and SIL got the keys for their house yesterday. Very exciting - but I'll be sad when they go. The first to leave the nest permanently (and yes, I know, she's nearly 27 so I don't really have anything to complain about. Do you think this'll stop me, though...?)

Pretty ceramics and a slug-free world

This is the design that I'm getting on a jug for my parents. I realise that this is a plate, but just imagine it round a jug. My mum really likes pink, so it's going to have a pink middle, and their names and "Diamond Wedding" and the date on the side, and all our initials on the bottom.

The potter phoned me up and we arranged it all. If you'd like to look at her website, it's at
www.gabriellashawceramics.com (This isn't an advert; I know nothing about her and just found her on Google.)

Zara and Wifemomchocoholic both commented on my previous blog AND THEIR GARDENS DON'T HAVE SLUGS. I thought slugs were a universal curse, brought on probably by Adam and Eve and that fruit problem. Actually snails are a worse trial, but slugs are bad too. But Wmc's deer sound even more dreadful. Ah, the heartaches and joys of gardening.

And the pain of trying to become less fat. I'm not getting any thinner. Or, I'm getting slightly thinner and then slightly fatter again. Why? I just can't quite get myself properly motivated. Oh, what a dolt. Tomorrow I will start again. I hope.

Cakes and jugs and plants

I've just come in from the garden because it was beginning to get dark. Not terribly dark - still light enough to read, if not perhaps tiny print, but twilightish, though the sky was still pale. It's six minutes past eleven now. When I came inside, the family had lights on and it suddenly looked much darker outside. I love these long light evenings in Scotland, though we pay for them in the winter with short days and long dark nights.

Above, you see some big pompoms of alliums. Below, hostas and heucheras. I love the contrast in leaf colour and shape. But can you see the snail holes on the hostas? And this is one of the less chewed ones...

It's been a bit of a frustrating day. In the morning, I took my mum out shopping - which was fine. I always take her out on Saturdays, partly to give her a bit of time away from my dad, who has always been rather irascible and is not any less so now that he's 86. Also it gives her a chance to chat to someone (me) who is a) interested and b) not deaf. (Yet.)

In the afternoon, however, I decided to start to get organised for their diamond (60th) wedding anniversary, which is on June 29th. (60 years of really not getting on very well, but still, it's an achievement of sorts. Well, it's a huge achievement, actually, putting up with my dad and not attacking him even once with a blunt intrument.) It's hard to know what to give people who don't need anything, but I'd decided on a commemorative jug with their names and so on. I'd established from their website that Bridgewater Pottery would do one with hearts on it and the requisite lettering - a pint and a half capacity, for £50. Seemed reasonable. They have a shop in Edinburgh, so off I went to order it. On the way, I went to the Cake and Chocolate Shop in Bruntsfield to discuss having a cake made. Its website said it was open till 5, so I arrived at 4.30. And guess what? It was shut. Sigh.

So I then went to the pottery shop (open till 6) and yes, it was open, but no, they no longer do that jug, only a six pint one for £70 plus £1 for every letter (and I wanted 45 letters) of the inscription. Six pints! Who wants a decorative souvenir-type jug holding six pints? Well, a pub celebrating its centenary, maybe, but not an 84-year-old lady who's going to display it on her dresser.

So I came home and, after spending a long time on the internet, I started to come to the conclusion that - though there are many many potters who'll do you a personalised plate - there was a definite gap in the market for personalised jugs. Which either meant that no one but me likes jugs or that I had a last found the way to make my fortune. Or at least, this could be the way if I knew how to make jugs and wasn't so averse to getting my hands all covered with clay. Yuck.

But then I at last found a site with what looked like just the right sort of thing. They'll take commissions. So I emailed them. Ah, the joys of modern technology. They didn't seem to mention prices, which was a bit ominous, but let's be optimistic.

Which I generally am, about most things, though possibly not about snails and hostas.

Will this work?

Blogger hasn't been working - at least for me - so this is an experiment to see if this post appears. It's also a picture of an iris in my back garden. I love irises and this is an interesting colour.