Et in arcadia... spelling mistakes

See what the Lady Chapel in this Devon church is set aside for. Alas.

At least they're not offering "leafets" about it, as in my previous entry.

Hello again

We're back! Thank you so much for your birthday and holiday wishes. We had a nice time but the weather was a bit British.

This is the view from the café at the St Ives Tate Gallery in Cornwall.

This is Beer, in Devon.

I'm sure you can't wait to see the rest of my holiday snaps, but meanwhile: what have you all been doing? Off I go to find out...

The Queen and I

We’re about to go off to the south-west of England - Cornwall for a week and Devon for another week - taking my 87-year-old mother with us. It’s been jolly hot in Britain – I’ve just looked it up and it was 83 degrees here yesterday, which is 28.333333333333335 Celsius, according to Google. And let me tell you, we were aware of every one of those 3s. It may not sound hot to you Australians and Midwesterners, but we’re fairskinned Celts and we don’t have air conditioning or houses that are designed for hot weather. We’ve been wilting, especially those of us who’re covered in black fur. No, I don't mean me or even Mr Life (well, maybe him a bit). Cassie and Sirius Cat have been spending the days lolling in the shade, proving the scientific truth that black colours absorb heat and that it’s better to be a white cat if the weather’s hot.

And it’s all very well if you can loll, but some of us have been cutting the grass, ironing and so forth.

Fortunately my mother is one of those people with no fat on them – unlike me – who doesn’t feel the heat.

It’s my birthday today, or rather, my official birthday. My actual birthday is tomorrow (Happy Independence Day when it arrives, American friends) but we have to go to the airport at 7.30 am and get on one of those nasty flying machines, so I decided to celebrate it today instead. Look at my nice cards. I usually take my own bodyweight in books on holiday, but since we’re flying I need to be a bit more circumspect.

Look at my nice presents too. Just what I wanted.

And a couple of DVDs.

I don't know why this is sideways. I didn't take the picture sideways and then I rotated it on Picasa when it came out this way. Still, you get the idea.

Ditto.

I was hoping to celebrate becoming 59 (eek!) by getting the new carpet laid in Daughter 2’s room. The saga of this room is a long and tedious one, beginning with Mr Life putting up a cornice and preparing the room for decorating. If Mr Life has a fault (surely not! you cry) it’s that he doesn’t quite have the stamina common to people in my family, and so this has been a very very very long process – I think it began in January - during which Daughter 2 has been camping in Daughter 1’s vacated bedroom. Eventually, however, the painter came and painted, the carpet layer came and laid – and the carpet was faulty. Today, a fortnight later, the replacement carpet was laid -and it was faulty. Same fault. Much has been the grinding of teeth, the heaving of furniture during heat waves, the filling up of our sitting room with said furniture and the general dissatisfaction with cruel fate.

Still, nil desperandum, it’ll all be the same in 100 years, every cloud has a silver lining (really?) and suchlike clichés. Meanwhile, I’m off to see if Andy Murray can beat Andy Roddick to get to the final of Wimbledon. See you in a fortnight, everyone. Have a good time in my absence and be sure to tell us all about it.

A visit to the boy

On Sunday we took my mum to visit our son, who's a junior doctor in Dumfries, in south-west Scotland. He and his junior doctor girlfriend have been living for the past year at Rockcliffe, where her parents have a house. After lunch, we went for a walk along the shore.

It was a warm day but a bit hazy.

Here we are: Mr Life, Son with my mum and in front of them, Son's girlfriend, Daughter 2's actor boyfriend and Daughter 2. You'll notice I'm quite happy to post pictures of people's bottoms as long as mine isn't included.

This is the sea front; quite the prettiest one I've ever seen.

This is the view to the left.

More bottoms.

I would like this house. Do you think if I wish hard enough, some good fairy will give it to me?

This is that house's view.

Along a bit, we sat on a bench while Daughter 2 and her actor boyfriend went for a paddle. The tide was far out.

Then Son and his girlfriend followed.

On our way back the sun came out, which improves any photo.

Back in the garden, we noticed swallows* building a nest in the apex of the roof. That blurry thing with a forked tail just above...................here............... is one of the swallows. My camera isn't really up to action shots.

