Bubbles

And just like that, they're gone. August passed pleasantly but busily, with child-minding and visiting family and cooking and so on. 

I took Littlest Granddaughter to a bubble show at the Festival Fringe - which was very good - and we bought some of the chap's excellent bubbles. 

On the way home, she found one of her dad's company's posters, and kissed the little picture of her dad. I'm sure this was totally hygienic.

One day we went to the Botanics. 

On Sunday the Edinburgh family came and played with the bubbles. 

And now Daughter 2 and family have gone back to London and we have our time to ourselves and can't think what to do because we're too sad. However, the garden has been neglected so I'll get back to that. 

Ah well. We'll recover a bit in due course. Countyourblessingscountyourblessingscountyourblessings. 

 

Visiting

The house has continued to be quite full - Littlest Granddaughter and Daughter 2 are still here, as are Nephew and his young lady, though the latter two go back down south tomorrow. Brother and SIL departed today. So it's all been very nice, though the house could not be said to have been its tidiest. 

Momentously, Big Grandson has started high school! - he who was a small baby about (it seems) two years ago. So far, three days in, he likes it very much, so this is good. He's a clever chap and I'm sure he'll do well; I just hope that Big Boys aren't nasty to him!

Littlest Granddaughter has been looked after two days a week by her dad, one day by her mum and two days by me (while they worked), so it's been fine. 

One day we went to the museum, where she contemplated the Whirlpool Galaxy which, according to this display, is between 13 and 30 million light years away. I think she mainly enjoyed turning the dials rather than contemplating the hugeness of space. But I thought about it for a bit, before my brain melted and we went for the bus. 

Today, my brother and his wife went home, my nephew and his fiancée were out and Daughter 2 and her little one went up to visit Son and family overnight, so Mr L and I went walking with our rambling chums in East Lothian, from East Linton and round Binning Wood. It was such a great day. 

The weather was pleasantly, but not too, warm.

It was a bit windy, but the trees broke up the gusts. 

And in Binning Wood, which is a green burial site, we thought about our mortality for a while and then went to have coffee in the local garden centre while we still could. My hip was rather sore. But it's much better now, after a sit-down. 

Up north, Daughter 2, Son and their children fished for tadpoles. 

Our house is currently and not unpleasantly quiet. And marginally tidier than it was earlier. 

 

Nothing to report

There is nothing particular to report: much providing of meals, much clutter, many shoes in the hall, various outings - it's been fun, and things have happened and photos have been taken, but mostly unbloggable ones. The grandchildren are currently out doing an art afternoon at the gallery and the house is quiet. (And untidy. But that doesn't matter.)

How I envy friends whose children and thus grandchildren have stayed near them. I love having them, but it would be so much easier if they visited, say, on a Sunday, saw one another all the time and we didn't have to worry about allocating beds, whether they would get to sleep (and to stay asleep) in an unusual location, and the intense excitement of seeing their cousins after a long gap. Still, life's not like that; and if offspring marry someone from a different place then they obviously can't live near both sets of grandparents. We're lucky to have one lot quite near. 

One can't have everything. And we have a lot. 

Here be dragons

On Saturday, Son, Daughter-in-Law and their two arrive for about a week, and on Sunday, Daughter 2 and her little one arrive for three weeks. In the middle of August, my brother, sister-in-law and nephew and his fiancée will be here for about a week also. This is obviously all very nice, but will be busy, so I've been getting Big Granddaughter's dragon quilt to the stage of being pinned together, ready for hand-quilting, so that the fabrics and sewing machine could be tidied away. I was about to go up town to buy wadding the other day but thought I should just check that the odd bits I had wouldn't be enough to cobble together. And the first photo shows an arrangement of every last bit I had!

So, with saving the planet - not to say our bank account - in mind, I crawled around the floor for some considerable time and sewed it all together. I hope the planet appreciates this. My knees weren't so sure. 

