Grandson and tag mark 2

Visited Daughter 1 today and took Grandson out for a walk shortly after taking this picture. He has a bit of a cold. He's delicious all the same. I can't get over how soft his skin is, how wide his smile is, how much he bounces up and down with his lovely shrieky giggle.

He's much more interesting than my answers to the set questions will be, so I'll be brief:

Shoplifting - have you ever? Goodness me, no. Far too scared even if I wanted to.

Slapping children - yes or no? Well, no in theory. Can't remember doing it, but...

Shower every day? Never! Hate showers. Bath every day. (Sorry, environment.)

All is fair in love and war - yes or no? No.

Queue jumping - do you? Of course not. I'm British.

Social class barriers in Britain - vanishing or not? Don't think so, or only a bit.

Cap on benefits - yes or no? Hmm. Not sure. Don't think so.

Marmite? Yuck.

Why blog? To communicate.

Tribute bands? yes or no? I have no views. Even original bands - not really.

I won't ask anyone to do this because I know some people don't like to, but here are some questions, if anyone is lacking inspiration and would like to be questioned:

1. What would be your (at least faintly possible) dream job?
2. What era would you like to live in, if not now?
3. What super power would you choose?
4. Would you prefer to be more beautiful or richer?
5. Exactly how tidy are you?

A picture of the cats as kittens and a bit of a tag thing

They're bigger than this now.

One of the problems of posting every day is that I have less time to visit and comment on other people's blogs (and I do have rather a lot on my Favourites list) so I'm having a minor catch-up tonight and discover that I've been tagged by Libby on http://d-scribes.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html (can never remember how to do the proper linky thing). I'm a bit hesitant about doing this because my bloggy friends probably know too much about me anyway. However, I have nothing much else to say so here goes.

The instructions are to:

* post 11 random facts about yourself
* answer 10 questions
* make up 10 questions for the next tagee
* suggest 10 people to tag

Some facts :
1. When I was a little girl I had a ball on an elastic string and I pretended that it was my dog.
2. I would like to go to Iceland.
3. I've wanted to go there since doing a year (or was it two?) of Old Icelandic at university - reading the sagas in the original language.
4. Unfortunately I've forgotten a lot of it. Who am I kidding? Most of it.
5. A strange boy told my friend Dorothy and me the facts of life when we were 12 and picnicking on Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh's city hill. Actually, she already knew. But I didn't. I was very surprised.
6. He offered us half a crown to do it with him. We weren't tempted.
7. I invented bungee jumping (the general idea - it needed some refinement) as a punishment for my horrible maths teacher. I used to imagine shoving her off a tower block with elastic tied round her ankles. I should have patented the idea (this would be about 1965.)
8. My granny used to have a square of asbestos in her kitchen - she put in on the gas flame and then put the teapot on top, to keep the tea hot and stewed, the way my grandpa liked it. This doesn't now seem like a good idea but they lived to be 86 and 89.
9. My friend Dorothy was killed when she was knocked down by a car at the age of twenty-three. Another friend died at the same age, a year earlier, in a car crash. I often think about all the life they missed. And it had a great effect on me too. You never quite recover from such events.
10. If I lived on my own, I would possibly never cook again. It doesn't seem like a good use of time (unlike this, of course...).
11. Not all that long ago I wrote a little hello email to my dad's email address. He died nearly 5 years ago. I thought it would bounce back but it didn't and I know it's silly but ... I found that slightly comforting. Yesterday was his birthday. I haven't forgotten him.

Ok, that's enough. I'll do the rest tomorrow.

The study and The Big Bang

It's been one of those nothing days when the most exciting thing that happens is going to be when we watch two episodes of "The Big Bang Theory". Perhaps I should take this as a sign that I shouldn't post a blog entry today. However...

In my teaching time, such a peaceful day would have seemed a great joy so I shouldn't really complain. But it's a bit scary when you contemplate the day and realise that it's slipped uneventfully away, carrying you slightly closer to the grave. Ah yes, cheerful as usual. We didn't do nothing. I took my mother to and from her Probus club; I made soup; Mr Life and I went to Tesco - where, excitingly for him, he bought himself an Android tablet (I think that's right) with the money collected for him as a leaving present. So at least he's a happy chap. And I'm tidying the study which, when it's done, will give me a sense of satisfaction - though in fact it needs a deeper tidy (a purge of all the drawers and shelves) than it's going to get.

A month or so ago, Mr Life bought the first four series of "The Big Bang Theory" and we're really enjoying it. He'd previously been watching it for some time, but the episodes he found on cable (was it?) tended to be in the wrong order. I occasionally walked through the room where he was watching it but saw only the odd ten minutes at first and didn't get sucked in . But then I did. It's rather pathetic that I really look forward to my daily two episodes a night of BBT, but we must take our pleasures where we can. If you've never seen it, it's about four young scientists who're very clever but in various degrees have their feet some way off the ground; and the girl across the hallway who isn't academic but is much more sensible. Later, other girls come into the story too. It's very amusing - makes fun of geekiness but not in an unkind way.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, this post is an avoidance tactic - back to my study-tidying.

