Big wind

Well, spring is springing here, or at least the end (ish) of winter is being a bit flowery. Most things are still pretty dormant, but you can always find something colourful at the Botanics. 

Azalias or

skimmias or

witch hazel or 

just a little robin. Traditionally, robins here are known as robin redbreasts, but their breasts are really orange. We didn't have a separate word for orange (as opposed to red) until actual oranges arrived here, and their name then got made into an adjective. So this is really a robin orangebreast. Doesn't have quite the same ring. But Christmas cards tend to have robins with red tummies, such is the power of language versus observation. 

I've started to cut out a quilt. It's to be a rainbowish one, so against all my principles I'm going to have to use some orange fabrics. I have to admit that Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain. 

We've had a Big Wind, Storm Eowyn, which has done a lot of damage, though thankfully not to our house or garden. This happened on the path beside the golf course (apologies for the blurry photo) but, much more seriously...

this happened in the Botanics: its tallest tree, with 14 others, was damaged beyond remedy.  

This is what it used to look like - the tree right at the bottom of this path. Very sad. But worse things, much worse things, are happening in the world. 

A little trip

We took ourselves off for a little outing to Dunfermline on Thursday on the bus, over the bridge to Fife.  (Buses are free to the over-60s.) We'd heard that there was an exhibition of Joseph Noel Paton's paintings in the Carnegie Library, and having only vaguely heard of JNP, wanted to find out more. 

It turned out that he was very famous in his day and was the Queen's (Victoria's) Limner in Scotland. He painted lots of pictures of fairies, because that was very fashionable, but also portraits of his family and other people. 

This one is of his wife and youngest son and is called "Lullaby". It somewhat disregards the fact that the average mother, having got the baby to sleep, would immediately put him down and go and tidy up - or possibly collapse in a heap - rather than balance him precariously on her knee and play the piano to keep him asleep. However, artistic licence and all that. 

The paintings were in a modern extension to the library, which was very nice indeed, and which also houses a museum with various exhibits showing the history of Scotland and specifically of Dunfermline - which was the capital of Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries. 

Queen Margaret founded a priory here in 1070. As tends to happen, the building got altered a lot over the years, a bit of it was taken over for a palace (now fairly ruined) and an extra church was built on the side two hundred years ago, but there's still quite a lot to see. The extension to the library has lots of glass, with extensive views over the gardens, 

and the Abbey church and precincts. 

You can see Robert the Bruce's name built into the church tower.

By the time we'd finished looking at the exhibition (and had lunch) the Abbey was closing, as was the Palace, so we just had a quick look and will come back another day.

Then we went for a short walk in the adjacent Pittencrieff Park. This was bought by Andrew Carnegie in 1902 and given to the people of Dunfermline. The story is that as a boy, he couldn't play there because the estate was privately owned, so he vowed that one day, he'd buy it. And, once he'd become one of the richest people in the world, he did. 

 

Grrr

Nothing much is happening here. Well, unless you'd like to know about the new(ish) car we bought recently, which is supposedly very clever and is automatic and is thus (in my opinion) much harder to drive than our previous, manual one. Anyway, we tried to go to church in it this morning and the car WOULDN'T OPEN - you remember what cars with keys were like? - yes, quite. Anyway, a chap from the AA (Automobile Association, not Alcoholics Anonymous) came after some hours, and got it open. He has a theory about the battery being drained because .... something like... it was attached to our wifi. Not by us, it wasn't. Things can be too clever, in my opinion. 

Deep breath. Yesterday we went for a walk down through another bit of the New Town,

to what is now one of the modern art galleries. We're not huge fans of (some) modern art but it has a good cafe. This building used to be an orphanage - it's a beautiful building but I imagine it was a somewhat forbidding sight for the poor little mites who got taken there from their presumably humbler homes. 

Here's the cafe. We warmed ourselves up there. 

And outside again, here, over the impressive curlicue on the wall, you can see allotments and then the other modern art gallery (also with good cafe). That gallery used to be a school. 

Here are the allotments. We haven't had snow but it's been very frosty all week. No one was working on the allotments. Wisely. 

Then we walked through the grounds of the second gallery,

down to the river and along the path towards home. 

When we got to the park, there were two swans and lots of ducks finding something good to eat on the river bed. I'm glad I'm not a duck. 

It's supposed to get much warmer this week. 
 

Cold walk

We did a recce for a town walk yesterday. We started at the Portrait Gallery

and plunged down through the New Town (can you see the sea and the hills on the other side?)

and further down - this is Scotland Street, which might be of interest to anyone who reads Alexander McCall Smith's writing about this street - 

and along cycle/walking paths

which used to be railway lines (it was a beautiful day, but cold)

till we got to the sea. Then we had coffee in a pretty little pub.

And after that we walked back a different way, saying hello to a watchful cat,

 

and ended up at the Botanics, where we had lunch. 

The walk wasn't quite five miles but we were glad to sit down. We've not been walking so much over the festive period and were clearly out of condition. Must do more!

Quiltquiltquilt

I feel a rainbow-ish quilt in the offing. Thanks to my lovely friend Thimbleanna, I have enough orange and some purple, but I think I need to buy a little more purple. Even with all this on the bed, the stash cupboard is still full. But there's no purple. I did claim I would never buy any more fabric but... what can a person do? 

A jolly candidate

Well, hello 2025, and Happy New Year to anyone reading this. I have very little idea who that might be, other than a few kind commenters, but according to Google there are quite a few others hanging around on the sidelines. I myself do sometimes read blogs that I don't comment on, though not often. So hello anyway. 

My brother and sister-in-law went down south again yesterday, so we've just been gently pottering about, putting things back in their usual places, washing sheets, watching programmes that we've recorded, and so on. Also going for walks, such as this one yesterday, along the path beside the golf course. It's funny how hills always look much smaller in photos than they do to the eye. These are the Pentlands, and you can't see, but they're covered in snow. 

It was a beautiful day yesterday, and also today, but rather chilly. Not many people were on the path. 

But the light was beautiful. 

At our ages, 74 and 76, it's impossible not to wonder from time to time how many more New Years we'll see. My brother is now 77, and though he's very fit as far as he knows - well, none of us does know for whom the bell will toll (next). 

Still, I always remember Charles Lamb in The Essays of Elia, writing, "I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821", and that seems a good attitude. We're fine. We hope to continue thus for a while. Meanwhile I simply must start another quilt. 

I've been writing this blog for nearly 19 years. I'm slightly sad that there's no easy way (is there?) to print it out economically and concisely, since it's a record of these years. I've seen companies that will do it as a fancy book, with one page per entry or whatever, and all the photos, at vast expense.  This would take up more pages than I'd like to leave for my descendants to deal with.

Anyway, on with 2025.