The Death Clean continues.

It's the school holidays, and Son-in-Law1, the Edinburgh grandchildren and I went up Calton Hill, something I haven't done for years. Though it's in the middle of the city, it used to be very quiet, but it's now a tourist destination - coaches parked at the bottom - and there were lots of people wandering around. The weather was beautiful, which no doubt encouraged lingering.  

This is Edinburgh's Disgrace. The plan was to build a replica of the Parthenon, with stones exactly the same size as in Greece, in honour of the Scottish dead in the Napoleonic Wars. The money was to be raised by public subscription, but only half of the £42,000 was produced so this is all that got built. It's still quite striking. 

It looks as if this leads straight on to Arthur's Seat in the distance, but there's actually quite a chunk of town in between. 

You get a good view of the Castle and the east end of the main part of town. 

Littlest Granddaughter and Daughter 2 have been staying, and this sort of thing has been happening. 

Littlest has more or less taught herself to knit and made this, with some other creations. 

But they've gone now. It was a beautiful day again today - looking this way. 

Looking the other way, though - the Great Book Purge has begun. So far, we've succeeded mainly in making a Great Mess, but we have hopes to continue the death cleaning in this area. There aren't that many books that I actually want to part with, but facts must be faced, one of which is that we probably won't live long enough (ie to our 150th birthdays) to reread them all (as well as using up all my fabric stash; but that's another story). 

 

More holiday

The following day we drove to Wigtown, which has lots of bookshops, including this one owned by Shaun Bythell, who writes the "Diary of a Bookseller" books, which are funny and interesting. We've been to The Bookshop before, but Shaun himself wasn't there. This time he was, which was exciting but slightly alarming. (He can be very scathing about some of his customers.) And of course we bought quite a lot of books.

It's an interesting building, with various rooms and quirky messages around the place. 

And then we went on to Portpatrick. It's a pretty little place, and we enjoyed walking around it. 

Lots of thrift growing in the rocks.

I always wonder what it would be like to live in places we visit. Portpatrick was full of holiday homes, which I imagine makes it quite empty in the winter. I can see myself living in Wigtown, though - at least, as described by Shaun, which makes it sound like a wonderful community. 

Then on our last day, Mr L nobly took the long way back via Dumfries House. This is a stately home which was put up for sale, with its contents, in 2008. Prince Charles (as he was) heard about it and managed to raise £45 million to buy it, with contents, for the nation. It has lots of Chippendale furniture. And then more millions have since been spent on restoration of the house and grounds - both are beautiful. One of the King's enthusiasms is heritage, and he's keen on heritage crafts too, so he's set up craft workshops where apprentices learn traditional skills and use them in the house and garden. For example, there are various garden shelters made by them. 

It's all very lovely, though I think it'll be even lovelier next week, when more will be flowering.

You can't randomly walk around the house but have to go on a pre-booked guided tour, with two guides making sure you don't pinch anything. The king is keen not to have ropes that corral the visitors in one space, but as a result, you walk past pretty things which I suppose have to be kept an eye on. Various of them would look very nice in my sitting room. 

Anyway, it was a lovely end to our day and our holiday. And now we're home and the garden has grown lots of weeds in the warm weather. But also flowers. 

 

Life is nothing but fun...

The main reason we went to Galloway was to visit The Book Shop in Wigtown. Wigtown is a pretty little place which has reinvented itself as a book town, with lots of second-hand bookshops and a Book Festival, which is happening shortly. 

The owner of The Book Shop - the largest one in Scotland, he says - is Shaun Bythell, who has now published two books about his experiences while running the shop: "Diary of a Bookseller" and "Confessions of a Bookseller". I would greatly recommend them - they're very funny, and it's also quite interesting (and sobering) to read what he says about the effect that Amazon has had on the book trade.

We follow him on Facebook (The Book Shop, Wigtown) and he posts funny videos set in the shop so it was SO EXCITING to be there.

On that vintage typewriter on the table is a piece of paper which says
I AM NOT A TOY
I AM NOT A TOY
I AM NOT A TOY
I AM NOT A TOY
I AM NOT A TOY

and there are various other admonishments and wry quotations posted around the shop.

I'm an avid reader of published letters and diaries so was very happy.

Shaun wasn't there, which was a minor disappointment, but we would have been much too shy to tell him how much we enjoyed his books and anyway, he can be very scathing (in his writing) about customers so we'd have had to be on our best behaviour. Which of course we were anyway, and bought lots of books. (Oh dear.)

Though we didn't meet Shaun, we did meet Captain the Cat, which was almost as good and less scary.

Yesterday we visited friends who took us to The Hill House, designed for the Blackie family by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and built from 1902-4. CRM was a wonderful architect from the artistic point of view but not so good on the practicalities, and the house is now, as the director of the Scottish National Trust says, "dissolving like an aspirin" because of various issues with the way it was built.

