The new Mrs P.

Daughter 2 got married yesterday. Here she is with one of her bridesmaids, decorating the cake.

Here is my niece, another bridesmaid, folding orders of service.

The wedding was lovely but complicated. The guests were mainly architects and actors so artistic considerations had to be adhered to at all times and production values had to be high. A lot was achieved by d-i-y rather than vast expense; though expense did also feature. None of this was conducive to a tidy house.

Various house guests came and went. Much tea was drunk and food consumed. Many dishes were washed. Much washing of sheets and towels has been done and much still remains to be done. Ribbon, paper, flowers and other remnants are all still in evidence.

A few tears were shed, though not by the bride or groom.

Miraculously, the sun shone.

More will follow, including possibly some pictures of men in kilts for Anna.

Now I must go and have a restorative bath.

(Two weddings down, one to go - Son gets married next July. He says that his wedding will be less exhausting.)

The unsatisfactoriness of some aspects of life

This is the garden last year. See all that yellow coreopsis in the big flowerbed? It was spreading and choking all around it, so in the autumn, with great toil, I dug every bit of it out.

And this is it this year. Hmm. I think I must have missed a bit.

Nothing really to say except it's hard to forget that September day, 10 years ago yesterday. We remember it as a family because Daughter 2 was in the air while the hijackings were taking place. Fortunately she was on her way to Sweden. So many others were not so fortunate.

I wonder what the chances are that this is being read by the person who kicked off Son's young lady's wing mirrors from her parked car some time overnight on Saturday? No, I don't think so either. I wonder what satisfaction it gave this person. She's a hardworking young doctor who has to drive 30 miles to the hospital she's working at just now. Hard to fathom.

Lots of things are hard to fathom, aren't they?

Advantages

The advantage of being a baby is that, when you're tired and weary from having your nappy changed, you can just shut your eyes and have a nap. Dreaming, maybe, of being a ballet dancer.

The advantage of being a parent is that you can dress your baby up as an elf and it doesn't occur to him to object.

See his appley hat? This is what it looked like before. Daughter 1 made an apple stencil and applied fabric paints.

And.... snooze.

(Your lovely shawl is getting well used, Dianne!)

Out and about

On Monday, I went to Queensferry and had lunch with my friend J. Here she is, taking a picture of the Forth Rail Bridge. J lives in Queensferry and is very involved in the community. (J is not a large person - much of that black round her trousers is shadow, not her legs.) We had a lovely time.

I don't know if this is proverbial only in Scotland, but here we refer to an endless task as "like painting the Forth Bridge", since as soon as the painting is completed at one end, the painters have to start again at the other. However, no longer: a new, longer-lasting paint has been developed so that by the spring, it'll be finished and won't have to be done again for a few years.

So they say.

On the way home, I walked past this huge house that's being built fairly near where we live. I should say that our house is not far from a very posh area featuring mansions owned by millionaires. There was a very nice house here before, with swimming pool and all, but it was demolished and now this ridiculous great castley thing has been rising from the ruins.

As I passed, a young workman emerged, crossed the road (there's no pavement on the other side) and walked along near me. I engaged him in conversation and he said that the new owner had bought the previous house for £2 million and that the replacement was costing £6 million. I can quite believe this since the building has been going on for ages and it's huge.

It's not actually leaning like the Tower of Pisa, as it looks in my picture.

I don't find it beautiful. And it seems very wasteful.

Was it later that day that Daughter 1 and I took Grandson to the supermarket? This is how I too feel about shopping.

Today we went to Dr Neil's garden at Duddingston Loch, but he didn't seem to be impressed by that either.

The weather has been discouragingly nice this week. I do hope it's not saving up its rain for Daughter 2's wedding next weekend.

Stuff

I suppose I must be biased in thinking that Grandson is exceptionally cute. On the whole, he's a very jolly sort of chap, which helps. Just think how handsome he'll be once his hair grows back.

