A smelly post

Here are some more pictures taken by Mr Life of our boy washing the skylights. I think they're rather striking.

By the way, remember the Gorgonzola that was making our fridge smell bad?

I force-fed it to Mr Life. That should do the trick, I thought.

But the fridge still smelt.

So I took everything out and washed down the shelves and walls to try to eradicate the smell.

Which is when I found

the remains of a packet of prawns (bought for the cats)

seven days past its eat-by date.

Very stinky indeed.

I didn't make anyone eat the prawns. Not even the cats.

These pictures are, of course, in the wrong order, since I temporarily forgot that Blogger insists on showing the last first (very Biblical). But they took SO LONG to load (as I sat reading the poems of Norman MacCaig to while away the time) that I couldn't be bothered doing them again. Just look at them backwards to get the sequence. Or not.

Various Life events

What else has been happening in Life land? Well, the cats have been having a bit of a nap.

Our son has been up on the roof, washing the skylights.

When he came down, Daughter 2 gave him a halo. He calmly continued to read his book.

She bought her actor boyfriend a ukelele and he sat in the garden, practising it. In Britain, we spell "practice" with a "c" if it's a noun and an "s" if it's a verb, but you don't do that in America, do you? It's the same both times, though I can never remember whether it's always "c" or always "s". How about the southern hemisphere spelling?

He got quite good at the ukelele. I'm not sure if this will further his acting career. He always wears odd socks. Perhaps that will be the key to stardom.

Daughter 2 had a birthday. She is such a darling girl.

These photos are all taken with my husband's expensive new SLR digital camera. I hope you can see the huge improvement in standard compared to the ones I usually post, from my cheap camera. This plant is a trollius. Lovely bright yellow.

Irises. I love irises.

A ceanothus. Great blue, don't you think?

I bought a bit of Gorgonzola in tribute to Suse, but no one's really eating it (I'm certainly not going to; I don't like strong cheese). I wish someone would. The fridge is smelling a bit ripe.

Have a good weekend. I don't want to boast, but I have one more day of work and then six weeks of holiday. (Big grin.)

Reunion

A couple of weeks ago I went to a school reunion. It was such fun. I know there are those who would never attend such things, but I’m insatiably curious. Also, I’ve known some of these people since I was five years old – even if I haven’t seen a few for a long time – which makes for a strangely intimate sort of relationship. Almost like meeting a blog friend: you have a lot of common ground.

We attended a famous Edinburgh girls’ school, many of us from age five till age eighteen. From age five to ten, there were two classes – I was in the class for slightly younger girls. When we were ten, however, extra pupils came to the school and we were divided into ability streams: top, middle and bottom. Judging people at the age of ten is not necessarily very accurate; however, I was put in the top class and so from then on, my friends mainly came from this group.

My friends B, M (the one who tragically now has dementia), and I organised the first reunion, for this class only, twenty years after we all left school. That was in 1988. Almost the whole class attended, though we were unable to contact two of our number. Everyone else was in touch with someone who was in touch with someone… . Actually, I have to admit that one of these two was the only person I wasn’t terribly keen on at school, so I didn’t try very hard to find her. The other one I liked a lot, but she seemed to have dropped out of the loop.

The first reunion was a great success. At that point we were about thirty-eight years old and some of the class were doing very well in life. One of the slightly eccentric girls was chief accountant of a large firm, for example; two were university lecturers; we had several hospital consultants and so on. Those of us who had less impressive careers, doing things like teaching, tended to have smallish children who took up our time and talents.

We had another reunion five years later which was not quite so well attended, though still most people came. We had located the two missing girls and they came to this event. The person I didn’t like much was still not quite my favourite – though I regret to report that she had somehow been transformed into easily the best-looking of us all – where's the justice in that? - but the other one was sweet.

And then somehow we never arranged another gathering, though we did think about it.

The recent reunion was organised by the school – it was a lunch to which those who left in a year ending in -8 were invited. There were two ladies from 1938, while the youngest ones had left in 1998 and all years in between were represented. A few of the “girls” who attended our group had been in the other two classes and I hadn’t seen them since we were eighteen – though in some cases we’d been in the same class from five to ten. Most people, however, I’d seen at our last reunion. But that had been fifteen years ago.

I was slightly nervous about it. To be honest, I was faintly anxious that my career would seem a bit less than starry. I had nine years as a stay-at-home mum to my three children, went back to work part-time for the next few years before going full-time again, and have never been particularly ambitious. I prefer teaching to administration, which is the fate of those high up the career ladder in education. I knew that at least one of my classmates was a university professor and that others were considerably better-off financially than we are. It didn’t stop me going, but I did wonder whether any of this might matter.

It didn’t. Not a bit. Everyone seemed just the same; forty years was like nothing. The professor had invited us all back to her rather grand flat and we sat around all afternoon eating strawberries, drinking wine and talking of our youth. It was just lovely. One of the hospital consultants, who had been head girl – and was still in charge of us all by force of personality – went round and collected email addresses from everyone (not that she’s circulated them yet, I would have to say) and there was talk of a weekend away for our sixtieth birthday. The good-looking one was still good-looking, but hey, surely she's got to start deteriorating by the next time?

