A lovesome thing

Well, Blogger was a bit absent for a while, wasn't it? At least it was absent from here. And when it came back, it had eaten some of your comments. Oh well. Here are some photos from our trip last Sunday to lovely Branklyn Gardens in Perth. There's Daughter 1 with her bump and her husband, Mr Life and Son and my mum. She's not really disabled, but gets tired walking very far so we have a chair for these occasions.

The colours in the garden were spectacular. I love meconopsis, which clearly flourishes there, and there were rhododendrons and azaleas in rainbow shades.

And white.

Look at that blue!

Mouthwatering. Don't plants feed the soul?

I must go back sometime and see what blooms in other seasons.

Who are these people? Happy birthday to Son-in-Law, by the way.

I'm not purple's greatest admirer but I like it here.

And I don't like orange at all - but I might make an exception for this.

Trilliums in large quantities.

Then we went and inspected the house that Son and his fiancée were about to buy (and have now more or less bought). This is the view from the front garden.

And this is the house. If it were about 60 miles nearer here I'd like it better, but it's much better than London, where Daughter 2 is. Except that she isn't at the moment; she's on a train and we're about to leave to collect her at the station. But on Sunday, alas, she goes away again.

Have a good weekend, bloggy friends. Tomorrow, Son and his girl are coming to Edinburgh and we'll all be together (except Daughter 2's actor fiancé) having lunch at a hotel in town with Mr Life's aunt, uncle and cousin. Which will be good, except possibly for the waistline.

Hawthorn time

Today I walked home from work along the cycle path. There were hawthorn trees everywhere, frothing with white. That sight of those bright green leaves against the creamy flowers and the smell of the blossom - slightly sour and earthy - always reminds me of visiting our friends in the west when we were all newly married. They lived in a high-rise flat but B, a true homemaker, had put a flowering hawthorn branch in a green bottle on the side of the bath. It looked lovely.

Every year in May I'm transported back to that happy time in my life when we were all young and starting out.

Or that's how I tend to remember it. Actually, I was a schoolteacher and found work very stressful in many ways. I wouldn't really like to go back to standing in front of a class of 34 stroppy teenagers crammed behind desks in a small airless room, as I pretended that I was in control.

I wouldn't mind reliving the weekends, though.

Ooh, 20 comments! How exciting! Nothing like being plaintive for eliciting reaction... Thank you!)

Boy at table

Today we took Daughter 1, her husband and my mum to see Son in Perth. We had lunch in the Royal George Hotel (rather a fine lunch, actually) and then walked in lovely National Trust Branklyn Gardens. The colours were spectacular but it's rather late and I must tidy up and go to bed so I won't take time to post more pictures just now.


This post is a bit of an experiment to see whether Mr Life, who downloaded the photos from my phone (but they were all sideways, gah) has managed to turn them so that they remain turned on the blog. Yes, seems to be the answer.

I've only recently got a phone with a camera so that I can take photos (I hope) of our grandson, in about ten weeks.

Meanwhile, here's our son awaiting his lunch.

A minor mystery: quite a lot more people click on my blog than did this time last year, but I get far fewer comments. I wonder why. My theory is that my bloggy friends now read more blogs than they did before so don't have time to leave as many comments. This is probably true of me too - because I read so many blogs, I sometimes read several of people's posts at a time so leave a comment only on the most recent one.

Not that it matters. I'm just interested. Eight seems to be the magic number for comments on my blog in recent weeks.

Anyway. I hear a bubbly bath calling my name (or at least I will when I've run it). Have a good week.

The gas man cometh

Phone call number one - in morning break between classes.

Me: How's it going?
Mother: It's a CALAMITY!
Me: Oh dear. What's happened? Is the gas man there?
Mother: Yes, and both of my gas fires are leaking. They're both condemned!
Me: Oh well, don't worry. We can take you to get new ones.
Mother: But the disruption! I can't cope.
Me: I know, but we'll help you to cope.
Mother: And the expense!
Me: Well, yes, but it's not as if you're hard up. It's only money.
Mother: It's a disaster. This flat is doomed.
Me: It'll be all right ... [etc]

Phone call number two - in afternoon break between classes.

Me: How's it going?
Mother: Oh, it's fine. The gas man's slaved away all day and he's fixed both of the fires. I feel much better.