I wasn't feeling jolly this morning when I made the mistake of phoning up the company to which I paid lots of money in AVCs (additional voluntary contributions) to supplement my meagre pension. I was just wanting to be sent some information but the lady kept me on the phone for half an hour, asking difficult questions. Some of these I understood. With the others - there's a limit to the number of times one can say, "Sorry, I don't quite follow that." I did gather that as long as I live to about 150 I might get a reasonable amount of the money back. I was a bit surprised to be told, by the way, that the average life expectancy of a woman who gets to 65 is 89. (Not 65 + 89, you understand. Just 89.) I really don't know if I can be bothered living that long. Not unless I can figure out how to work our new television.

It's annoying (I find) how I've become de-skilled over the years. When I was young, I was perfectly capable of switching on the telly. Now the thing requires the erudition of a systems analyst and I have to get Mr Life to do it for me. Which is why I watch hardly any telly now. No doubt this has happened because lots of smart young men wanted to make the whole thing more technically perfect, while people like me were quite happy just to walk over to the device and press a button to make a good-enough picture appear on any one of three channels. Who needs digital pictures and millions of garbage-carrying channels? Not me, especially since I can't access any of them without the old chap. I tell you, he'll have to live to 152 so as to keep me amused with moving pictures in my old age.

And cars - why can't they make them all the same? Well, ok, they could do them in a range of sizes (big, medium and small) and of course a good choice of colours. But I think that they should all be standard in other ways: all the controls in exactly the same places, for ever, and all with the same symbols so that I always know how to turn the windscreen wipers on. Why do they have to keep redesigning them?

Seems very simple to me. I think someone should put me in charge of Stuff.

September arrrives

I've turned into one of those retired people who wonder where the week went. I don't think that Sirius, relaxing in the sun, is troubled by any such questions. Another question is: how come that I have such a huge pile of ironing, when I used to work full time plus an evening and do ironing for five of us and it never built up so much? Very mysterious.

Anyway, Grandson had the odd snooze in the course of the week. Oh, he's so yummy.

Another day, Daughter 1 and I took him for his first visit to the Botanics.

We're going to bring him up with an appreciation of gardens.

Yesterday, on one of the few nice days of the summer, Mr Life and I unaccountably decided to go inside, to the refurbished museum in Chambers Street. They've opened up the basement as a café so we had lunch far away from the sunshine.

All the publicity says that they've made more room for exhibits but it didn't look like that to us. It's now got lots of empty space - and then there's another eatery on the first balcony, where there used to be cases filled with stuff. Still, it's had a nice lick of paint. I'm sure there are deeper reasons why it's been closed for three years or something and cost millions of pounds.
I imagine there was something we didn't notice.

Anyway, it was full of families and they all seemed to be having a good time.

Furry friends

This post is mainly for my Son-in-Law. He, Daughter 1 and Grandson are down in Worcester so that Grandson can experience the other half of his genetic heritage and meet his extended family and friends. So we're guinea-pig-sitting. Brownie, Cupcake and Pumpkin are the most carefully tended guinea pigs in the country, with their diet scientifically controlled: it features supplements of vitamins (multivitamins and extra vitamin C), probiotic powder and cranberry juice. We take our responsibilities seriously and are following the detailed instructions to the letter. Look, SIL, here they are, capering about and perfectly happy. And yes, they're drinking. I've seen them.

We're also enjoying a flying visit from Son and his young lady. So far, they've eaten mainly toast.

And it's - well, not positively raining, but dull and damp. This summer's been the dullest and dampest since 1929 or something (this may be slightly inaccurate but 1929 came into a newspaper report somewhere). Anyway, it's been fairly rubbish. I met some nice people from Wisconsin yesterday and they said that their summer's been terrible too - so hot and dry. Truly the world has its variations.

And here's Sirius having a drink.

Having mastered (well, sort of...) my first tune on the piano, I've now started to practise "What a friend we have in Jesus", picked more or less randomly from the hymn book. Well, I did make sure I chose one with only one flat. But each hand has two simultaneous notes!! Very tricky! Chords, I suppose you'd call them. I haven't quite mastered this.

I recently read an article about Benjamin Grosvenor, a young British pianist, in which he said he practised for eight hours a day. This might explain why I'm not so good as he is. Possibly ten minutes every three days isn't likely to have the same effect. And I dare say I ought to be practising scales or something. Still. It's quite fun - in a very frustrating sort of non-fun way.