We missed M, though, and someone had the terrible news that another of our classmates, E, also has advanced dementia. What are the chances of that? Two out of twenty-eight of us. Shiver. I hope it wasn't anything to do with the school lunches. And we remembered my dear friend D, who was tragically killed when she was twenty-three by a car that mounted the pavement. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

Which I would do, if I just had a bit more spare time.

For Suse

This post is for the benefit of Suse, Mrs Pea Soup, who kindly thought of me in her June 15 post (http://peasoupoftheday.blogspot.com/). She was wondering what the word “Gorgonzola” would sound like in an Edinburgh accent. She was having an uneventful day, I imagine.

I thought I should oblige. I had to rope in some technical assistance. Sirius provided the eye candy.

Freedom!

My marking is finished and sent away. O joy. However, the trouble with being a keen gardener in the marking season – or a marker in the gardening season – is that the garden romps away while the marker is closeted indoors drinking coffee and wielding the red pen. The result is that urgent gardening backlogs await her on finishing the scripts. So I’m still busy – but I much prefer gardening to marking.

While I’ve been slaving on scripts, our son and his beloved have been revising for their finals, which happened last week.

The cats have usually found this quite boring.

At times, though, Sirius has found it all too exhausting even to watch.

But during quiet moments, Cassie has offered advice.

Son and beloved have now passed their exams, however, and are officially doctors. I bought a cake (didn't like to make one in advance of the results, just in case...). Daughter 2 bought them medals (made of chocolate)

and champagne.

The only bad part of this from our point of view is that they start work (in August) in a town about a couple of hours away from here. I, the ultimate in clingy mothers, am not going to take this well, let me warn you now. I know, I know – you rear them to let them fly. Hmm.

Meanwhile, however, the doctor offered to hang out the washing.

How not to start an essay

An essay topic that students frequently choose is that of animal testing. It doesn't gladden my heart to find one of these essays in my marking pile.

The following opening paragraph isn't from my exam marking, just from an essay by one of my students. She's clearly trying her best to achieve the requisite word count and seems to feel that a full stop would interrupt her train of thought.


"Just let me ask you this, if your child or a relative may it be your mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle or grandparent and they had a fatal brain tumour or cancer would you not let them get treatment so as they could possibly live a longer life, or would you see it that they died sooner just because you believe animal testing is wrong, although some may say "if that's what god intended then so be it" and would never let themselves or any family member be involved in anything to do with animal research."


I have thirty four exam scripts left to mark. Meanwhile the cats are doing a bit of relaxing.

40 years on...

Busy busy busy here in Life country: Daughter 2's had a birthday, I've been to a (high) school reunion (40 years since we left school - can't wait to tell you about this) and I'm therefore behind in my marking and WAY behind in my blogreading. So - must stop having fun in a moment.

However, the passage that the students had to answer questions about in the exam concerns landscape and the environment and how these change through the years. You might be interested to know from their answers that:

"Stone Age man needed food to survive."

"There are very few bisons, giraffes and hippos in Scotland nowadays."

and

"We used to have fauna in Scotland but you never see any of them these days."

I'll be back. Save your exciting posts till the end of this week, please.

Sleeping and supervising

Some of us were born to do washing and marking

and others - like Cassie - to supervise.

Better test these socks and things for softness, thinks Sirius.

while Cassie checks out of the window for slugs rushing across the lawn.

Look at those envelopes of scripts behind me, says Sirius. Get on with it and stop disturbing me.

The garden show in the sunshine

Thoughtlessly, the Edinburgh Garden Show is always arranged for the weekend in the middle of my marking marathon. However, a girl has to have some time off, so Daughter 1, my mum and I spent a few hours there yesterday. It was hot and sunny and the crowds were out.

Look: some natives talking to a man in a hat.

One often has to go inside the flower hall to shelter from the rain but on this occasion, it was pleasantly cool compared with outside. Why do my clematis not look like these?

A bank of fuchsias. Delicious.

Veg art.

Alliums aplenty.

The bonsai stall - never very sure about bonsai but I think I like them. This azalea or possibly rhododendron was pretty, anyway.

Back home, the cats were enjoying the sun.

It's hot being a black cat.

Sometimes you have to catch a bit of shade...

... before returning to a sunny spot.

My spring pansies are still looking good.

However, this is Scotland and today it's raining. It makes the plants grow. Mr Life relaxes on the sofa with his fluffy friends and the Sunday papers.

Life's exhausting when you're a cat. Or a man.

I've marked 70 out of my 210 papers.

The Marking 08

On Tuesday, I went to the markers’ meeting in Glasgow, an annual event attended by the hard-up, hardworking or just plain masochistic teachers who volunteer to mark (in this case) Higher English – the English exam taken by Scottish pupils who hope to gain university entrance.

Markers come from all over Scotland and you meet some people there year after year. Rather pathetically, it feels like a bit of a day out. I get the train through to Glasgow, which counts as excitement in my life, and a taxi – a rare event – to the venue. We then get free coffee and muffins! Later, even more thrillingly, there’s a free lunch.

