Little bits of life

The garden is blooming but the weather is currently REVOLTING - cold and wet. Sorry, tourists. April is a reasonable time to come to Scotland, but not this April, or not so far. 

Friends very kindly sent us a token to have a meal in a certain restaurant, so we went with the Edinburgh family and here's Big Grandson, taking the opportunity to bus-spot while awaiting his lunch. 

A week past Saturday, we walked along the canal path at Linlithgow and sat on a bench to finish the coffee in our flasks. When we got home, I found that I'd replaced the cup, but not the stopper on mine. So on Monday we were going back to Linlithgow anyway and walked along to the bench just on the off chance that the stopper might be there, rather than having blown into the canal. And we found that some kind person had taken the trouble to tie it to the back of the bench! With green silken cord, no less. How nice!

It seems quite tempting to live in this canal-side cottage, but you'd have lots of people passing your front windows. 

Yesterday, Son came down with his little ones, which was lovely. The Edinburgh Two and Daughter 1 came to and the cousins played together. Son and co stayed overnight and today we all went to the museum, along with lots of other people finding something to do indoors out of the rain. 

It was good, though. 

I was thinking today, alarmingly, that it seems not long since my Norfolk aunt died, but that was in 2018. Six years. And in another six years, if I'm still around, I'll be coming up for 80. How can this be...? 

Need to get on with things. Bell distantly (or maybe not...) tolling. 

 

Peachy person

Daughter 2 and her little peach have been here again - she's been having meetings in Glasgow, how lucky for us. We get to look after Littlest in her absence. Littlest chose some books and then "read" them to the wooden cat that I bought 30 years ago.



"I reading story to my cat. There go, cat, you read it."

She and I went to the museum. She carefully pressed buttons to make wheels go round.

And watched a balloon being filled with hot air and floating up towards the ceiling.

She communed with Dolly the sheep - "the most famous sheep in the world", according to the label. There may not be that many contenders for the title.

At one point my back was sore, so I fetched a museum stool for me to sit on while she looked at things. This didn't go entirely to plan.

And then on Saturday, I went with the two girls to the Botanics, which are showing a lot of colour.

Beautiful primulas.

And beautiful girls. It was quite breezy but as usual, the aeolian harp wasn't singing. Edinburgh's a windy city, but I've only heard the harp once, despite my many, many visits to the gardens.

Descendants

It's been a busy but lovely time in the last week or so. On Friday, Son-in-Law 1 and I took the Edinburgh grandchildren to the museum. Here you see them admiring some train (I think) traffic signals. Look at how long-legged Grandson is getting. I thought back on the first time I took him there - below. Now he's six and a half.

Then, hooray hooray, later that day, Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter arrived for a five-day visit. Littlest Granddaughter is so lovely (totally unbiased opinion). She's now looking round a lot and smiling, which is so nice.

I do love babies: their soft skin and round eyes and bouncy faces. She's very wakeful during the day (mostly) but does sleep at night, so Daughter 2 is finding motherhood very fulfilling and much less hard work than architecture. I found that myself: one tiny person to look after instead of 100+ potentially stroppy teenagers who needed to have their writing marked. Babies are extremely hard work - I'm not denying that - but their needs aren't complicated and they're very cuddly.

However, alas, they went home this afternoon and I'm missing them a lot.

Son, Daughter-In-Law and Middle Granddaughter came to stay at the weekend and the Edinburgh family were here too, so that was exceedingly good. Middle Granddaughter was very dubious last time about her parents paying attention to Littlest  Granddaughter, but this time she was absolutely fine. They even had a bath together, with Son washing his niece, and Middle Granddaughter didn't object at all: in fact, she "helped" to bath the baby.

We warned Grandson that Middle Granddaughter (17 months) would probably play with (ie rearrange) his elaborate rail layout (which is always constructed on the sitting room floor) and he was very good about this. However, when Son and DIL had packed to go home on the Sunday - but Middle Granddaughter was still picking up bits of the railway - Grandson said to DIL, "Did you say you were leaving?"

