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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
Overheard whilst handing out kit for our Bronze Duke of Edinburgh group tonight…
Can I swap rucksacks? This green one doesn’t go with my waterproof jacket, I’d rather have a blue one.
Do you snore? Because if you wake me up I will put you out of our tent.
I’m not sharing a tent with him, have you smelt his feet!
Ooh look, my rucksack’s got a packet of fruit pastels in the top pocket.
If this gas canister is full of gas, why does it sound like it’s full of water?
And my favourite
I think he should carry all the food for our group, because he eats more than the rest of us!
Honestly, what are they like?
My Mama, who is lucky enough to currently be in Madagascar, keeps emailing those of us left behind pictures of lemurs. Normally I go ‘Awwww – look at the pretty lemur’, but today’s picture was a mite disturbing. Mouse actually skyped me from Stirling to ask if I thought its head was on the right way round, or if perhaps someone was playing a joke on his Grand-Mama, and it wasn’t really a real lemur at all?
We came to the conclusion that someone had cut the head off one lemur and stuck it back onto a bigger lemur’s body back-to-front, but that’s just a theory…
It is such a delight to take Blossom out with us – our own kids are a bit blasé about the things we do all the time, like climbing and hill walking. I suppose that’s pretty natural, they grew up being hauled out on hills and thrust (or pulled) up climbing walls whether they wanted to or not. But it’s all new to Blossom, and she just loves climbing. We took her and Hairy to Ratho with us yesterday, and after making sure that Hairy remembered how to tie the knots and how to belay safely we set them loose (I kept an eye on them all the time, I promise).
Hairy didn’t stand a chance, she had him belaying her up everything she could find that looked climbable, with just the best silly grin on her face the whole time. I really love seeing someone enjoy themselves so much! And then, she got all the way to the top of the slab wall (which is really quite a long way up for a beginner) and did it all on one colour, with no cheating as well. She was (quite rightly) enormously pleased with herself. Almost as pleased as I was when I did the fluoro yellow 6b without stress or strain…
Hairy and Blossom go back to Glasgow tomorrow, and the house will once again be quiet (and tidy) and just a little bit boring.
We took Mouse back to Stirling this afternoon, via a large supermarket where he did his usual version of emotional blackmail – ‘If I buy the supersaver bread, can I have chocolate digestives? I write essays better with chocolate digestives…’ and ‘I need anchovies and parma ham so I can cook a quick dinner and still have time to go to the library.’
He is not fooling me one iota, but I still bought him the chocolate digestives and the parma ham because I love him, and I’m really happy that he actually cooks and that he doesn’t exist on pizza and pot noodles. I bought him a stapler as well, so that he doesn’t have to brave the scary electric one in the library!
I left him happily unpacking his shopping in his garret – it was remarkably tidy for once.
Handsome and I decided that we couldn’t face the motorway yet again on the way back, so we meandered back through the little towns and villages between Stirling and Falkirk – we intended to stop for coffee, but failed to find anywhere; luckily Handsome knew there was a cafe at the Falkirk Wheel and got there just in time to see the wheel go around, complete with narrow boats (which you can’t 
really see well in the photo, but they’re in the bottom left cut-out). I think it’s hilarious that there’s this wonderfully technical super-lock on one side of the basin, and on the other side… there’s an old fashioned, traditional lock.