I'd already done the front, but I had the back to make, patching it together the back because surely no one else I know will want dragon fabric. (Obviously it needed a bit of a trim. And an iron.) Apart from dragons, the back mainly features books because she's a total bookworm. 

It's all embarrassingly simple but she's only ten and now it's done. And it was fun to do. 

And then I packed all the fabrics away. Mine are arranged in categories: plain, stripes, spots, checks, animals and birds, flowers and leaves, Christmas, and then whatever doesn't fit any of these descriptions. I did once try arranging them by colour but too many of them had multiple colours. And anyway, I always seem to end up riffling through them all to find just the right thing. I need a bigger cupboard but - no - that way would madness lie. I will never use up all that I have. 

It's been very wet in Britain generally, but the rain cleared yesterday and we went out for a walk along the river. 

It was very full. 

Today the sun shone so I hope that's us back to normal summer weather. Not sure that it is, though... .

 

Exercise

The Edinburgh Two are still down south with their other grandparents, and much though I miss them, I quite enjoy knowing that they're safe and happy and don't need anything from us for the moment. We went for a walk along the river on Friday, and had coffee at the gallery half way round. 

And today we went to the Botanics. 

The herbaceous border is in full flower. 

I rather like these pink tasselly things, which according to the label are Sanguisorba Hakusenensis. 

I've at last got back to working on Big Granddaughter's second quilt. I finished the front weeks ago but somehow didn't seem to have a minute to do the back, which I'm piecing together from various bits of fabric. This of course is much more time-consuming than just using a single piece - though it's too big, actually, for a single piece. Of course I'm putting some effort into getting it symmetrical, even though it's the back and she's ten and it's got dragons on it (her request) which I'm sure she won't want when she's ... well, not much older. But I'm enjoying myself. 

In preparation for my hip op, I have to do exercises. A single set takes about 10 minutes and I have to do them four times a day. Will I manage to keep this up? Well, obviously I have to. I also do more tiring exercises with weights (only 3kg, but I do 12 of various lifty things and some other sit-up/leg bend stuff) - these were prescribed by Doctor Son a few years ago, on the slightly depressing grounds that when one's legs give out, it's good to have strong arms to heave oneself about. It's all very time-consuming when one has gardening and quilt-making to do!

 

Not pottering

I was down in London last weekend, babysitting Littlest Granddaughter while Daughter 2 and Son-in-Law 2 were at a wedding. We played hide-and-seek. Can you possibly guess where she is, in this photo?? 

We read lots of stories. 

It rained, really quite hard, so that we couldn't go out. When I was a mum, I was famous for dragging my three out for Wet Walks. But I don't feel that I can exert so much authority over grandchildren and anyway, it was really very wet. But the day passed pretty well anyway. 

On Sunday the sun shone, so Daughter 2 got some plants planted. When they bought the house, the back garden was all grass, but she's gradually filling it with flowers. The soil is very solid London clay, so hard work to do anything with. 

Meanwhile the Edinburgh 2 are down in Devon with their cousins on their dad's side, which is lovely. 

About fourteen months ago, I got seen by a consultant who said that I needed a hip replacement operation, but the NHS has big backlogs so I was expecting to wait several years. However, to my surprise, I was recently summoned to a hospital in the west of Scotland and so went there today. I travelled by train, which was easy enough, though I did get up at 5.30am to do so - I was worried that the later train might be cancelled. I was in fact far too early, but that's better than being far too late. I saw a different consultant, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, a pharmacist and an occupational therapist, and they were all very nice, and it turns out that I should get the operation within 3-6 months. 

It seemed a good idea to get the op when it wasn't for several years. Now I'm thinking - hmm! oooh! - that's not very long. 

Still, it would have cost about £16-£18,000 to get it done sooner, privately, and this will be free. So - good old NHS. And I'm just not going to think about it until I have to. 
 

Pottering

It's been one of those busy weeks when you can't quite remember what you've been busy with. On Saturday we went walking with the walking friends.

The weather was perfect: not too hot but very pleasant. The company was lovely.

