Beautiful weather for a funeral

We were checking Daughter 2's Edinburgh flat the other day and took a walk down to Newhaven. The weather has been so beautiful this week - unbroken sunshine and blue skies, though with a slight frost overnight. 

I would hate not to live near the sea. 

Today was the funeral of Prince Philip and we decided to watch it. We're not particular royalists, though by the time you've got to our age you realise that there's something to the argument about continuity. I've just checked: in my lifetime there have been fifteen Prime Ministers - they come and go with what seems like increasing speed - and only the one queen, who has been very faithful to the duties wished upon her. Well, there was a king for the first two years of my life but I don't remember him. So the Duke of Edinburgh has been visibly around for all of my life (and indeed for some time before it) and now he isn't. So it seemed significant. 

And I'm glad we did because it was so strange. The soldiers were socially distanced and looked like toys set out by a little boy.

 

Those carrying the coffin wore masks. I was so nervous that they might drop it, but thankfully they didn't. 

I felt sorry for those ordinary people, born to be unordinary but with very human problems - how dreadful to be them, despite their huge wealth. Imagine all that scrutiny when you were mourning the loss of your father or grandfather. 

And in the chapel, the little Queen, who looked for the first time quite doddery, sat alone, quite distant from her family - who in their turn were distanced from each other, and masked. They had to conform to the rules but it seemed so weird and cruel. It's happened to a lot of others, of course, but for those others it wasn't beamed round the world. 

The music at the service was beautiful. I particularly loved William Lovelady's setting of Psalm 104, which I've listened to several times since the funeral. It was sung by four, distanced singers with such wonderful voices. Do Google it if you like music.

Meanwhile, in my garden, spring continues. And tomorrow we're going up with the Edinburgh family to visit Son and his family in Angus. Our First Minister has given us permission - a week earlier than expected. There's an election coming up but only a cynic would suspect a connection... . I'm feeling excited but nervous, in case it doesn't go as well as I hope. It's six months since the children have seen any of us. 

 

The Kelpies

Another hike with the walking group and (hurray) Daughter 2, who was home for a long weekend. This time we walked along the canal at Falkirk.

We came to the Falkirk Wheel, which is a very cunning device for allowing boats to pass from the higher to the lower part of the canal. But that wasn't our destination today -

though there was a small model there.

Further along the canal we went.

Look - a distant sight of our objective.

I'm not sure what these berries are but they're such a cheerful colour.

Nearly there...

... at the Kelpies, a recently installed art work. They represent mythical water horses possessed of the strength of 100 horses - but also celebrate the work horses which pulled the wagons and ploughs, barges and coalships so important to the area.

http://www.thehelix.co.uk/things-to-do/the-kelpies/

They're the largest equine statues in the world and are really impressive. As you walk round them, looking at them from different angles, they almost appear to move.

I love the way they seem to toss their heads in the Scottish wind - wild...  

... and yet friendly.

Nine miles there and back and I think my feet will recover in a few days. A lovely, lovely day.

Most foul

One really shouldn't complain but ... it's been rather hot. I would like to work in the garden but really it's much too warm. According to the internet it was about 25C here today, which is 77F - and yes, you may laugh, you Mid-Westerners, but we're Scottish and we wilt in the heat. It's been lovely sitting in the shade reading a book, however, so I have to admit to a bit of sloth for the past few days.

We have various visitors coming soon, but no doubt the weather will have broken by then. We'll be able to say to them that it's such a pity they weren't here earlier in July... .

In a completely different realm of seriousness, we've been somewhat riveted in our neighbourhood by a murder. About four weeks ago, a woman's dismembered body was found in a shallow grave on a hillside really quite close to our house - at least quite close as the crow flies. It appeared to have been there for some weeks. Despite appeals and much publicity, the police didn't know who she was. This was curious because she had about £10,000 worth of veneers on her teeth and was wearing four distinctive rings - surely this would identify her? But no. Then they did one of those facial-reconstruction things that they do sometimes on Iron Age skulls or Richard III - at which point her family in Dublin recognised the computer-generated image produced. (I've always wondered if those reconstructions are really like the people. In this case, yes, fairly, by the look of actual photos of her now appearing in the papers.) Her son has been arrested and charged with her murder. According to the papers, he lives quite near us also. She was in Edinburgh visiting him.

I know that people get murdered in various places but - illogically - it seems
particularly shocking that it happened (presumably) in a road that we frequently walk along. The police said that the murderer must have had the body in a rucksack or something to carry it up the hill. And he must have had a spade also. It's so weird to imagine this chap, at dead of night (and it doesn't really get dark for long here at this time of year) creeping up his street with his terrible burden, crossing over the main road and struggling a little way up the hill.

It's appalling to think of someone killing his own mother. And I can only assume that he expected to be caught - maybe even wanted to be caught - since he buried her so near home, in a shallow grave and on a hill where many people go for a walk, often with their dogs. What was going through his mind as he waited for her to be identified and for the police to ring his doorbell?

Shall I compare thee...?

Would you like to have your mind boggled? Then look at this link below (sorry, can never remember how to do the wee screen thing).

The background to this is that Daughter 2's husband-to-be is an actor and improviser - he belongs to Showstopper, an amazing company which improvises musicals - words (rhyming) and music (harmonising) from audience suggestions about plot, characters, genre etc. I don't know how they do it.

And this is even more astonishing - it's one of his colleagues, Shaun, who's in Showstopper and another company called School of Night, and he's really, honestly, improvising a sonnet based on the tin hat he'd only just been shown. Daughter 2's chap was filming it. Shaun had just finished improvising a sonnet about a yellow pencil and D2's chap was filming it to upload on to YouTube, but Shaun vanished from view by sitting down just as D2's chap was zooming in, so they had to film a second one.

You'd think it was impossible; but D2 swears it was genuine improvisation. Shaun can do this any time.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofGDRyFzJiU

It would take me a day to write a sonnet with a pencil and paper and even then I'm not convinced it would be nearly as good.

You could look at one of the Showstopper clips too, and maybe go and see them if they're performing anywhere near you. They really are good. They're mainly in the London area but are coming to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as usual.