We’re paid £2.67 per script and the first evening it took me three hours to mark seven scripts. I reckon that’s about 60 pence per hour. This is the point in the process when you think about how free that lunch actually was… .

I’ll speed up, though, once I become more familiar with the passages and the questions and stop agonising so much over the exact shades of wrongness of some of the students’ answers.

On the train on the way home I talked to a fellow marker whose teacher husband left her for the school secretary a few years ago. Now the deserted wife has a new partner, a millionaire businessman. He’s actually an old flame who sought her out after thirty years apart. You couldn’t put this in a novel because it would seem unrealistic, but there she was, glowing with happiness and prosperity.

I bet she won’t be doing The Marking next year…

And now I must ignore my garden in the evening sunlight and get down to work with a red pen.

Travelling in New Zealand

I would love to show you lots of wonderful pictures from our boy's trip to New Zealand, but my computer is going through a difficult phase when it sometimes - not always, mind you - not often enough for me to remember to get a chap down to look at it, but sometimes - won't save things. So after much struggling, this is the only one of his emailed photos that I've persuaded the thing to save and therefore that I'm able to post.

So instead, here are some extracts from some of his emails. These are from when he and his beloved were travelling in South Island, though they did fit in work experience at the hospital at Nelson. In their final week they went to North Island.

They had a lovely time but I was so glad to see them back again.


****

Just a quick email to let you know that I’m still ok.

We went in to hospital this morning (or yesterday evening to you, I suppose) and got told that they had an audit on, so could we go away and come back tomorrow? This is somewhat typical of being a medical student, but somehow, when it’s 25 degrees Celsius outside and you feel like you’re on holiday, you don’t mind so much.

We came back, got changed and went for a walk. This took in the town centre, a bit of beach, some Japanese gardens, a historic park and the “centre” of NZ. We were quite tired by the end. During the time we ought to have been watching Neighbours we went to a supermarket and bought quite a lot of food, then ate some for tea and sat around for a bit.

*****

Tomorrow, I suspect we may actually have to do some medical studenting, but I suppose that’s technically why we are here…

Someone said G’day to us today. It made me happy.

*****

(This accompanied some photos.)

1. A view over Nelson from "The Centre of New Zealand"
2. One of the many crossings of the Buller River in the Buller Gorge
3. The Pancake Rocks at Punakaike on the way down
4. Your favourite son/brother in front of the Franz Josef Glacier
5. A rather atmospheric shot on the glacier
6. Guess who at the foot of the Fox Glacier

*****

G'day,

Now in Queenstown. Arrived safely, although the landing seemed to come perilously close to mountains. We've seen several other planes take off/land and they all did that, not just us.

Our hostel has two cats, plus one who comes and begs for food from the kitchen - very nice, though obviously not quite as good as our cats.

*****

Somewhat time-limited right now (there's no such thing as free internet in NZ, apparently, and what we have in this campsite is rather slow). Today we went on a cruise on Milford Sound - very big, very pretty, very wet below, fairly wet from above. I also wrote you a postcard - are any of them getting through? This [picture above] is it - rather misty but very atmospheric. You probably can’t get how impressively big it was in a picture.

Tomorrow we're off to Stewart Island off the South coast, the best place in NZ to spot a kiwi, apparently.

*****

Hello there,

Just to let you know that we're still alive. We are. Yesterday we went to Stewart Island off the south coast. It was very nice, although the weather was somewhat changeable. Very choppy journey there too. We're now in Invercargill and about to drive to the Catlins National Park. The weather is currently sunny.

*****


Hope all are well back home. We are currently in a campsite in Timaru, which is sort of halfway between Dunedin and Christchurch. There's not a lot to Timaru, so we're really just stopping off in between the two cities (Christchurch is our target, where we will drop off our little Suzuki Swift tomorrow - sniff). For those who I haven't spoken to recently, since Saturday we have covered Queenstown, Milford Sound, Invercargill, Stewart Island, The Catlins, Otago Peninsula, Dunedin and Oamaru. It has been somewhat whistlestop. Over that time we have seen tui, fur seals, albatross, sea lions and penguins. No kiwi though.

*****

We're now back from Nelson Lakes, which were lovely, but VERY cold! It was beautiful weather, but if you weren't actually in the sun (ie when we were walking through the forest, which was much of the day) it was really fairly chilly. We walked up one side of a valley on Sat, and we could see our breath (and snow on the ground) towards the top. This morning the car (a Mitsubishi Colt this time) was completely frozen up. However, we barely saw a cloud.

*****

We made it back from Picton - which is where I last phoned from - driving the scenic coastal route. Those who get car sick would not have liked it much, but it was very pretty. Since Sunday the weather has been pretty cloudy and exceedingly humid, but still pretty warm, at least. Yesterday we went on an 8am ward round in the morning, wrote some discharge summaries and then both worked on our elective reports. Mine is currently about 3 pages long (maximum of 5) and very waffly.

In two weeks and two days I'll be heading back across the world - very odd. But nice. I'm looking forward to seeing you all and the cats. I'm intrigued by what you say about Sirius’s entirely logical fear of hot water bottles. Is it the mere presence of a hot water bottle, or does it need to be a particularly aggressive one?