Missing

When our son first left home about three years ago, I found it very difficult to do the supermarket shopping. It was especially hard to walk past the packaged mango and pineapple pieces because I always used to buy them for him to eat as snacks.

Now I'm ok with this. Kind of.

Missing Daughter 2, I now have trouble driving through the district of Leith - which I've had to do on several occasions in the past few weeks - because she used to work there and her flat, now rented out, is there.

And then, the other night, I was lying in bed listening to the radio when this came on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9shXm0cIeEY

It's a choir singing Eric Whitacre's "Sleep", which her Edinburgh choir used to sing so beautifully.

I couldn't listen to it that night. I can't listen to it now.

I suppose it'll get better eventually.

Can it really be...?

It's Son's 27th birthday (Happy Birthday, Son) but he's not here. He's having a few days off in the Lake District. According to the weather forecast, it might not be raining. This is him a few weeks ago, giving his nephew a professional (washed) pinkie to cheer him up.

Here, never before published (world exclusive) is an extract from my diary, written slightly post-event:

7 September 1984

... Anyway, around 6.15 am - ish, I suppose, I began the second stage of labour and felt the possibility of pushing and [Son] was born at 6.42 am. The cord was wrapped round his neck. The midwife tried to untangle it but couldn't, so cut it, and so he started crying when only his head was born - which was weird but quite encouraging.

He was born a bit chilled so was taken away to spend the morning in an incubator, but not before he'd had various cuddles and a little feed.... He's beautiful - quite perfect, no missing limbs or birthmarks or anything. He's very like [Daughter 2] at that age - a slightly longer head and bigger nose, but otherwise her spitting image... .


Well, I suppose he still has a longer head and bigger nose than Daughter 2 (who has quite a small head, with nose to match) but he doesn't look like her any more, I don't think, apart from the thick, dark, wavy hair. And he doesn't have a big nose - in fact it's rather an elegant one, I think.

It doesn't seem 27 years. And I would wish that I was back there again if I didn't have the diary to remind me that it was quite hard work:

15 October 1984

[Son] has now (famous last words) started sleeping through the night. He went on waking twice a night for four weeks, which was somewhat tedious, but then took to waking just once, and in the last week this has changed from being 4ish to being - today - 7.30. However, at the moment it's midnight and [Daughter 2] is coughing away, which makes me wonder if the night is actually going to be unbroken. Both she and [Daughter 1] have been waking occasionally, [Daughter 1] with night terrors.

But then, there's -

January 9, 1985

[Son] - I adore him. He has a lovely little, smooth, soft, bouncy face, with a dimple in his left cheek when he smiles, which he does a lot. I love carrying him around. He's at the stage when he just leans against you in a relaxed way, not struggling to get down. I can't help being surprised that I'm so besotted with a boy. I really did think girl babies were much nicer!


I did indeed think girl babies were nicer, just because I loved my own girls. I mean, I knew it was silly; but I felt it all the same - until I had my son, at which point I fully saw the charms of boy babies. Ah, nature, how it programmes us to nurture our young!

Wilting

I've been in the study most of the day (and quite a lot of the previous days) fighting with the computer in the attempt to arrange the church magazine, which is more complicated than usual this month. I think I may have won the fight.

But look at Grandson! Isn't he delicious? Aren't all babies delicious? The shiny eyes; the bouncy faces; the hopeful expressions; the squashy limbs.

Why don't cats eat slugs?

Why don’t cats eat slugs?

I have a wide selection of these slimy horrors in my garden. They come in two principal colours: the tan and the black, though I do also have the earth colour.

Of these, the tan are the most disgusting… or maybe the black. The tan ones are the colour of the contents of Grandson’s nappy, only slimier, moving and with horns. The black ones are perhaps more evil-looking – (why am I, the owner (servant) of two adorable black cats, saying this?- it can’t be the blackness so it must just be the slugginess) - but they have the advantage of being more visible on paths and therefore less likely to be trodden on by mistake. I mean, I wish someone else would tread on all my slugs (sorry Buddhists) but I’m not keen to do so myself.