So a huge roofed cage has been built around it to keep the rain off till it dries out and then some lucky person will decide what to do about it.

The cage includes a walkway so that you can go up round the outside of the house and look down at it. This walkway is made of slatted metal so that you can see how far up you are, which is a bit AAAAAAAGH,  which is why my photos are mostly from lower down.

There's a nice view over Helensburgh to the sea.

Inside it's just the same as before, marvellously preserved with much of the furniture. Here's the sitting room...

and here it is a hundred years or so ago, with a ghostly Mrs Blackie reading her book. Well, the house has lasted longer than the people, so that's something.

Mollie Panter-Downes

Sometimes I'm aware that my blog can be very Pollyanna-ish, possibly giving the impression that my life is all jolliness and sunshine. As with anyone's life, this isn't the case: there are unbloggable worries and sadnesses as well. However, I try not to dwell on these, so here's a picture of the garden, with its riot of daffodils and forget-me-nots.


This attitude tends to be reflected in my choice of reading material also: I prefer the upbeat or at least the not-too-depressing. I've recently discovered Mollie Panter-Downes (fine name) who wrote during the war, often for the New Yorker - though she was English. I do find her a hoot. For example, here are some extracts from "Good Evening, Mrs Craven: the Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes". In this story, Mrs Ramsay is meeting up with an old flame after five years, during which he's been abroad and she's got married. (The ... s indicate where I've skipped bits.)

“Gerald dear,” said Mrs Ramsay softly. She held out both of her hands, which Gerald pumped up and down. “Well, well,” he said, “old Helen.” Mrs Ramsay felt a slight but definite chill…

“Old Helen,” Gerald repeated fatuously, “this is nice.” Mrs Ramsay noticed coldly that he was a good deal yellower than he had been five years ago. “How is old Charles?” he asked. “And the kiddie?”

Mrs Ramsay said that old Charles was well and that old Susan had, of course, been shipped off to relatives in the country. He patted her knee absently, as though it were the head of a retriever…

Towards the end of lunch he extracted a snapshot from his cigarette case. Mrs Ramsay gazed thoughtfully at a toothy young woman in a bathing suit. “… We’re thinking of getting married,” Gerald explained…

Monica's teeth seemed many more than were strictly usual... Mrs Ramsay passed the snapshot briskly back to Gerald and said that she was so glad.

“Monica can sit on her hair,” said Gerald. “You never saw such stuff – naturally blond, too.”

Mrs Ramsay, reflecting that she would find no difficulty in sitting on Monica’s hair either if Monica’s head were included, said that she really must be running along now.

“I want you to meet Monica soon,” he said. “Do you know what attracted me to her about her first, Helen? She reminded me of you.”

As soon as she was out of sight round the corner, Mrs Ramsay took out her handbag mirror and anxiously inspected her teeth. They seemed much as usual.

It was odd how Gerald had changed when she herself looked precisely the way she had always looked. Already she felt a good deal better as she stepped jauntily along… away from the dear and mercifully stone-dead past.

Flowery dress

When Daughter 1 went to nursery at the age of 3 in 1982, parents had to supply a painting overall. I considered making one but then came across this brown one and bought it instead. Then I felt a bit guilty that it was such a boring colour, so I appliqued a dolly on the back.

I got the scraps of fabric from my mother-in-law, who was a wonderful seamstress and had made a dress for Daughter 1 out of the flowery material.


Fast forward to this afternoon. The grandchildren were here and wanted to paint, so I fished out the elderly painting overall to put on Granddaughter-the-Elder.

After this, we had some stories. I was reading this book (published 2010,  highly recommended) to the children.

And then I noticed Lola's dress.

I'd love to know how Lauren Child came to have this fabric.  And does anyone else recognise it?

Still very quiet around here...

And so that was Christmas. Our day was very pleasant: extremely quiet and lazy. I don't often do lazy but it made an interesting change. Our son gave me this beautiful glass bowl, made by Etling in the 1930s. I had admired it in an antiques centre but had no idea that he'd gone back and bought it. I'm a great lover of glass and this is rather Lalique-like: opalescent with a sinuous pattern of (according to one website) sea anemones or (according to another) sunflowers. When you look at it from the side under a light, the middles of the flowers (if they are flowers) look yellow, so I'm slightly inclined towards the sunflower theory, though the petals aren't very sunflowery in shape. I love it, anyway.

