Things

Time's winged chariot has been galloping on, as it does. It was quite nice weather for a while

and then it was cold for a week. There was only a wee smattering of snow but it hung around, and the pavements were frosty and thus potentially slippery, which is not good for not-so-young people who are keen not to fall and fracture anything, especially at the moment, when we're told that hospitals are bulging. We're certainly in a bit of a pickle in Britain at the moment, with striking teachers, nurses, railwaymen, postmen, ambulance drivers et al. 

Anyway, instead of striding along the pavements we went to the City Art Centre, which has four exhibitions on at the moment, three of them very interesting. The first was just of what seemed a fairly random collection of things relevant to Edinburgh from the archives. I dare say that curators had thought long and hard about what to display, and they decided on a mixture of objects, documents and photos that had been rediscovered during the reorganisation that they did while Covid held us in its thrall. 

For example, this sampler - I can't imagine Big Granddaughter, who's 9, doing this, though actually we got sewing at school from age 7 and I was quite neat even then (by the evidence of the lapbag and shoebag I produced) so maybe she could. (Currently, however, she's writing a graphic novel in her spare time. I'm not sure it has much plot yet, but it's an ambitious idea.)

And then there was this washing machine. Yes, quite. Many blessings on the inventor of the automatic version.

On another floor were lots of photographs from the 1980s of shops and workplaces, such as this sporran workshop

and this bagpipe maker's. 

I think this photo of a brushmaker's shop is rather beautiful, with the light shining through the windows.  

Can things really have been like this when I was a young woman? Cafes aren't like this now... .

And then there was a floor of photographs taken by women photographers in the 20s and 30s. There was also a long film, a silent one, about life in Shetland in the 30s. We saw this lady washing clothes in a wooden tub outside in the snow, and then hanging them up, as above. If I ever complained about housework, I never will again (well, not this week, anyway). We saw the Shetlanders, men and women alike, ploughing (sometimes with a hand plough, sometimes behind a horse or a cow), reaping, winnowing, planting, harvesting, and gathering peat and seaweed in huge creels - it was exhausting just watching them. And the women, at the same time as toiling up hills or cliff paths with creels full of peat or seaweed, were knitting. 

Knitting things like this...

Here's the interior of a kitchen, with the fire in the middle of the room and a skillet over it for cooking oatcakes or pancakes - small ones that we eat with butter and / or jam, not the big bubbly ones that you roll up. English people sometimes call our little pancakes "drop scones" or "Scotch pancakes". Delicious. 

Here are girls on St Kilda - which was evacuated in 1930 because the islanders decided that life there was too hard. These girls are holding gloves that they hoped to sell to tourists. They look as if they're wearing their best clothes. I'm amazed to think that people in the 1920s would take the very difficult sea journey just for a jaunt. I would love to go there, but would hesitate - it's a long way from anywhere.  I know there's somewhere in Australia called St Kilda, but I imagine that it's not a remote archipelago away out in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. 

Anyway, it was all very interesting and made me very conscious of being a southern softie. These people would have continued their lives unaffected if there had been shortages or strikes. We would scarcely survive for a fortnight without supermarkets and electricity. 

Meanwhile, have I started the decluttering, which would not have been a problem for those hardy Shetlanders in their bare houses? Hmm. Not as such. Thanks for all the interesting comments. Nice to know that I'm not alone in my need to thin down the contents of the cupboards. 

 

Lockdownish week 17 - Monday and Tuesday - style

Yesterday I did the garden in the morning and the evening - and was discouragingly stiff afterwards. My gardening consists mainly of getting on to my knees, weeding or chopping or whatever, getting up again and then down again a couple of feet along. And repeat - a lot. I don't feel that this used to be so difficult... .

In the afternoon I had coffee with a group of friends in someone's garden, which was very nice. We usually meet every Monday for about an hour, but this was the first time since March. 

Meanwhile Mr L was painting Daughter 2's Edinburgh bathroom, which has now got its new suite. 

I went down with him today and he continued painting - the bathroom and the insides of cupboards. My part consisted largely in wiping the insides of kitchen cupboards, cleaning windows and providing flat-dressing, as below. This plant is supposed to hide the communal bins in the street outside. As Daughter 2 said via WhatsApp, "Bins? What bins?"