But why don’t cats eat them? Cats eat all sorts of disgusting things, such as cat food, which smells revolting. Unfortunately, Cassie and Sirius can easily differentiate between, say, Whiskas sachets, the contents of which are slimy and evil-smelling, and the much more expensive Sheba mini-cartons, the contents of which look and smell much the same to me. I imagine that our furry friends favour them because of the word “Premium”, which is printed on the outside of the Sheba. I knew it was a mistake teaching them to read.

Anyway, surely slugs are made of meat? They look quite nourishing. I know that cats are attracted to moving things, whereas slugs don’t exactly gambol across the grass. But then Sheba doesn’t move very fast either and they’re very attracted to that. And prawns. And Dreamies. Wouldn’t it be great if our cats spent their days prowling in my herbaceous border, hunting down the slugs who munch on my hostas and phlox?

Snails might be a bit crunchy.

Yes, you’re right. I have better things than this to do and am procrastinating. Onward!

Another ending

Two funerals a week is perhaps a bit many, reminding one of one's mortality: the skull beneath the skin and all that.

Today's was of an old lady whom I visited in her care home because I was her church elder. She was very confused and kept bursting into tears and begging me to take her home to her own house. I never knew her unconfused so didn't ever find out much about her except that she was a widow with no children and had a niece in England.

There were only 13 people at this funeral (contrasting with the 350 or so at the previous one). On the other hand, this lady was 91 ("I'm 46!" she used to tell me) and I imagine that most of her friends were dead. It turned out that she used to be a nanny / housekeeper in Canada to a family with five children, and they thought so much of her that they named the youngest after her.

It made me realise that I'd kind of assumed that she hadn't had a very interesting life - just because she wasn't able to tell me about it. Whereas she clearly had.

When my confused aunt was in her care home, I took care to put pictures of her when younger around her room: photos of her in Pakistan, wearing Pakistani clothes and talking to children; or with her husband, young and cheerful. I wanted the staff to know that she'd been competent and lively in her time.

(Well, that was an uplifting post, wasn't it? One day, we'll all .... )

Meanwhile. little Grandson looks around thoughtfully, working out what it's all about. Do let me know when you find out, little G.

Wheels

I went to the funeral of the lady in the cycling accident today. The funeral announcement asked all her cycling club friends to come on their bikes. And they did. If you click on the photo, you'll see some of the bikes locked to a bench which was brought out from the hall. And the church was packed with people of all ages, many in brightly coloured lycra (though most of them were still inside the church at the point that I took the photo).

It was a wonderful celebration of 75 years of energy and cheerfulness.

Another weekend older

It's been a busy weekend, though not (for me) in any productive way. Daughter 2 came home at the weekend for a wedding dress fitting and to discuss various weddingy arrangements with her husband-to-be, who's in Edinburgh appearing in the Fringe. The fitting was on Saturday morning and Daughter 1 also had the first fitting for her matron-of-honour dress - Grandson having been up till now a limiting factor in this process. Here he is, above, recovering from his exhausting life. (You can almost imagine from this photo what he'll look like when he's 80 and having a nap in his armchair with his hat at a rakish angle.) And here he is below, having a kick on his mat. Those socks didn't stay on for long.

Then she and the chap discussed cakes and hymns and ... well, I'm not quite sure but it took a long time. Then they went off to discuss photos with his friend the photographer, and then Daughter 2 came home again while he appeared in a show and then she went off again to see him in another show. Meanwhile they were going to be here for a meal, and so were Daughter 1 and Son-in-Law (who was going to come over on his bike) but then Daughter 2 and future husband didn't have time for a meal and so SIL decided not to come over and Daughter 1 thought she'd better go home...

It was that kind of weekend. Today Daughters 1 and 2 spent the afternoon with Daughter 2's Edinburgh friends in a mini-refined-hen-afternoon-with-various babies and now Daughter 2's gone back down to London exhausted, poor lamb, for another far-too-busy week at her very tiring job.

Big sigh.