(Oooh, look, paragraph spaces!)

Guest post by N

I had a busy day today. In the morning I went with my mum and granny to a clinic to see about my mum's sore back. Then I went to Granny's and sat on Great-Granny's knee and waved a toy about.

Later I sat on the floor with some toys in a box.

I tipped them out of the box.

I chewed my rattle. (Well, I chewed all of them in turn.)

I haven't got any teeth yet but am planning on getting some soon.

Then I was a bit tired and lay down for a refreshing (brief) rest and some thumb time.

Tuesday morning walk

After my piano lesson today, Mr Life came and met me. We had coffee in the coffee shop below my teacher's flat and then walked home. We crossed the canal and saw some new flats with berths for boats.

Later we walked through Roseburn Park along beside the burn (little stream).

This house has a little seating platform at the end of its garden, just above the burn, presumably so that the occupants can sit and watch the wildlife - not to say the people in the park.

We watched a squirrel running along from tree to tree to tree to tree. I took some photos but running squirrels don't make good subjects for one's phone camera. So this is just a picture of the burn.

I don't think that my photo of these birds - a male and female mallard and a female goosander - is going to win any prizes for wildlife photography.

This photo of one and a half goosanders, not taken by me, is considerably better. Not to say very cute.

The house which has the seat beside the water at the end of its garden is one of these houses on the right. You wouldn't guess the existence of the burn and the park if you didn't know, would you? This is the main road into the centre of town.

All in all, we decided that the way we spent our morning was possibly more fun than working.

Seasons

I posted the above picture yesterday; and today...

... came across this one, which was taken in August from more or less (not quite) the same spot. And that - together with Daughter 2's enthusiasm for winter - led to my thinking about seasons.

Britain has very definite seasons and it came as a surprise to me when I started teaching and came across students from other countries (for example, Malaysia) where they don't have spring, summer, autumn and winter as we do. They may have, for example, a rainy season but they don't have markedly different periods of weather when the plants change their characteristics.

I suppose it's just what you're used to, but though I couldn't positively claim to love winter, it makes spring even more pleasurable. The first day of spring weather is so intoxicating, when the earth's warming up and you can almost feel the roots spreading beneath your feet; the birds sing; the daffodils are such an intense yellow; and everything is full of promise. Then there's the summer pleasure of seeing the leaves unfurling, the herbaceous plants burgeoning and blooming and the air becoming mild and, yes, sometimes hot. Autumn has that rich lushness together with the occasional nip in the air to remind you to appreciate it because winter's on its way. And even winter can be lovely - the beautiful days give hints of spring to come and the dark, cold, wet ones provide a fine excuse to shut the curtains and read books.

Maybe it's just all a big con; maybe we kid ourselves that we like the variety because that's what we've got. But - conveniently - I do like it. At the moment in the garden the snowdrops are still blooming, most of the crocuses have come out and the first, Tete-a-Tete daffodils are opening. Spring won't be long now.

The gardening season is almost upon us. I'm looking forward to it.

No snow

I don't want to boast, but while much of Britain appears to be covered in snow, we look like this. Green. And it's mildish.

The winter hasn't been very cold at all. Yet. Here's a rose, still blooming.

Our crab apple tree: leafless but against a blue sky.

We went for a walk. There's our city hill, Arthur's Seat. I love it so much. The shape of it is engraved into my brain. Whenever we've been away and come back by car, it's such a good feeling to see it in the distance and know that we're nearly home.

In Daughter 2's blog http://allchangeb.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2012-01-01T00:00:00Z&updated-max=2013-01-01T00:00:00Z&max-results=2 (I have no idea why that's come out so long) she posted pictures of snow near her and said both "I love snow" and "I love winter". I was astonished to hear this. I've known her for 31 and a half years and didn't know that she was particularly fond of either. I taxed her with this. (Oops. I meant 30 and a half. Sorry: brain-to-finger malfunction.)

"Well, I mean," she said, "that I love going out in nice snow in my site boots and crunching about a bit and then going in and sitting on a sofa in a warm room."

A fine example, dear readers, of why you should ever believe all that you read in blogs.

Paintings and miracles

Today was rather chilly and damp - though not snowy, as in other parts of the UK, not to say other parts of the world - and Mr Life and I decided to have an outing to the Dean Gallery, which seems to have renamed itself, rather boringly but I suppose descriptively, Modern 2. (Modern 1, formerly The Gallery of Modern Art, is across the road from it.) We wanted to see the exhibition of the paintings of Frances Cadell (1883 - 1937), who was one of the Scottish Colourists.

