I take it all back

This evening we had goldfinches basking in the evening sunshine, I find that I can put up with starlings if there are goldfinches in the balance.

Tomorrow morning, quite early, we head off for the Scottish Borders, with two minibuses, a trailer full of rucsacs and tents and twenty-seven fourteen and fifteen-year-olds. The weather forecast is strangely good, considering how many times this group of kids have walked in appalling conditions. They’re on their own this time, so I hope they all remember what they should do, where they should be going, and how to put their tents up! And I really hope their Assessor is kind to them…

winged invaders

We have starlings nesting in the eaves all around our house (eaves sounds a bit posh actually, they’re probably just sofit boards) which leaves me in a bit of a mixed state of mind. I like having wild birds in the garden – I feed them, and watch them and worry about them, particularly the wrens in the wood heap which I feel are a bit too close to ground level to be safe. I can even find time sometimes to admire the rooks in the adjoining rookery, especially when they’re wheeling through the trees in that amazingly acrobatic way where they always look as though they’re about to hit a branch or a trunk just before they dodge it.

I remember watching something last year all about how starlings are becoming endangered, and how we should encourage them, and we have on occasion stopped the car to watch the starlings murmurating over the village rooftops in the evenings…

But (very small voice) I don’t like them nesting in my roof. They are messy, and noisy and numerous, and they rattle in the walls and roof space at night and make my spine shiver in case they get inside (which I do know is impossible). I thought we’d fixed the problem last year, when we had the guttering and sofit boarding fixed, but the little avians have obviously circumvented that, and are quite happily nesting in the roof again in their droves. Ah well, I suppose I’m being hypocrital, because I certainly don’t have any issues with the swallows which nest right above the back door and chirrup at us as we go in and out – although to be fair they don’t require us to change where we park the car so that it’s not on a flight path.

I have a garden bench, so I have to use it sometimes

Do you see that? That’s sunshine!

To celebrate, when I got home from work today I sat on my garden bench and ate a choc-ice, and then I decided that it was a bit parky for that after all, so I finished it in the greenhouse…

Four hours later the sky is as black as a witch’s hat, the wind is howling around the chimney and the BBC reckons we might have snow on high ground tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to photograph the penguins.

other people’s gardens are greener than mine (also a lot bigger)

This gallery contains 7 photos.

strangely weird and creepy

Driving home from dinner at Mama and Papa’s last night, we drove past the local cemetery – which was full of little blue and purple glowing lights… How long have people been putting solar lights on graves, and why haven’t I noticed before? And why on Earth are they doing it?

Definitely creepy.

lacuna

Noun

• An unfilled space or interval; a gap
• A missing portion in a book or manuscript

How to recap the last three weeks? The weather finally got a bit warmer – apart from last Monday, when we had hailstones the size of duck-eggs. Really. Oh and Tuesday, when there was snow on the car in the morning. Anyway, it has been warm enough for things to start to grow, so I’ve been planting and potting on and all those technical things that people with greener fingers than me do. However, I suspect that I’m going to have to keep most of the salads in the greenhouse or the propagators anyway, because we have RABBITS. They are cute, but have already voraciously attacked the lollo rosso and salad bowl planted outside. They don’t appear to like rocket? Luckily I do, so I have planted extra.

We took Mouse out for lunch with his girlfriend, and he showed us his new flat (from the outside only) on the way back. We are moving him in in two weeks time, there is potential for fraughtness, because he can’t move in to the new place until the 1st of June, and he has to be out of halls by 9:30am that day (they are knocking down his garret on the 4th June). We should be able to move him in about two runs, and it’s not too far so if we have to do extra runs someone can just stand on the pavement with all his worldly possessions.

Blossom has finished all her exams, and they went well – I am so happy for her.

Handsome and I pre-walked our Bronze Group’s expedition route (to check it out) and discovered that:

a) the mud in the forest has developed to the point where you could lose a tractor in it (I had a tantrum half way through, it is truly horrible mud).

b) there is a dead and decaying sheep at a point where even the most squeamish kid will not be able to avoid fairly close proximity to it – I foresee hysterics, and

c) the new forestry road at the end of their first day involves a diversion to their route.

We have prewarned them about the mud and the forestry road; we thought it was best to let them find the sheep themselves!