We walked past Penicuik House, just walls since a big fire in 1899. How sad the architect would be. 

The garden flourishes.

So do the Botanic Gardens.

And also Big Grandson, who's now 12 and taller than me. This is his cake, a German ICE train. Obviously.

We were on the beach today, and he built a tunnel system for - naturally - trains. 

And so life goes on. Such a pity that I'm getting so old. I'd like to go on pottering around for ever, really. But sadly... .
 

Things come in fives...

 
This was a more domestic week. On Monday the two sisters, and the sister-in-law, of the husband of my American second (or something) cousin who came to stay with us a couple of months ago - are you following this? - visited Edinburgh briefly en route for a cruise ship, so I gave them a walking tour of the city and then they came back here for dinner. So that was very nice. Their cruise goes to Orkney, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, which sounds lovely. The only snag might be the weather, which in Britain at least has been, on and off, very rainy this week. On Monday it was only very briefly, but torrentially, wet. We had just left the cafe at Holyrood Palace and immediately decided that another cup of coffee would be very welcome - back in the cafe. 

Other than that, there's been some coffeeing with friends, some lunching with friends, some being with the grandchildren - that sort of thing. Yesterday we took the Edinburgh Two up to see the Unbloggables, which was lovely (and not wet, or only a tiny bit). 

Son lives in the country, in a scenic but (for us) inconvenient area. Still, I can see the appeal. If my life were different, I too would like to live in the country. At least in the summer. 

Only one of the children sat down in the water. 

Their bloggable cat, in catmint (I think). 

Since we got back from being away, we've had a series of minorish, but tedious, problems.

1) While Mr L was still in Hamburg, I found a dead rat in the back garden! Now, firstly, a rat! and secondly, I don't deal with dead things. I'm a vegetarian and very squeamish. However, I had to deal with it. Please applaud. 

2) Also while Mr L was in Hamburg, I looked up at the bedroom ceiling - the fairly newly decorated bedroom ceiling - and there was a damp patch, clearly a leak. The roofer has now fixed the leak, at least we hope so. The brown patch remains to be dealt with.

3) The cord of the blind in a spare room broke. Mr L has fixed this. 

4) The dishwasher stopped working. It needs a new bit, which a dishwasher chap is going to get for us. Let's hope.

5) We have two skylights in our kitchen, made out of some sort of plastic. This is one of them. A huge brown ... splodge? burn? who knows what? - not us ... has suddenly appeared on it. It's as if an ostrich had been flying overhead and done something unmentionable on it. However, the very heavy rain of the last few days has had no effect. We can't imagine what it is. We are no longer willing to climb on roofs to investigate, so contacted a handyman who we've used before. Sadly, he's about to go on holiday and can't come and look at it till late in August. Could it be a burn? We don't get aeroplanes flying above us as a rule, though we do get the occasional helicopter nearby. Do flying vehicles drop hot things? 

Oh well, these are all minor things compared to the disasters suffered by many people in the world and no doubt something will be able to be done about it in due course. But that's enough little problems, thank you, world, for the moment. 

Chuff chuff chuff

Well, life has been, unusually for us, full of event. It all started some months ago, when we were thinking how much Big Grandson, who's transport-mad (particularly about trains/trams/buses) would enjoy being in Hamburg and going round the enormous model train exhibition where Mr L went for his 70th birthday. I mean, I went too. But Mr L is a train enthusiast. I just wandered around. 

So we decided that Mr L would offer to take him. And then Mr L realised that Big G would really like to go on the Eurostar, under the English Channel, rather than flying. This meant a train to London, a stay overnight beside St Pancras Station, the Eurostar and then various changes of train on the way to Hamburg. And back again. Somewhat to Mr L's relief, Big G's dad said he would like to go too, and crucially, as well as being a nice chap, Son-in-Law 1 has a first-class honours degree in German with distinction in spoken German. Big Grandson has been learning German on Duolingo for some months in preparation but is not yet at his father's level. 

