Agley

Thank you to the kind commentators who wished us well in our medical procedures. 

So here's the thing. We were just leaving the house on Monday to take Mr Life to his hospital on the east side of Edinburgh for his angiogram and possible stent, when the phone rang and it was my hospital, through in the west of Scotland, cancelling my hip replacement operation because of "problems in the operating theatres". 

I had been going to drop Mr L off and then drive home and get the train through to Dalmuir to stay in the hotel attached to the hospital for the night before reporting to the hospital at 7.30 am on the Tuesday. And, because Mr L wasn't going to be able to drive for the next week, we had complicated arrangements involving our son's very kindly coming to collect me on the Wednesday from his home, quite far away, and then, if I wasn't let out on the Wednesday, a helpful friend's doing the needful. 

Anyway... it didn't happen. Which was, as it turned out, just as well, because it turns out that an angiogram is a bigger and nastier thing than we'd expected (Mr L thinks they got it slightly wrong when inserting... I'm very phobic about arteries and things, so let's draw a veil) and he's had a very bruised and sore arm all week, which he isn't allowed to do much with. So if I'd been hobbling about on two sticks, uttering low moans, we'd have been a pretty pair. Also, I wasn't exactly looking forward to having the top of my leg sawn off and now I can pretend once more that it's not happening. Win win. 

The further win is that Mr L didn't need a stent and his heart seems to be more or less ok. Which is good. 

So we didn't do much all week. I'd had to cancel two friends who were coming for coffee on the Tuesday - this was before I knew the date (ha!) of my op - so I uncancelled them and they came and made sympathetic noises. 

And I've been getting on with my cot quilt because Daughter 2's friends' baby's is due in December. So that's been quite fun. 

Edinburgh Son-in-Law has been away down in Worcester with the Edinburgh Two, visiting his parents, so Daughter 1, who sadly hadn't enough holidays left to go with them, has been on her own. So today we went out for lunch with her and had a nice wander through Dr Neil's Garden by Duddingston Loch. It's still beautiful even at this time of year. 

You wouldn't really think, would you, that this was in the middle (well the eastern middle) of a city? 

The garden was made about fifty years ago by two doctors in the grounds of Duddingston Kirk. 

When I first visited it as a girl, there wasn't much: mainly heathers and small conifers. 

But sadly, it's a while since I was a girl. 

While the years have given me wrinkles and arthritis, they've only added to the beauty of the garden - which is open to the public, though is never busy. And when I've been carried off by those years, the garden will still be here and still be beautiful. Which is a comforting thought. Will I have had the op by that point? Watch this space. 

Cutting

Littlest Granddaughter is now 6 - which is a bit alarming. She had an under-the-sea-themed party - largely so that she and her friends could, if they wished, dress up as mermaids or whatever. Her mum, Daughter 2, is an architect so obviously made a fancy cake and decorated the house appropriately. 

I did use to make fancyish cakes for my children's parties. 

But I didn't go so far as to decorate the house.

Anyway, we weren't there (she's in London) but a good time was had, apparently.

I've been getting on with the cot quilt. I think it needs sashing. It's just lying on a sheet here to test out white for this purpose. I don't know how soon I'll be able to get back to it: cutting out is quite physical. I mean, not like mountaineering; but you need to stand and lean over and so on. 

Talking of cutting, I've been reading the booklet the hospital gives you about the operation. It sounds extremely gruesome. I'm glad I'm not a surgeon, though equally glad that other people are. I hope they don't tell me about it as they go along (one gets an epidural, another thing I've never had, rather than a general anaesthetic). Other times I've been in hospital for unpleasant experiences, I've been given a nice baby at the end of it all. Sadly, I don't think this is going to happen this time.

I'm now going to go and read something more soothing, possibly about gardens. Much more my thing. 
 

Sorting out

Goodness gracious, how is the world, or at least selected parts of the world, still at war in this day and age? It's scarcely believable: with all our so-called civilisation, some people are still behaving as if they were in Tudor times - kidnapping and killing one another in their quest for power. The minority, I'm sure, but their actions are so devastating.

It's all too sad and unfathomable. A lot of sorting out is needed. 

I'm making a cot quilt for one of Daughter 2's friends. She wants yellows and ochres, and not too much in the way of patterned fabric. Can't say ochre is my thing, or at least not the browny side of ochre, so I'm interpreting this as yellow with a bit of (reluctant) orange, and a few sneaked-in patterns. There are going to be quite a lot of solidish colours too. It's such fun, playing with fabric.

We went up on Saturday to visit Son and his little ones and had a lovely time. 

Back at the quilt assembly, I did this again! 

Talk about a slow learner... Even that attempt wasn't quite right because I then noticed that the top left hand square was a different way round from the other similar ones. It's now sorted! 

It's been quite wet here, which has shown us that the new skylights we've had put in the kitchen are not entirely satisfactory. One is fine. The other leaks. They were put in three weeks ago and since then, the chaps have been back five times to try to find where the water is getting in. The last time - at least, we're hoping it's the last time - was yesterday. It hasn't rained since, so it's impossible to tell whether it's worked at last. "I'm 95% certain that's it now," said the chap. So far, we've had Lee, Lee's three laddies who actually did the initial work, Lee's dad and then yesterday Lee's brother trying to sort it out. Sigh.