Most of my presents were books, all exactly the sort of things I like to read. I don't read many novels - not because I don't like the novel as a form, just because there are a lot that are depressing or alarming or a touch on the sordid side and frankly, I haven't got enough life left to want to read stuff that I don't enjoy. One novel that I read recently and absolutely loved was "Gillespie and I" by Jane Harris. I thought it was well-written, evocative and convincing. In fact, the moment I finished it I started rereading it. I mentioned it to my friend Morag because I thought she'd like it too, and was about to expand on its excellence when she said, "Oh yes, I've got that but I couldn't get into it." So it's all a matter of taste. But I know I'll like biographies and letters and diaries. "A Notable Woman" is the diary of a woman who lived in the first three-quarters of last century and contributed to the Mass Observation diary project. After she died, her niece found that she'd written personal diaries all her life, hoping that one day they'd be published. They're fascinating. She never achieved anything special but she's very honest about her life. So far I've only read up till she's in her early thirties and still hoping to find the love of her life; she never did.

So, yes, nothing's happened. We've been out for walks both today and yesterday and neither time did we meet anyone apart from a few dog-walkers. Today has been quite wet and it was perhaps a bit mad to go trudging through the puddles, but you can justify laziness only to a certain extent.

Now I'm off to cut out strips of green fabric. I hope that all my bloggy friends and lurkers are having a lovely Christmas season; and I send my sympathy to any who aren't.

Various ways of spending time

This is one of our favourite places in Norfolk - Burnham Market. We always visit it when we're staying with my aunt. One of its attractions is the second-hand bookshop, which always has lots of the kind of books that I enjoy: memoirs and diaries and letters of the sort that never get into major bookshops. Then I have several happy weeks of reading musty volumes by people that no one's ever heard of.

It's also a pretty little place.

On a slightly different topic: colouring books for adults seem to be everywhere nowadays. I cannot imagine being so bored that I would want to spend time with one of these. And a friend at choir tonight was saying that she had a sore neck because she'd spent so long crouched over a difficult jigsaw. I've never seen the attraction of jigsaws.

But Mr L and I do spend part of most days doing cryptic crosswords. And cutting up perfectly good pieces of fabric to sew them together again can't exactly be described as a sensible use of time.

But then there are the grandchildren. It's not a waste of time to go to the playpark with them.

 

Even though they won't remember a thing about it in future years.  

Getting enjoyment out of life in various ways

It's been absolutely glorious weather, warm enough for summer (in Scotland) but with those long shadows that remind you that the earth is tilting away from the sun and you'd better enjoy things now before autumn closes in. We've been enjoying from the top of Corstorphine Hill -

- ooh, look: some tell-tale autumnal colours there -

and along the canal -

- not a ripple on the water -

- and in Princes Street. There were some Japanese tourists with parasols. Now, those were optimistic items to bring on a Scottish holiday at the end of September.

So that's been nice, but the real joy's come from a review which I've just read of a novel which has been long-listed for the US National Book Award for fiction. I don't like to criticise your taste, Americans, but - really?

Here are some quotes from the novel which were used in the review.

"She made a promise that he would never know the scope of her darkness, that she would never show him the evil that lived in her, that he would know of her only a great love and light."

"The dean's eyebrows were caterpillars that chew down apple trees overnight."

"She had gorgeous hands, like owlets."

"The ice had retracted from the banks to resemble gums with exposed tooth roots."

"Her grandmother's mouth was more dash than n, signalling happiness."   (???)

"His looks were both promising and as if some essential promise had fled and left wreckage in its wake, which was odd, the boy being fifteen at most."

There you are. That cheered you up, didn't it? I wish I were still teaching - what fun I would have discussing these with a class.

(I don't like to type out the complete title in case ... well, I don't know. But it's F-tes and Fur--s by Laur-n Gr-ff. I think I need to order it from the library to find a few more gems.)

Fireworks in the USA?

Alarmingly, I now seem to be 65. That's makes me feel quite - well - old. Ish. Because, sadly, I am. However, so are lots of other people; and no doubt in five years (if I'm spared, as a friend tends to say) 65 will seem a lot better than the situation I find myself in then. So there we are. Isn't it ridiculous that we never really believe that we ourselves will get old, despite all the evidence that everyone does (if they're spared)?

I thought about my mother. It's not till you have children yourself that you realise how significant your birthday is to your mum as well. It would be nice to be able to hear her telling again the story of how I was very overdue and my dad went to play golf, and the message came that Mum had gone into labour, and he finished the round of golf before going to the hospital. Dad used to tell this story with a merry laugh, as an example of how relaxed he was about this whole childbirth thing. Then one day Mum told him that she felt like thumping him when he recounted this, because it wasn't exactly relaxing for her. So he shut up about this. (She wouldn't really have thumped him. She wasn't like that.)

Son came for lunch - he seems to be growing a beard - and so did the grandchildren and their parents, so that was nice.

After they all went away, we watched Wimbledon - James Ward getting beaten and Andy Murray winning. I also admired my new pieces of glass, seen on the left of the television. I really must stop acquiring glass. No more; I should be shedding things instead. But I do like it a lot.

I also got several nice books...

... and some lovely flowers.

Happy Fourth of July, America. I hope you had a good day, as I did.