Daughter 2 and Son were having a chat and posed for a photo.

"How about one without the discarded socks?" suggested Son. Ok then.

I wandered off round the garden to take photos of the view.

And again. As usual, I wondered why I live in a city.

Sigh. Yearn.

"Let's have a rolling race down the hill," suggested Son to his sister. He's never one to lie around for long.

So they did, giggling hysterically.

And raced back up again. Son went sideways by mistake because he was dizzy.

Later, we had dinner at Kippford, on the other side of the bay.

And then we got in the car and drove the two-and-a-half hours home again.

In August they move to Glasgow to work in hospitals there. When will I ever get used to him not being with us any more?

* My brother says he thinks they're house martins, not swallows. I could look this up on Google but it's TOO HOT!

Tennis and work and such like

First day of the holidays and I was at work till 2.45 pm. Didn't quite get finished last week.

However, cards like this one are a great compensation. How nice - not only that he felt like that but that he bothered to say so. (I don't get messages like this every week; hence my great appreciation when they do come.)

Can't stay around; Andy Murray isn't doing as well as he might against Stanislaw Wawrinka and though I can't bear to watch, I can't bear to stop watching either.

Pensive

I walked to and from work today – a total of 6 miles, which isn’t very far but which made it seem a good idea to go out into the garden and collapse on the grass for a while when I got home. And I started my usual round of worrying, about:

My mother being 87 and what the future might bring for her
Daughter 1 being about to start the dissertation for her second Master’s degree rather than being at the stage I was at when I was her age (not that this was particularly impressive either)
Climate change
Interest rates and banking and so on
Getting old, fat and wrinkly
World peace or the lack of it
Daughter 2 going out with a mostly-unemployed actor
Son being overworked as a junior doctor
My very small projected pension because of my having been an at-home mummy for nine years
Son having left home so that we hardly see him (because he's a very overworked junior doctor and has very little spare time)
What to do with the cats when we go away on holiday in the future
What we'll do without the cats because they won't live forever
The ivy on the back walls of the garden, which probably will live forever, getting bigger and bigger, alas
Whether I'll get done everything that I need to, by the end of my holiday from work
Whether I'll ever get the photos organised even if I live to 100
Possibly living to 100, when I would be a burden on my children

And so on

And then along came Sirius. He rubbed his warm, solid, fluffy tummy against my cheek as I lay on the grass and then he leaned companionably against me for a while, purring. He wandered round my recumbent form, looking at me curiously. Then he sat on my head: the very best kind of furry hat.

That’s why I like cats. They don’t worry. They just make the best of things.

Crieff again

We've been away for a long weekend to Crieff, in Perthshire, about an hour to the north of Edinburgh.

We stayed in a house in the grounds of Crieff Hydro, among the trees.

This is the view from the porch.

When we go to Crieff, we always walk up the little hill behind the house. It's called the Knock, from the Gaelic "cnoc", meaning "hill". Not a very inspired name...

but the views from the top are lovely.

You can see for miles...

in every direction.

Why do we live in a city when there are places like this? I would like to have that white house in the middle of this photo.

It was sunny but a bit hazy.

This is Crieff from the path downwards.

Another day we went to Drummond Castle, which has the most amazing topiary garden. We had it almost to ourselves. Do click to enlarge this - it just shows what can be done with very few actual flowers.

Distant cows. What a peaceful scene. I'm not so keen on close-up cows. They're a bit large for my liking.

I'm glad I don't have to trim that box hedging.

Or any of it, in fact. We kept waiting for the Red Queen or the White Rabbit to pop out from behind a tree.

My lovely son-in-law stopped this one from falling over.

And Mr Life, Daughter 1, my mum and son-in-law all got a bit silly.

Who was looking after the cats, you ask? Well, for the first and last nights, we abandoned them! Karen, our nice neighbour, popped in and out, adminstering cat biscuits and prawns, however, and shut them in overnight. And for the two nights in between, Daughter 2 and/or her actor boyfriend were here, having driven back since they had a wedding to go to. So our furry friends weren't totally neglected.

They seemed pleased to see us when we returned, however.

Back to work tomorrow. But not for long. Three and a half days and I'm free for seven weeks. Hooray for being a teacher. (Not gloating or anything...)