The flat is painted white and the idea is to make it very neutral so that a buyer could just move in, but Daughter 2 put these shelves up when she lived there (or, to be more accurate, Mr L put them up for her) and so obviously we had to put some artistically-arranged what-nots on it. The boat picture was left by the tenants, while the other stuff comes from our house or Daughter 1's. Much WhatsApping went into getting it arranged just as Daughter 2 wanted it.

This is the very neutral new bathroom. The tiles are actually pale grey, not beige as they look here, and the suite is white.

She got us to buy two Ikea mirrors for it. Again, we consulted her as to where she wanted them.

We also needed to know the height above the shelf. (Talking of height - have I always been that much shorter than Mr L??)

It was quite easy because she answered our questions with a quick architectural drawing via WhatsApp. Isn't technology amazing? The bottle at the side in her drawing is a deep blue and I found another couple of blue things to go with it.

Obviously we want someone to buy the flat who cares deeply about the exact placing of objects... .

Talking of objects, I've been battling again with archives. I find it very difficult to throw away bits of paper of sentimental value or archival interest - but there's too much of it! Also photos - it's such a difficult balance. How many photos will our unborn descendants (if any) want of, for example, my parents? Probably only one or two, so that they can see what they looked like. But I find these hard to throw out. And how many will they want of my childless aunts, of whom I was very fond but who will be of limited interest to future generations?

So far I've put photos into boxes, to be sorted out properly on some cold winter evening when I have nothing much to do. Will that ever happen??

On days like this, when we've been by ourselves and just pootling along, it's easy to forget about the Covid situation. The other grandparents of the Edinburgh Two came up from England today for a few days because they're now allowed to, but we can't go down south because in England, we're not allowed yet into someone else's house - I think. It's quite confusing and becomes more so, the longer it goes on and the more (the different more) that things are loosened, here and in England. In Scotland, for example, you can't fly to Spain because the figures are too high there, but in England you can, so people are just driving down to England and leaving from there. Not that I myself want to go to Spain, or at least not in the foreseeable future.

I'm amused at how quickly masks have become fashion objects, to match one's outfit or express one's personality. I have two, one lime green and one turquoise, but I bought them somewhat randomly without thinking of stylishness.

Things people do

Today dawned raw and cold but I felt like doing something so I went up town to look at the museum without the grandchildren. Lovely as they are, their presence isn't conducive to long examination of artefacts. I jumped on a bus which should have taken me all the way, only it didn't because it slowed down and stopped. The driver then got out and returned after a moment to say that the road ahead was closed and we all had to leave the bus. So we did. There was a police car across the road, blocking it, and there were lots of policemen herding everyone to the other side of the road. We were all looking around to try to see what was happening, but there was nothing obvious. Then someone looked up, and then everyone looked up, and there was a girl in a white dressing gown, sitting on top of a dormer window in a roof, four floors above the road. She was hunched against the cold.


She must have been persuaded to go in because when I returned a couple of hours later, all seemed normal. However, it was rather sobering. I imagine that she wanted someone to pay attention to her. Who knows? Maybe she wasn't in a state to think rationally at all. I wonder how it felt to look down and see the traffic jam of buses and cars; and the people hurrying away; and the swarms of policemen in the streets. Attention was certainly being paid.


Since there were no buses to continue my journey, I walked the rest of the way, up past the Castle rock (above), which was looking particularly sombre and unclimbable (so as to repel invaders, which was the idea)...

 
and on up Castle Terrace. There were a lot of tourists. I can never really understand why tourists come here in winter. I mean, I like my city as much as the next person, but I really wouldn't recommend Scotland in February as a holiday destination, not if you could choose another time. Our winter days are sometimes sunny and mild but on the other hand are sometimes dreich, like today. So come in the spring, summer or autumn, people, that's my advice - when the days are long and the sun may be warm.

Anyway, the museum. I really like - would like to have in my house - this large "blue and white jar of a hundred cranes", Ming dynasty, late 16th to early 17th century. I wonder who painted the cranes in such an intricate pattern, almost like M C Escher, but all slightly different; and what he (I imagine it was a he) would have thought to see me looking at it in a glass case in such a different world from his own. And where has it been in the intervening 300 years?

And this wall tile with tulips, painted in the Netherlands in the 1630s - how did it survive and end up here? And isn't it quite like the tulip wall tile that I bought in the Netherlands in the late 1990s?

This coffin end is a lot older. What Egyptian painted it between the 8th and 4th century BC, and how amazed would he (I assume) be to see me in my waterproof  jacket admiring it 2000+ years later? It's an Apis bull (the incarnation of a god) who was thought to protect the dead on their way to the underworld. It really looks quite modern: bright and clear. Things last such a long time compared to people, who pop in for a few years and then depart.