Handsome went on a course that involved him spending two days at a Smithy – he thoroughly enjoyed himself, but he came home completely exhausted having spent the entire time hitting bits of molten metal with big hammers. He made a massive toasting fork (I don’t quite know what we’re going to do with that, it’s not as if it’s dry enough to barbecue in Scotland just now, and given the size of the thing we would need to be barbecuing a small pig), a rather nice candlestick with a candy twist on the stem and a twirly bit on the bottom for it to stand on, and a really pretty solid iron leaf, with a hole in the stem to thread something through. Theoretically I could wear it around my neck, but I suspect it would drag me down… one of my colleagues suggested using it as a cake slice for fairy cakes, and I though it could be a door knocker for a Wendy house… but it has ended up being strung on the side of my handbag as a very attractive although somewhat heavy charm.

Next time I decide to be lazy for three weeks I’ll keep notes to make it easier!

skiving

We were meant to be doing useful stuff today, like gardening and sorting out the paperwork which has got to the point where if you knock it over, you could bury a small child… Luckily we don’t have small children anymore, so when we woke up to blustery squalls rattling barely unfrozen rain against the windows we decided to go out instead. We headed for the blue bit of sky, unfortunately it moved before we got there.

We went to Harestanes, which has things made out of wood (and a Tim Stead exhibition) for Handsome, and a leather crafter for me ( I may have got an early wedding anniversary present… I may not have allowed Handsome to buy a fifteen thousand pound table), and gorgeous views for both of us. And very, very close to Harestanes is my favourite independent bookshop – Mainstreet in St Boswells – so we had to have lunch there as well.

It was so much better than staying at home and doing the paperwork, or gardening in the rain.

 

the worst that happened was that Handsome didn’t bring me any sausage pie from the Harlaw coffee morning

It’s been a busy week. The problem with spending your whole weekend wandering around the hills with other people’s children (OPC) is that you still have all the things you should have done on said weekend to do, even although you are a) working, b) have a parents’ evening and c) do not have a car because it has failed it’s MOT and the garage won’t let you drive it home. Luckily after a ridiculous amount of money my Yaris is now feeling much better (I would be feeling much better if I’d had that much money spent on me) and I have finally managed to catch up on the washing and housework.

It was a good weekend with the kids as well – they navigated much better than I thought they would; I must in future be more positive about their abilities, not one group got lost, despite their routes taking them in all directions around, through and across the Pentlands. I had the joy of watching my only all-girl group steam up a hill as though it was a mere pimple in their way – and they stayed together, and they stayed cheerful. And they were still wearing too much make-up and pink.

One of the groups turned up absolutely on time at every checkpoint. This may not sound like a major thing, but I have spent years (probably literally if you add it all together) waiting for kids who turn up late by minutes, hours, weeks… so to have a group that was always on time is quite exceptional.

It was not the best night for camping from a practical point of view – it was very windy, and therefore quite hard to put tents up without them turning into large and ungainly kites, but they all managed (although there were several instances of people frantically chasing bits of tent across the field). They enjoyed us breaking a tent pole when none of them did a little too much…

This week’s homework for them has been ‘What did you carry that you really don’t need’ – I’ve had all the usual answers (make-up, towel, too many clothes), but I have also had ‘My Chemistry jotter, because I had a test on Monday’, ‘Two spare torches because I’m scared of the dark’, several of them brought books (to be honest, I bring a book, but that’s because I have to sit around and wait for them to make the checkpoints) and one lad says that he isn’t going to bring his ‘phone next time, because he doesn’t need it and his mates kept texting him to ask how it was going and it got too annoying!

The next time we have these kids out is their real expedition – in the Ettrick Valley, one of my favourite places. I’m a lot more confident about it than I was a week ago.

an unexpected gift

I was busy collecting in consent forms from my Duke of Edinburgh group this morning (they’re camping this weekend) when I noticed one of the kids was standing in the queue with a grin on his face and one hand behind his back. When he got to the front of the queue, he handed over his consent form with the other hand, and said “Miss, I’ve got a present for you from my Mum.” I had fleeting (very fleeting) ideas that he might have a bunch of flowers, or a packet of chocolate digestives… but no, he produced with a flourish, a very, very old library copy of Wuthering Heights. It was due back in 1982, which is long before I started working here. It was issued on a Browne issue system for goodness sake – or to be exact, not issued, because the card was still in it!

I told him, kindly, that his Mum could keep it – it really doesn’t meet my stock selection criteria any more. And then I went into my office and giggled for about twenty minutes!

crow’s nest descending

It is so windy outside that the rookery in the trees at the side of the house is dispersing sticks and moss and the occasional feather (luckily they are still building, so no eggs) in an almost continual rain of debris. The trees are pines, and they are bending right over and then flipping back, creating a lovely catapult effect – the rooks haven’t got a clue what’s going on.

I don’t often feel sorry for the rooks – they are large and black and noisy, and there are a great many of them – but I do feel a bit sorry for them tonight.