Mr Life and I spent this afternoon with friends in the country, which was nice. Because Daughter 2 had our (one) car, Mr Life and I used a car belonging to the City Car Club, which we've just joined. You book a car over the internet and then go and collect it when you want it. We joined mainly because now that Grandson has joined the family, we can't transport Grandson, his parents, my mum and us, all in one car. So this seems like a useful way round the problem.

What a boring post. Sorry. Never feel full of inspiration when Daughter 2 has gone. And she'll arrive in London at midnight thirty or something. Alone. Hmm.

Distracting myself from my thickness

Oh, it's a terrible thing to be thick. And I am. Having signed up for Facebook, I can't really see how you're supposed to work it. Possibly I might understand it if I tried a bit harder, but I can't be bothered. There seems to be a lot of information about friends of friends, which seems irrelevant to me. (Yes, I know I spend lots of time reading the blogs of people I'll never meet...) What I need is a young person to instruct me. Daughter 2's coming home at the weekend but she's got lots of weddingy things to arrange.

Anyway, I'll distract myself by posting pictures. Son came to visit us twice within a few days (we were honoured) and Sirius lay on his legs. These big blue things are Son's feet. It's funny how Sirius looks in photos. In fact he's the nicest natured, most tolerant cat in the world (I've met all the cats in the world, of course) but he looks rather severe and reproachful here.

Here's my mum cuddling her great-grandson. Thank goodness that he's here to cheer Mum up, because she's not well, she can't sell her flat and her upstairs neighbour is being difficult about downpipe repairs. "I just want to run away," she keeps saying.

This is the second of Son's visits. Look at those butch bootees. Son used to have a pair just like them.

They had a bit of a chat. It's so odd (but sweet) seeing the person who was (it seems to me) a baby himself such a short time ago, and was the baby of the family, cuddling his tiny nephew. Tempus (as I'm not the first to remark) fugit - and extremely fast.

Flotterstone

Today, pursuing the philosophy of reminding ourselves (well, me) why retirement is a good thing, we went to Flotterstone at the foot of the Pentland Hills, on the southern edge of Edinburgh, and walked in the sunshine. It was glorious. It's a long time since we did this - just because there has never seemed to be time - but it's about 20 minutes' drive from home and we shall make it one of our retirement habits. We didn't exactly walk up the hills; mainly round them.

It was very quiet. The reservoir made little plishing noises.

The heather glowed on the slopes.

The grasses whwhwhwhed. A peewit went "Peewit". (Is that a Scottish word? Not sure. Lapwing is the other name for this bird.)

It was very peaceful.

It didn't rain.

And I wondered, as I so often do, why I live in a city.

(Mind you, I wouldn't like to have been there in last winter's snow...)

Isabelle cuddling Grandbaby

Bowing to popular demand (it must have been at least four people...) here's a picture of me with Grandson. Admit it: he's lovely!

And here he is again. Look how he's growing out of his newborn-sized suit. He looks as if he's going to have long legs like his dad, which is good.

My colleagues - my ex-colleagues - have now been back at work for two days, which makes me feel that I've really and truly retired. And it's a very odd feeling. Mr Life is on holiday this week and yesterday we went on the train to Berwick in the north of England, which was very pleasant. We walked around the walls in a holidayish fashion. I wanted to do something on this first college day to distract myself from feeling that I should be at work. I actually felt a bit sad about not being there, which is silly because I made the decision to retire so that I can (among other things) spend time with Daughter 1 and the baby.

Several of my colleagues emailed me to say that they were missing me, which made me feel better, though of course it may not have been entirely because of my wonderful sparkling personality; it could also have been that I normally do things that other people are now having to do. Guilt...

Birth (and life) and death and thoughts of these

This is a photoless post because though I got Box Elder's fine instructions (for which many thanks) for reducing photo sizes and have printed these for future use, I feel it's a bit late at night to try anything new. I'm not really good at new things in the technological line. Mr Life has just organised me to join Facebook - well, he did it last thing last night - and I haven't fully grasped what it's about, despite having just finished watching "The Social Network".