(Oh, this is big. What is Blogger up to?) Here's Vishnu sleeping on the coils of Ananta, the World Snake, carved in the 14th century. He will awaken for the next cycle of creation which will herald the destruction of all things. Luckily he looked quite peaceful when I took his photo.


So many things, so many people; so impossible, really, to know what's been going on in anyone's head. I hope that girl is all right.

Mist and light

I took this picture of Edinburgh Castle yesterday. Can you see it, just looming through the November mist? No, neither can I. But it was faintly visible to the eye.

And facing in the opposite direction, here are Edinburgh's horrible new tram poles and wires. Very unbeautiful.

However, I really like glass, particularly with light shining on it.

These were the last two roses in the garden, with some astilbe leaves.

Winter is a-coming in. Brrr.

Any more suggestions for holiday destinations for Son and DIL? Thanks for those provided so far.

Slug and jug

 

I'm sure one ought to be blogging about the economy or the American elections or other distressing and important things but one doesn't feel qualified to do so. Well, I don't anyway. So I thought I'd tell the bloggy world about my slug rings. See above. Daughter 2 kindly sent away for these. They're copper and you put them round your plants and evidently when a slug comes into contact with the copper on its way to gorge itself on my gerberas, it gets a teeny electric shock and this makes it decided to slime away and eat something else instead, for example my pansies, which are now a lost cause.

 

I was favourably inclined towards these when I'd read the instructions. Two extracts:  Make sure that the rings are scrunched into the soil a little way to leave no gaps underneath from a slug to sneak through. This writer understands the nature of slugs, which inspires confidence. Make sure that there are no leaves overhanging the ring which allow snails to abseil in. Spooky - has this person been observing my personal slugs and snails, which are athletic and can climb like monkeys?

 

Anyway, they do seem to work! My gerberas don't appear to be any more chewed than they were before. I doubt if I can afford a huge ring to go round my entire garden, but it's a tempting thought. Though actually this would simply trap several million within my garden - not such a good idea. (If you want to try the rings, the company is called Slug Rings Ltd: a simple but informative name.)

 

 

And from slug(s) to jug. This is a little ornamental tankard that was my mother's. It's not a family piece; she bought it at an antique fair some years ago. She didn't have space for it in her room in our house (she had a lot of things on shelves) so I adopted it and put it on top of the piano. On the lid - see below - the name "William" is engraved.

 

 

I find it most frustrating that I shall never know who William was. I wonder if this was a christening present. It seems an odd thing to give to a boy or a man - I know it's a tankard shape but I don't think it was ever intended for use. It wouldn't hold much beer.

 

 

Tile

This tile hangs on our bathroom wall. I'm very fond of it. This is partly perhaps because I would like to live in a house with those elements: a geranium (got one), a cat (got two) and an uninterrupted view of hills (alas, no). And sunshine (we get that sometimes - or perhaps it's the moon). I quite like the spotty curtains as well. Don't you think life would be so nice and simple if you lived in that house among the hills?

We bought this tile over thirty-two years ago. I know this because I was very pregnant with Daughter 1 at the time and so it was one of our last outings as a childless couple. I think I was very aware of this fact, but like most prospective parents had no understanding at all how totally and permanently our lives were about to change. But this is another reason why I'm fond of the tile - I associate it with the joy of young motherhood.

Also I just like the look of it. We bought it at Traquair (pronounced tra-kwayr to rhyme with prayer) House, which is in the Border country, some way south of Edinburgh. The house's origins date back to 1109, though most of the current building is only about four hundred years old. It was once a hunting lodge for the kings and queens of Scotland. There's a story that the gates at the top of the main avenue, installed in 1738, were closed after a visit from Bonnie Prince Charlie (the grandson of the deposed Stuart king, James VII and II), with the vow that they would never be reopened until a Stuart king was back on the throne of Scotland. Thus they remain shut.

Anyway, in summer 1979 Mr Life and I had a happy day at Traquair and visited various craft workshops in the grounds, at one of which I bought the tile. I have no idea who made it - presumably I knew at the time - and have never seen anything quite like it.

Jane kindly told me who wrote the book I was asking about the other day (it was "The Gauntlet" by Ronald Welsh). I suppose it's a bit unlikely that the maker of the tile is reading this - but if he or she is...