Doing it this way was much more of a palaver, as well as being considerably more expensive, than flying. However, it did provide the train-mad nearly-12-year-old with lots of interesting trains to ride on. And, as it turned out, buses and undergrounds on the free days in Hamburg. 

Meanwhile Daughter 1 and I took his sister (who has no interest in trains but thought she might like theme parks) to Legoland in Windsor, in the south of England. This was much simpler but still involved a train to London, another to Slough, a third to Windsor, a very short walk to the hotel, a day at Legoland (travelling by taxi), another night in Windsor and then the journey in reverse, meeting up at King's Cross with Daughter 2 for a (my) birthday lunch. 

Big Granddaughter turned out not to be so keen on theme parks as she'd imagined... or at least, not on the scary rides. But there were various unscary rides that she and her mother went on, and other things to see such as this model world. There are also good playparks and shops, though it's an expensive way to to go playparks and shops... However, we had a good time and I think this may be, hooray, the last theme park I ever have to go to. We did EuroDisney and Florida Disney with our kids in their day and queuing in the sun is not my very favourite thing to do. Nor are scary rides (not that I did them. Good old Mr L took on that task).

The female side of the party got home on Tuesday, and then Daughter 1 had to go to work, while Biggest Granddaughter and I did various things in Edinburgh such as going to the Zoo,

buying books at a nice bookshop, having lunch out and so on, for the rest of the week. The male side of things got back to London yesterday after a very stressful day of cancelled and delayed trains (but in the end they caught their Eurostar - just - whew) and are now at Daughter 2's. Mr L and SIL 1 have had a quiet day, while Daughter 2 has nobly been taking glutton-for-punishment Big Grandson for
a London train/tube/bus day. This culminated in his being invited into the cab of the final train (which was stationary at the time!) and allowed to play with the buttons - seeing the camera's-eye view of the carriages, blowing the horn etc. I imagine this made his day!

Today I had a nice slow start and was just changing the sheets on our bed when I looked out of the window and saw the two friends I'd forgotten that I'd invited for coffee, coming down the path. Never have I sprung into action so quickly! Fortunately I had coffee and biscuits available and it was lovely to see them so all was well. Oh dear, brain overload...

Human life

Life trundles by. We've now passed the longest day, but so far the shortening of the daylight isn't noticeable and summer flourishes on, though the hot weather has blessedly cooled down a bit, even in London, where it's been extremely hot. 

I've finished the quilt top with dragons on as requested by Big Granddaughter. She chose all the fabrics, most of which were from my stash, though I had to buy the dragons and the purple and violet solid fabrics - which are not really to my taste. There was a big gap between my starting and finishing it, because I put it away when we had visitors and then somehow never got it out again till a week ago. I don't love it, but it's what she wanted and it was very easy. It's actually considerably brighter than it looks here. I was somewhat reluctant to do her a dragon quilt because I made her a rabbit one only five years ago and she now says that her tastes have changed - the difference between five and ten years old (which seems about a week to me). I can't really see her liking dragons for long either. Still, there it is - for now. I shall have to get on with quilting it.

Unbelievably, Big Grandson has now finished with primary school and will go on to secondary in August. He had three orientation days last week, which he enjoyed, so that was good. And now it's the Scottish school holidays. He celebrated this by going on a bus/tram trip round Edinburgh with his father yesterday, while I took Big Granddaughter and her friend to the local trampoline centre. They both went on this terrifying slide thing, though her friend dared to go further up than she did. 

Then we went back to Big Granddaughter's house and they did various crafting activities. Big Granddaughter made an abstract painting. "This is supposed to reflect human life," she said. "I'm trying to be philosophical."

Frances asked about the flowers in the night-time picture of the garden in my previous post. The yellow is yellow loosestrife, which is a bit of a thug. I like it, but dig most of it out at the end of every year, which keeps in more or less in control - though it's got away from me this year. The lilac coloured sprawly things on the right are penstemons - the one taken as a cutting from the other. There are dark red peonies at the back and a pink begonia semperflorens in a pot on the right.