In fact, the film has made it all seem somewhat sinister, which it doubtless is in a way. I only want, pathetically, to read Daughter 2's ... um... page (is that the word? or do I mean wall?) to brighten up my life - though she phones more or less every day anyway so it's not as if we're out of touch. I never signed up for Facebook when my offspring were younger so as not to be instrusive but these days, Mr Life's on it (with her permission) and keeps me telling what Daughter 2 has posted so I reckoned that I could join too. I don't think the other two offspring use it much. And I don't think my friends do much either, though I could be wrong. Anyway, doubtless I'll get used to it, though forgetting my password between yesterday and today wasn't a brilliant start. I eventually remembered it.

A nice lady in our church, a lifelong keen cyclist, decided to do a 75-kilometre bike ride to celebrate her 75th birthday and to raise sponsorship money for the church. So she did. That was at the end of June. On Wednesday of last week, she was in a collision with a car when she was cycling and she died of her injuries. It's so sad. But I suppose that, looking at it another way, maybe it's not that sad to die doing something you like, when you're in good health and have led a reasonably long life. Though what is a reasonably long life? I'm sure one's opinion changes as one gets nearer the three score years and... whatever one has in mind.

I'm editor of our church magazine and when I looked in my pigeonhole today there was an article that she'd written a week ago for the next edition, enthusiastically describing where she'd gone on her fundraising excursion.

It's all a bit sobering, this life thing. Meanwhile, Grandson is looking around with his big blue eyes, gazing into our faces and smiling. Or looking indignant. Or tragic. Or hopeful. Don't you love that feeling of being bumped on the cheek by a sweet, soft, blunt little baby face?

Lifting mine eyes

Life is somewhat dreary at the moment. Not half as dreary as for those poor souls who've lost their homes or businesses or jobs because of the riots in England (which appear to be over... let's hope) but somewhat less than splendid all the same. Also it has been raining in Edinburgh for what feels like the past forty days and nights. Though, miraculously, not actually today (yet). And it can't have been raining the other day either when I went on the above short walk, which is all I really have to tell you about today.

Edinburgh is surrounded by hills, even though it's in the Central Lowlands. You can imagine what the rest of Scotland is like - the other bits are the Southern Uplands and the Northern Highlands.

In the photo above, you see the Pentland Hills, which are slightly further away than they look, but not much.

And on my return towards home, here is Corstorphine Hill.

I may have blogged about this before but here is the garden of a chap in the next street. He likes to clip his plants into neat shapes, which he trims with small clippers every few days. Wonderfully appropriately, he's a retired hairdresser.

Here's his hedge. The photos are a bit sideyways because you can't really stand directly in front of the houses of people you vaguely know, taking photos of them.

Nearing home, there's the hill inside the city, Arthur's Seat, in the distance.

The Pentlands again - we would have this view from our house if we just lived up the hill a little bit. But we don't.

According to my son-in-law, who knows about these things, I have nearly used up my Blogger photo allowance. I didn't know there was such a thing. I wonder if this will publish.

Ah well. Off to change the bed, do a bit of dusting and then go to the supermarket. Have a good weekend, one and all.

Riots

Oh, for the days when my children looked like this.

Currently, as I have bemoaned before, Daughter 2 (in the middle) is in London. She's there mainly because her husband-to-be wants to be an actor and therefore feels he has to be in London. I have no idea why anyone would want to be an actor. And there are too many actors for the work available so he's impecunious. And at the moment, he's in Edinburgh because he's appearing in the Festival Fringe. And London is suffering horrible riots, which have been breaking out all over the place for the past three nights. Idiot young men are looting and burning shops and houses. And she's there - not at the moment near any riots but who knows where they'll go next? Any parent can imagine how we feel about this.

She often works late but, thank goodness, is not going to do so this week. And she and some friends have agreed to spend the night in whoever's flat seems furthest from danger - not that this is easy to assess, since the rioting has been breaking out in various places. How ridiculous does it seem, in a so-called civilised country, to have to evacuate your home and seek shelter with friends? And yet I'm very glad she won't be alone.

I'm not a person who is often angry but I'm angry now. Angry (not just on behalf of my daughter) and totally helpless.