The garden has been neglected because we were away and then it rained, but I did a bit of autumn cutting-down today. I'm going to get a hip replacement operation on Tuesday (argh), after which I'm not allowed to garden for 12 weeks, so... it's just as well that it's going to be winter. Mr L is having an angiogram and possible stent on Monday - it's all go from the NHS for us. I suppose we must be getting old. Funny how soon that happens. We were young and vigorous the other month... or at least year. Still, let the NHS sort us out and then we'll be leaping around again. Let's hope.
 

Going away and coming back again

We've been away for a little holiday. First we went to Norwich, in the south(ish) east of England, where we visited, among other places, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery. In the art gallery, some of the paintings were hung upside down. This has been done because it's a ... what? ... an installation, maybe, by an artist whose name we didn't know and have now forgotten. He has recently chosen some paintings to be hung upside down so as to ... the attendant I spoke to didn't really know, but thought that it was to make us look at them differently. Yes... . 

Anyway, we had various nice walks along the river, 

and visited the very impressive Norwich Cathedral, built 900 years ago.

Then we went to Cambridge to visit my brother and sister-in-law, who moved there last year to be near their daughter. This day, we visited Bury St Edmunds, and walked among the ruins of Bury St Edmunds Abbey, which was built around 1020 but destroyed by Henry VIII after 1539 in the dissolution of the monasteries. There are various lumps left of it, and interesting diagrams and models to show you what it was once like. HUGE, is what it was like. 

See the mustard-coloured bit on the drawing of the abbey as it was? 

This is it here. It's a fair size, so the rest of the abbey must have been enormous.

We also took a trip to Anglesey Abbey, which is neither in Anglesey nor an abbey, but a stately home. Mr L and I visited this in 1972, while staying with my aunt, who lived in Cambridge at the time. 

I remembered that I'd taken a photo of Mr L lying on the grass, so we recreated it in roughly the same place, 51 years later. He would look more like his youthful self if he didn't have the beard. He still looks much the same to me, anyway. 

There's a dahlia bed with flowers shading from red, to pink, orange, yellow and white. Dahlias can be a bit garish but this was a nice way to display them. I'm not really into clashy colours.

And this is a photo of my niece at her allotment. "Is this for the blog?" she asked. Turns out, it was. 

So we had a lovely time and now we're back and catching up with stuff. 

 

Nice things

My lovely bloggy friend Thimbleanna was here briefly with her very nice cousin. Anna is the person responsible for my quilting - I admired her quilts and she came to visit for the first time - from the Midwest of America - to catsit for us - yes, quite - in, I think, 2010 or 11. She brought me a cutting mat (all the way from the US!), a rotary cutter, a quilting ruler and some fabric and here I am, 23 quilts later. Anna wisely likes Scotland so she's toured around quite often with various of her friends and relations and it's lovely to see her. This year she brought all the above fabric and it's quite heavy. Thank you so much, Anna!

Edinburgh's bus garage had an open day yesterday and transport-mad Big Grandson spent a very happy day there. Isn't he getting tall?

The other day, he and his sister and dad were leaving our house when his dad noticed something crawling along the floor. "It's a fly, but I think it's injured," said our son-in-law. "It's not flying."

"A walk, then," said Big Grandson.

Isn't it lovely when they're big enough to make good jokes? 
 

Autumn

I've been to the Botanics twice over the last three days - more than usually - and it's lovely as ever, but getting rather autumnal.

I used to love autumn - crisp mornings, the colours of the trees, the challenge of a new term.

But as I get older, it has its sad side too. The fading of the year; the fading of my friends and me. 

Various of my friends' husbands have quite serious illnesses and it's impossible not to think occasionally of one's own death - not in a particularly gloomy way, but more in a - really? - does this death thing genuinely apply to me? - way. 

It can be quite minor things, such as feeling that it's not worth buying new floor covering for the kitchen, because - how long are we going to be in this house (never mind on this earth)? 

I have a tendency, if I find a comfortable pair of shoes, to buy two pairs so that I have another when the first wears out. But now I wonder how sad it would make my children to find an unworn pair of shoes at the bottom of my wardrobe as they cleared the house. 

All very morbid - and I'm not really. I just think I'm realistic. At 73, I'm glad to be alive and I hope to be alive another few years; but one can never tell (for whom the bell tolls). It's lovely to see new babies born and the oldies have to make room. Meanwhile, retirement is very pleasant. 

Mostly I feel very much the same inside as I ever did. However, there's now a long perspective, looking back, anyway. Forward - possibly not... .  Is it wisdom? Maybe not, but it's experience. You know that everything will pass, the good and the bad, because most things have already done so. You remember what all the stages of life are like. When I was young, I thought that old people were almost a different species, who would have forgotten what it was like to be young. Not at all. 

When you're young yourself, old people tell you how short life is, but you don't really understand this till later, just as you didn't really understand what hard work it would be to look after small children. You feel that no one's told you. But they have. You just haven't taken it in. And you feel you'll be the parent of small children for ever, and then they're grown up and gone. People told you that too. 