In which I consider the advantages of being a hermit

Devoid of inspiration for a blog post is how you find me. Life is busy and not in a good way. One of the causes of stress is my poor little mum, who at nearly 89 is finding things too much for her. She's trying to sell her flat, so far with no takers, and also has various health problems - fairly minor compared to those of most 89-year-olds, I'd think, but problems nevertheless. And she constantly foresees calamity, which is a bit wearing for her hearers, ie usually me.

And things are happening such as chaps who're supposed to be changing her gas and electricity meters not turning up on three occasions, which means she has to phone up distant call centres and complain. And then at last a chap did turn up today and discovered that she has a gas leak, whereupon he turned off her gas. Another chap is coming tomorrow to fix it, but she expects him to find dry rot, lead pipes, underfloor floods and probably death watch beetle and subsidence as well.

Normalish domestic life, really. But she's too old. She should have moved to a nice simple modern flat years ago. How I wish she had! One old lady doesn't need ten rooms all filled with furniture.

Today I had to:
* go into work late because I had to buy her eye drops
* work a full day, punctuated by many doom-laden phone calls to/from my mum
* come home and collect her to bring her down here to eat since she has no gas to cook on
* take her home again
* go with Mr Life and vote in the election
* go to the supermarket because Daughter 2 and her chap are coming up in a van tomorrow to collect lots of her stuff and Friday is usually a day when the fridge is empty but Daughters 1 and 2, their chaps and my mum will be here for dinner
* put the shopping away
* make up beds for the visitors
* do this blog post - well, ok, maybe I didn't have to do this
* and now I must go and mark.

I trust my bloggy friends are having a more restful life...


Oh, to be a cat.

Being ten

Sirius and Daughter 2 enjoy a cuddle last weekend.

Fifty years ago (fancy being able to remember that far back!) I was ten, coming up for eleven. We lived at 1 Durham Terrace in the Portobello district of Edinburgh, in a bungalow which had been converted by having two rooms built into the attic. I had the one at the back, overlooking the garden. It was a small house, but it didn't seem so to me because it was the only one I'd ever lived in. My room had wallpaper with little pink roses on it. The carpet was fawn - it wasn't new (I think it had been cut down from the living room carpet or something). My bedcover was green, made from some old curtains as far as I remember. It was the early 60s, still a make-do-and-mend sort of era here.

I loved gardens even then and enjoyed opening the window and gazing out at ours. It was quite a reasonable size, with a lawn near the house, then two long steps which led up through a gap in the hedge to another lawn with apple trees in it. The hedge used to go all the way across, dividing the ornamental garden from the vegetable garden, but my dad opened it up and planted the grass instead of the vegetables. He wasn't really a keen gardener. There were quite a few flower beds also, though, with herbaceous plants which I loved: purple bearded irises, various colours of lupins, geums, a trollius... also a lilac and a pussy willow tree... and we used to plant annuals such as candytuft, Virginian stock and nasturtiums.

I don't suppose I did this often but occasionally I used to go out into the garden very early in the summer holidays, before anyone else was up. I can imagine myself there now: there weren't many cars around in those days and our little street was very quiet anyway. At that hour of the morning the air smelt only of dew-damp earth, there was no sound but the singing of birds and the world seemed new. Our house was at one end of the street with a big brick wall between our garden and the garden of the house in the next street, but between all the gardens in our street there were just low fences, so that I could see all the way up. At that time of the morning, it was my territory.

A couple of years later we moved away, to a much bigger house of which I also have fond memories. But it would be good to be able to slip through time and stand for a few minutes again on that dewy lawn, on a sunny childhood morning, when the world was full of possibilities.

Three gardens

Last weekend, Mr Life, Daughter 2 and I went (as we so often do) to the Botanic Gardens.

Look at these tulips (mainly) - a burst of cheering colour.

Wallflowers and tulips lining the path to the big glasshouse. What a wonderful scent wallflowers have. They smell of spring.

Our little blossom. (One of them anyway.)

This is my garden today. Rather smaller - very small, in fact - but I love it. The cherry blossom is falling like pink snow.

I have tulips too, though they're just about over. The herbaceous plants are growing almost visibly.