The building was designed in 1830 as an orphanage and was later a teachers' education centre but has been a gallery since the 1990s. Though maybe a bit grim-looking from the outside, particularly in February, it's been made rather lovely inside.

Looking across the grounds, we saw what's presumably an art installation. You can't read it in this reduced photo but there are neon letters saying "THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE" - which is a pity. One feels that one's life might be improved by a few miracles.

The paintings in the exhibition were (mostly) lovely - rubbishly reproduced here, so you'll have to take my word for it. I would have very much liked to take some of them home. Cadell painted lots of still lifes - I'm very fond of still lifes as long as they're of beautiful things rather than dead bunnies and so on. And he painted interiors - often looking through open doors or windows to give a glimpse of what's beyond. If only you could push that door a little wider and walk through... .

His paintings are often of his Edinburgh houses and feature various of his possessions, some of which were displayed in cases or shelves round the exhibition rooms - such as a tea set and other dishes. And I thought, as I have (unoriginally) so often thought, how brief our lives are. Our bits and pieces will on the whole remain around much longer than we will.

Anyway, what's a blog post without a couple of pictures of Grandson? These are from my phone camera and I can't quite think when I took them. The above one, quite recently, but the one below?

I can't even think where it is. Perth, presumably, when we went for lunch to the Huntingtower Hotel. Grandson seems to be sitting on a table. Seems odd. And what's the red UFO above Mr Life's head? Is it a mirror or a painting?

I wish Blogger would allow me a paragraph space here but - to conclude - Grandson seems like a miracle to me.

The Group

I'm frantically trying to finish my book group book by tomorrow. It's Mary McCarthy's "The Group" (what a lot of books and groups in those sentences). Though it was doubtless very shocking and groundbreaking at the time (it was published in 1963 though is set in the 1930s) I'm finding rather laboured - she seems to be less interested in her characters as people than what she makes them say and do - the women are mainly just her, I'd think. Also I don't get quite a lot of the cultural allusions - I'm too young. (Hooray - something I'm too young for.) And maybe too British.

I Googled her to find out what she looked like and got the picture above, which came as a bit of a shock since I knew she died at the age of 77. However, this is not she, but Mary McCarthy Gomez Cuerto, who lived to 103. She's quite a good example, I feel, of Trying Too Hard To Look Young. Remind me not to do so. Actually, I probably don't try hard enough...

This is the author of "The Group". She died of lung cancer, so here we have another awful warning, though happily I've never felt the urge to smoke.

Must go and get on with the book.

Failing to learn or teach

Occasionally I look at my Site Meter statistics, which I find mildly interesting. My blog doesn't get hundreds of readers a day - only about 130 at the moment - but since I've started posting daily, my monthly total has gone up from about 2500 in October to over 4000 in January.

Now of course these aren't 4000 individual people, but 4000 clicks. How many people does this add up to? - I've no idea. I suppose that I'm aware of about 30? maybe 35? commenters but there are obviously other people out there idly reading about my thrilling life. (Some of them are my family.) I suppose that most of the daily 130 are separate individuals and that not everyone looks every day so that there are probably more than 130 people keeping vague tabs on the cats, Grandson and how things are in Edinburgh. But has the number of readers gone up, or just the number of times the usual ones get bored at work and think, oh well, I'll just have a look at that blog about cats and a baby? Probably the latter, I'd think.

Some of those in the statistics will have stumbled on my blog by mistake. Any time that I look at the entry pages, I find that several people have landed on a blog post entitled "Learning and teaching". Clearly some poor souls are Googling this phrase and hoping to find educational value through their search. I can't recall what the post's about but it's certainly nothing useful: it's something frivolous. Sorry, searchers for enlightenment - though of course they'll have clicked crossly away from that post and won't be reading this.

It's a funny old phenomenon, this blogging thing. I love it - words travelling round the world to communicate with those one will probably never meet - even if, in many (most) cases, the communication is one-way. Still, it is communication. (Hello.) It's strange that so many of us feel the urge to do it. And interesting that, presumably, it fills a need that we weren't really aware of. Or were we? It makes me happy that so many people must love to write but had no real outlet for this before; no one to write for. And now they do.

Smile for the camera

There is no doubt that one way to be popular...

... is to smile a lot, be agreeable and say nothing.

Maybe we all ought to remember this more often. (I include myself.)

Mr Life was up in Perth yesterday helping Son to assemble his Ikea furniture. Today he was a bit stiff. I enquired what was wrong. "Flat pack syndrome," he said, massaging his right shoulder. Poor old chap.

Idleness

This is a picture of central Edinburgh. In front of the Castle you can see the art galleries and underneath the right-hand one, with windows looking out on to the gardens, is a restaurant.

Here's a closer photo of it.

And now we're inside.

