Years

The solar eclipse happened, and Littlest Granddaughter, who with Daughter 2 is staying with us for most of August, saw it through the pinhole camera that her mother made out of a cereal carton. Well, we all saw it. The sun looked tiny inside the cereal box, but it definitely had a bite out of it. Littlest Granddaughter was not particularly impressed, even when we told her that it wouldn't happen again till she's 78 or something. 

She decided to make "an old, one-eyed teddy with a patch". So we did. She designed it, which is why the teddy has unusually pointy ears, but you don't argue with Littlest Granddaughter, at least not about something unimportant. The artist's vision, and all that. 

She found, and tried on, the dress that I wore on 18th December 1967, when Mr Life was my partner at my sixth year (ie final year) school dance. I was 17, he was 19, and this is when our romance began. The dress was, obviously, too big for her but not as much too big as I would have expected. She's very tall for nearly 9. However, I washed it not long ago and I think it shrank. 

Today we went to the funeral of the husband of one of my friends from my school-teaching days. I've known her since 1973 and the group of us English teachers who made friends then are still friends and meet up fairly regularly. Brian was 80, so it wasn't a tragedy exactly, but still, it's sad. The funeral food afterwards was by the river in Haddington; quite scenic. My lovely granny was born in a house just beside this bridge, in 1895.

Carpe diem, that's the thing. 

 

Crieff again

We've been away for a long weekend with all the family, minus Son-in-Law 2, who's performing at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. Son and family were staying in Crieff Hydro, while the rest of us were in a lodge in the grounds. We celebrated Medium Granddaughter's 10th birthday. 

I've been going to the Hydro since 1953, but I'm probably not the longest-standing guest. It's the sort of place that people keep going back to. 

Son and family did a hair-raising tree walk / zip wire thing. I could hardly look. I don't know where Son got those genes from; not me or his dad. However, they survived - indeed, seem to have enjoyed it. Argh.

And we went for walks and the kids did things in the adventure playground and most of the party went swimming a lot. It was very nice. 

On the way home yesterday, Daughter 2, Littlest Granddaughter, Mr L and I visited Drummond Castle, which has amazing formal gardens. The old bit of the castle dates from about 1490 and there's a newer mansion, in which the family actually lives when they're there, dating from 1689 but much altered over the years to suit contemporary tastes. 

There have been gardens here since the 1400s, but this layout was started in the 1830s. 

The upper photo shows most of the very formal bit, and you can see in the lower one how the box hedges make the main shapes, at the moment filled with antirrhinums of various colours, and lavender. On the sides of the garden that aren't shown are lots of topiaried trees. It's stunning. And very labour-intensive, I'd think. 

The area round our lodge was also scenic. 

And, as we always do, we climbed The Knock and admired the best view in the world. This is possibly a slightly biased opinion. 

Breaking no bones

On Friday we did another recce for a walk, this time in the Border country, starting at Kelso and walking down the River Teviot. We suspected that it might be a bit too long. Ten or fifteen years ago, the gang was doing 7-9 miles; now we tend to do 5 or 6, or 7 at a stretch. This one looked like 7. But we thought we'd investigate. 

It was a very pretty walk, though these lovely pink flowers belong to the horribly invasive Himalayan Balsam, and boy, it's invaded this river bank. 

It was a lovely day, if a trifle hot in the sun. 

And some of it was reasonably easy walking. 

But after a while, the path became very narrow and also sloped a bit from side to side, with lots of stones and roots. Hmm. Our progress was therefore quite slow. So after a couple of miles we decided that the whole walk - which is a circular one, down one side of the river and back the other side - would take too long, and we retraced our steps back to Kelso. After the last walk, where I tripped twice. we're being more cautious. Our ages range from mid-sixties up through the seventies and eighties, with one - the fittest of us all - being 95! 

Back in Kelso, we visited Kelso Abbey. It was built around 1128 and was a huge monastery. But its proximity to the border with England meant that it suffered from repeated English invasions, and in an attack in 1545 it was more or less destroyed. All that remains is this fragment of the Abbey church, which was in use till a new church was built in 1771-3. 

And then we went for coffee and cake. It was a good day, and we broke no bones.