Look, they're bigger already. Sirius watches them suspiciously.

This afternoon, Mr Life and I went to Malleny, a National Trust garden not far away. It's not particularly big - 2 acres, maybe? - but peaceful and soothing. Like my garden, it has lots of herbaceous plants that aren't at their best yet but are stretching themselves in the warm air.

More blossom, this time (alas) without Daughter 2, who's 400 miles away.

This is one tree with several trunks, like giants' legs.

I love trees: the variousness of their shapes and all the different greens.

Heard on the radio today - from a survey form:

Occupation: Sculptor of stone lions.

Detailed description of job: I chip off all the bits of stone that aren't lion.

Cats and things

As she almost always does (she's very good) Daughter 2 phoned tonight. And she seemed so far away - in London. And I hate London. It's so big and noisy and dirty and full of people that you don't know. And she was with her actor fiancé and while he may be a perfectly all right person, he's the reason she's in London living in a one-bedroom rented flat and unless he suddenly becomes successful, I don't see them ever having enough money to lead a life of reasonable comfort. As for starting a family...

So I felt pretty miserable. And sat down to blog. And Sirius came and socialised. He jumped up on my shoulders and walked round and round my shoulders and chest, purring and purring and purring. He then tried his paw at typing and made all sorts of things happen on the screen. Then he jumped up again into my arms and lay under my chin, a warm furry weight. Which was nice, though not conducive to blogging.

Prince William and Kate Middleton get married tomorrow. I don't exactly wish that Daughter 2 was marrying Prince William but at least the royal pair have a house. Several houses, I imagine. And loads of money. Still, I suppose they'll be living in London too, eventually.

I wish I'd realised, before having babies, that they'd go away. I'd have thought more carefully about it. But I'd probably have had them anyway. I wouldn't have known how fast they grow up. But they do. Very very fast. Be warned, mothers of children still at home. Tie strings to them.

On wings of song

Just back from choir, where we're in the final stages of learning Rossini's Petite Messe Solonelle, which is wonderful but hard.

Our lovely conductor pulled us up at one point and sang (in his beautiful, resonant voice) the bit we'd just been singing, to show us how he wanted it. We then repeated it.

"That sounded like a different choir!" he said enthusiatically. We glowed. Then he murmured with a grin,"The one I'd rather be conducting..."

The Lodge

Would you like to see more of my aunt's garden? Strictly speaking, it's not my aunt's - this is a long story which I have told before, but basically she and two friends plus (crucially) the much younger husband of one of these ladies retired to this house in Norfolk thirty years ago. The friend's husband was then 39 and he retired too! Being a whizz at DIY, he divided the house up, the top being three flats and the bottom being communal for visitors, entertaining, good works and so on. My aunt lent part of the money to buy the house but wanted the husband to own it, since he's likely to outlive them all. So she lives there, rent free, and does most of the work in the garden, which is remarkable since she's now 86. (The much younger husband does the chopping down of trees and cuts the lawns, and there's a gardener two mornings a week; otherwise, my aunt does it. Amazing.)

Now, the wife of the much younger husband has died (a couple of years ago, at 93), another friend has gone into a nursing home and my aunt and the chap live there in their flats, very happily - taking, as she says, a day at a time. Thus (alas) this wonderful place is not my inheritance... but we count ourselves very lucky to be able to visit. It's the nearest place to heaven that I can imagine.

This is the door to the garden.

Sorry, wrong order - first we pass the dining room.

We walk down the garden and look at the house. Can you hear the doves murmuring constantly: "Tak twa coos, lassie"? (But in a Norfolk accent. What would that be: "Take two cows, girlie"?)

Back down towards the house and walk along in the direction of the walled garden - looking back where you came from.

Glance to the left up at the orangery.

Oops, wrong order again - ok, walk backwards for a while, contemplating the archway through to the walled garden.

Here we are, a bit nearer the archway.

Inside the walled garden.

Walking round the paths.

The bird bath.

A patch of honesty.

A few weeks ago, this was a mass of daffodils.

Back into the lawned area.

Towards the wood.

Every time we go there, I wonder if it'll be the last. And this time might well be. I don't suppose my aunt and her friend's widower can stay there for ever. But it'll always be there in my memory, blossoming away in my head. I love it partly because it's so beautiful and partly because we've been so happy there: Mr Life and I and our children. Our son was not quite three, the first time we went there.