I met a friend here today, a retired teacher like me. We sat for quite a long time, she drinking tea, I drinking cappuccino, both of us nibbling shortbread. We discussed many things, including the beauty and sweetness of our grandchildren. We looked out at the Edinburgh skyline. She said meditatively, "Do you know, I think this is probably more fun than teaching."

I think she may have been right.

Off again

Today we went out to lunch to celebrate Mr Life's retirement. Daughter 2 was up from London and Son came down from Perth. Daughter 1, Son-in-Law 1, Grandson and my mum were there too.

For a short time, Grandson sat in a high chair. He hasn't really worked out about solid food yet but he gave a rice cake a bit of a lick.

He seems just as happy with an empty spoon. And Daughter 2 was happy to cuddle him.

As was Son.

Then I took Daughter 2 to her train while Son and Mr Life went to Ikea to buy furniture for Son's new house. They came back for a cup of tea before Son headed back up north. (The rather horrid green they're leaning against is a cat-proofing blanket rather than my chosen upholstery colour. We remove the blanket when cat-allergic relations are visiting.)

Daughter 2 has recently texted from the train that they've made an unscheduled stop in Newark because the train in front hit a shopping trolley on the line.

(These cable-pinching, trolley-on-line people, I'm trying to tell myself, probably had deprived backgrounds, not enough love from their parents, too much tv or sugar or alcohol and not enough vitamins. But but but but... .)

I prefer cats to (some) people.

Well, Daughter 2 didn't get into Edinburgh till 3.05 am, thanks, it seems, to idiots who stole the cabling from seven signals on the line. This meant that eight other trains from London to the north were queued up in a batch with her train and had to be signalled manually through, one at a time. She was thus three and a half hours late arriving in Edinburgh. And think of all the other people inconvenienced too... .

I went up to meet her and had the unusual (for me) experience of sitting in the car beside the entrance to a night club at 2.55 am while I waited for the train to arrive. It was quite entertaining, watching all the smokers chatting away and interacting on the pavement, and it was nice to have company of sorts.

So we're a bit weary today. Daughter 2 went to bed at 9.30 pm. (She needs her sleep.) I have some things to do (I don't need so much sleep) but will go off earlier than usual.

Cassie was tired too. She and Sirius sat up with me while I read my book, waiting to go up to collect Daughter 2. Actually, to be more accurate, Cassie went to sleep on the sofa. Sirius, who could clearly tell the time, stayed awake and kept looking at me. "Come on," he kept saying. "It's bedtime. Why are you still sitting there? Where are our bedtime Dreamies?"

So today Cassie rested in the sun, pretending to have four front paws.

Later, the two of them did their conjoined cats impression.

(Grr, Blogger's doing its won't-give-you-paragraph-spaces again.)

Things that take longer than expected

This is a totally irrelevant picture of Cassie. I have nothing particular to say this evening since I've spent most of the day editing the church magazine. This is in addition to the hours I spent on it yesterday and the day before and the not inconsiderable time that Mr Life spent doing some of the technical stuff earlier. I would like to think that people will go "Wow! Impressive!" when they get it... but I suspect that they won't. It's astonishing how long it takes to footer about with things to get them looking right(ish) and to find suitable little illustrations to cheer it all up.

It's quite fun, though.

Less fun is what we're also doing, which is waiting for time to pass. Daughter 2 was supposed to arrive for the weekend at about twenty to midnight but her train has been delayed - as have lots of others - because someone has vandalised the signals on her route. Currently she's in York, which is some hours from here, and the train that she's been transferred on to isn't moving yet. The information suggests that she may get in about 2 am, but I imagine that this is a bit speculative. Since she has to go back down again about 36 hours later, this is all very trying. Ho hum.

Smiley boy

A year ago, we were only just getting used to the idea that this little chap would be joining the family. Indeed, we didn't know that he was going to be a chap. Now look at him - he's finding his feet in more ways than one.

What a smiley boy. I hope that he retains his sunny disposition. Meantime I take every opportunity to cuddle him. One of those years, he may not be so amenable to this.

This afternoon, he and I went out for a walk. He chatted a lot. Mainly he said, "Aaaaa."

Mr Life, retired accountant

This was Mr Life's last day as a working man. (Well, apart from the nice little list of retirement tasks I have for him.) Here he is, coming back from work for the final time. Look at that smile on his face.

His assistants had laid on a little extra leaving do, consisting of wine and nibbles. This may have contributed to the slightly glazed look.

The cats have decided to retire in sympathy.

I'm feeling very odd. I can convince myself I'm experiencing a sort of extended college holiday but Mr Life has never had those, poor chap, so this seems a bit different. I need to get used to the fact that we're both retired. And not on huge pensions, either.

Definitely on the home straight now.

(Thank you for all the comments about comments. I'm deep in doing the church magazine at the moment but will digest them in due course.)