Meanwhile I shall go to the Botanics and meet friends and tend my garden and make quilts - so many nice things to do, so little time. 

 

Doing things

I've been getting on with things: yesterday I dug up some irises that had spread beyond their allotted space, and planted a lupin (I love lupins; unfortunately so do the snails); and then transplanted a large self-sown foxglove (which surprisingly didn't seem to mind) and planted a verbena bonariensis in its place. I also love this plant but sadly it's not entirely hardy here, and last winter there was a brief cold snap that I think did for mine. However, a friend kindly gave me one that had seeded itself in her garden, only five or so miles away (but clearly in a warmer place). So - fingers crossed. And doing things is cheering. 

Today we did a couple of exhibitions. The first was in the Dovecot Gallery, which is also a weaving workshop. Their cafe has lovely panels of woven fabric (above) as decoration round the walls. 

The exhibition was of Scottish women artists. This is a woven picture (done at the Dovecot) of a painting by Elizabeth Blackadder, who often painted flowers and cats. I really like this one. 

This is by Dorothy Johnstone, of Cecile Walton, who was also a painter (and from a very artistic family). I think it's lovely, though I would have advised a different colour of stockings. Apart from being orange (always a mistake, in my view), they clash with her - is it a skirt or trousers? A bold choice of fabric, whatever. 

Now this is a self-portrait by Cecile. I think she may have flattered herself here. She was a good-looking woman but not quite as glamorous as this, I think. It's a bit chocolate boxy. Still, it appealed - many of us have tried to go on sleeping for a few more seconds while a wide-awake child tries to prod us into wakefulness, in this case apparently using my granny's hairbrush. 

This is "A Cellist" by Beatrice Huntington. It's a very strong face; a determined young lady. 

And this, "Lemons Dripping" by Helen Flockhart, is a bit eerie but interesting. 

And in this one, according to the label, Caroline Walker, in 2020, "turns her typically voyeuristic gaze upon her mother, Janet. Blurring the line between the public and private, she shows Janet carrying out everyday household chores in their family home. It is part of Walker's wider aim to diarise the domestic work traditionally carried out by women that often goes unrecognised. Built up from quick photographic snaps, these intimate moments become luminous paintings, often on a grand scale."

Yes, I approve of that and like the painting a lot. Quite an upmarket family home, mind you! You can't really see in my rubbish photo, but at the bottom of the painting is the top of a shiny black grand piano. 

You can walk round the gallery above the weaving workshop and look down at the weavers. They do amazing work, and on a grand scale. I didn't like to take more than a rapid photo, though. It seemed intrusive. The building used to be public swimming baths. Mr L has swum there, though not within the last fifty years.

Then, since we were up in that direction, we visited the Little Black Dress exhibition at the museum. We found that a lot less interesting - it was very well researched and laid out, but fashion, especially all-black fashion, doesn't interest either of us very much and I found so much blackness a bit depressing. 

Still, it was all quite fun. Then we walked a bit of the way home in the sunshine. Edinburgh was looking beautiful. Ideally I wouldn't live in a city, but since I have to, I'm glad it's this one.  

 

Getting a grip

It's been unusually hot for September and I can't do energetic things in the heat, so there's been a bit of sitting in the garden, which still has a reasonable amount of colour. 

On Wednesday we had our longest-standing friends over from the west and we went to Lauriston Castle and wandered around, admiring the views through the gaps in the hedges.

And today was Daughter 1's birthday, so we went up to Swanston and had lunch with her and her family.

The sky is bright so the foreground looks dark, but it wasn't. It was warm and muggy. 

I really must do more next week but apart from the heat, I'm still suffering from post-Daughter-2's- departure blues. However, inactivity is not cheering. It's even been too hot to do much hand quilting - sitting with a quilt draped over one is not a cooling pastime. Still, this will not do. Stiffen the sinews, grit the teeth, get a grip. 

 

Places

We've had a quiet week: recovering from the visitors and from their departure; changing beds; doing some gentle local walks; putting away the toys; and tidying the garden. We had the Edinburgh family on Friday, which was lovely. Big Grandson is enjoying high school, which is very good.

One of my choirs started this week, which makes it feel like autumn, though the weather is still warm and summery. We walked to the local park, where most of the flowers are past their best but some are still blooming their hearts out. 

And then we walked home along the river. 

At this stretch of it, it's easy to imagine what it was like hundreds of years ago. There are still trees along the bank and lots of little pebbly beaches. Now there are also houses and traffic within a few hundred yards, though it's peaceful enough strolling along beside the water. Once - not all that long ago really - a hundred years or so or a bit more - it was all fields round here. I would love to be able to time-travel back and see it as it was. 

Today we went up to visit Son and family, which was nice. The children are so sweet. I wish they lived nearer, though.  

And Daughter 2 and family are on holiday in Tenerife. Now, that's a long way away. This is the view from their balcony. 

I still feel melancholy after Daughter 2 and her little one's departure, but next week will be busier with various events and I suppose I'll probably start to feel better.