Daughter 2 is now back in London, alas. Still, she was here from Friday till this afternoon, so we had lots of chat and cuddles.

Back to work tomorrow. Hmm.

Being away and coming back.

Happy Easter, everyone.

We got back on Wednesday, having been away in this lovely house in Norfolk. My aunt lives here (it's a long story) and we've gone to stay with her every two years since 1987. Which has been wonderful. We have very fond memories of holidays in this house and its beautiful, huge garden.

This is the view from an upstairs window.

And this is the view from the woodland part of the garden - you can see the house in the distance.

And I'll write more about this another time, but Daughter 2 is here for the weekend and I don't want to spend time away from her.

But I will just add a big thanks to Gossipya, who came all the way from Amman in Jordan to catsit our cats! (Well, she did have other reasons for being in Edinburgh too.) This all seems to have gone fine up to the point that she texted us when we were on our way home, to say that Sirius had been missing for 24 hours. We were distraught, and spent the next five hours imagining the worst, since he'd never done anything like this before - he very occasionally stays out all night but has always been back by 5 or 6 in the morning.

However, when we got home, there he was curled up on my study chair. Where had he been? He's not saying.

This is the fourth time I've appealed for catsitters on my blog and magically got them: Thimbleanna and her husband from Indiana; Scott from Australia via Liverpool; The Phoenix and L from the North of England; and now Gossipya from Amman. How amazing the world of Blog is. Thanks to you all! Cassie and Sirius send you purrs. (And in Sirius's case, Gossipya, profound apologies. )

Keeping breathing

You know that feeling when you just wish life would pass you by from time to time? I would quite like to sit in a mindless heap for a while, with all my near and dear ones pootling gently around the place and all problems whizzing past the top of my head. You know, just for a couple of days.

No major disasters (I hope). But it's all a bit exhausting.

A view

(Ooh look, a picture.)

I was on the bus this morning (going to meet Daughter 1 at the dressmaker's to organise her a bridesmaid's dress) behind a rather refined mother with a posh English accent sitting beside her small girl - aged about three.

The child looked out towards the magnificence that is Edinburgh Castle, its craggy rock glistening in the sunshine, a host of golden daffodils fluttering and dancing on its lower slopes. "What's that?" she enquired.

"That's Edinburgh Castle," said the mum and launched into a short history lesson about it.

"No," said the child indignantly, "what's that?" She pointed at the window itself. "It's bird poo."

And it was.

Blogger the Dunce

Breathing deeply here. This post is brought to you with some difficulty. I've been trying to post pictures, taken today, of our garden in the sunshine. This is so that our kind catsitter, who arrives tomorrow, can see evidence that it doesn't always rain here. Not that I know it's going to rain during her stay. But it might.

However, Blogger is refusing to cooperate. I've always thought of Blogger as a kindly, if mysterious, benefactor, who gives you free stuff for no reason that I can see. I thought it was rather unreasonable to complain when the free stuff sometimes went a bit wonky. However, I'm beginning to turn peevish. First Blogger wouldn't do paragraphs without a lot of footering; then it made my blog look like an eye test by mucking about with the font size; now no photos. Come on, Mr B.

Scott says that I should move to Wordpress but he clearly underestimates my technical incompetence and cowardice.

Sirius isn't helping by doing his blog routine: I sit down to blog, he runs through to me in the study, squeaking interrogatively, I stroke him, I then start to type again, he scratches my chair until I start stroking him again...etc etc.

There's nothing like an impending house guest to make one look critically at one's house, especially at this time of year, when it's eight months since I last had any extended time to do extensive cleaning. I spent the morning at the dentist (Dentist: "I don't think we have many options with this tooth") and then at hospital with my mum, having her foot x-rayed (Mum: "I think I'm in trouble with this foot") and then at Marks and Spencer getting her some trousers (Mum: "I don't like to think why I'm losing weight" - she's now a size 8, which is something like a size 0 in America. I would love to be a size 8, personally). She's always been very slim, though not quite as slim as this.

So I must go and wield the duster now. Not to say give Sirius some Purina to stop him pestering me. At least he's not worried about the size of his trousers.