She laughed and said, "Would you like her to stop playing with your railway?"

He hesitated, clearly wondering how truthful to be. Then he said cautiously, "Yes." Pause. "But she's very cute."

Tactful. Ish.

Out and about

It's been a very outdoorsy sort of week, with beautiful autumn weather. Somehow autumn sunshine is lovelier because you know winter is coming.

Granddaughter the Eldest and I had a trip to the Botanics and played in the leaves.

Then Mr Life and I had a day out on the bus to nearby Haddington, and walked along the river there.

It was a perfect day and we felt quite holidayish.

See how long the shadows are, and it was only mid-morning.

In the town, we said hello to Bridge Street, where my beloved Granny was born.

 and then we sat having lunch and looking out past a little lemon tree (with two lemons - so exotic) at the bridge.

Another day, we went with our walking friends to Penicuik (pronounced pennycook) and did a circular tour round Penicuik House, built in the 1760s and ruined by fire in 1899. The walls have been preserved so that you can see that it was once a beautiful Palladian mansion, and the estate is now open to the public.

This is still a vista from the house down an avenue of trees to a monument .

The walk was about seven miles and, despite the lovely weather, quite muddy in parts.

And then the other day Granddaughter the Eldest and I went to the museum and dressed up as explorers.

It's a surprisingly busy life. Which is very good.

Urgh

I hope that the people who made the Lego model of the museum realise how carefully it's studied by the clientele. It was worth the many, many hours of fiddly work that they put into it.

Granddaughter-the-Elder and I had another lovely afternoon there. Today she examined various stuffed (urgh) beasts. I must look more carefully next time to find out what an owl, a white rat (is it?), a turtle, a - what? - shellfish of some sort? and a red squirrel have in common, apart from sharing a glass case.

This is her favourite butterfly. Again, pinned to a board, so a bit urgh, but she's unbothered by this.

It was a beautiful sunny day, though windy.

This is a somewhat fiendishly difficult sort of jigsaw thing, aimed at teaching the food chain (ugh).

Happily, Granddaughter is currently unware of the redness in tooth and claw of nature. Not to say humankind.

Joy, o joy, Daughter 2 has been here this week from London to go to a meeting and then to work in the local office of her firm. She very kindly brought gifts.

 The box of chocolates is no longer completely full.

Maybe I am a real quilter after all if the evidence is that I keep seeing potential ideas in unrelated scenes, such as this shot of Jeremy Paxman on University Challenge. The colours weren't quite as they look here: the blue was royaler, the green was mintier and the beige was golder, and the whole picture made me think of a rather attractive quilt. Though Jeremy Paxman wouldn't, ideally, feature in this. (Urgh.)

Granny fun

On Tuesdays I pick up Granddaughter the Elder from nursery at 11.30 am and we go on a trip - often, as today, to the museum.

In the downstairs playroom, she likes making the dragon move by turning these wheels.

In the upstairs playroom, she likes to dress up in - sometimes unusual - outfits - such as this: a deep sea diver with a furry hat.


There aren't all that many places for an elderly granny to sit, so today I had the brilliant idea of bringing into the playroom one of those folding stools provided in other parts of the museum for the less able members of the public. I thought I could sit on it while she did her thing.

That worked really well, as you can see.

Here, she relaxes while watching leafcutter ants.

And here she moves on to her next project, stool firmly clutched under her arm.

Then we went back to her house, where Grandson was home from school and, as usual, was drawing. Here he depicts chaps mending the road by filling in holes with small stones and then applying black tarmac. I like his multi-coloured cones.

And here's a street scene including (a newish feature for him) flats with balconies.

And then I came home and made some crazy squares for a quilt for him. Goodness, this is addictive and SUCH a waste of time - all to use up little bits of fabric which cost, oh, all of a pound. I've no idea if I'm doing it right. But it's fun! And one has to do something with one's old age.