Monday, 6 July 2009

Collage

What have this dress:



box topiary, and this poem:

Snow
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

by Louis MacNeice, got in common?

I don't know, myself, but I love them all.

Thursday, 2 July 2009

Bring Me Sunshine

Forgive me blogger for I have sunned, it has been three weeks since my last post. In that time I have been to a literary festival; the launch of a friend's latest collection of poems, and the party that followed; a reading by T. S. Eliot prize winner, Jen Hadfield, and – get this – delivered my first, ever, lecture. Mostly, though I've been 'making the most' of the good weather. In the last few days I've also been trying to prevent said good weather draining the life out of my garden. Which means endlessly tramping up and down the steps from garden to kitchen to fill, and then empty, my watering can. I don't have an outside tap because the sky usually acts as one. This is probably the one year I could have successfully grown tomatoes but it is actually the first year I've made an effort to grow things that like cold, dampness.

I must remember to do that again next year...

It's just got warmer and warmer over the course of about two weeks, today it is 27Âșc, but apparently it is set to cool down and rain again over the weekend. My Angelica will be glad and so will my dissertation supervisor: I've done no real work for some time.


The Borders book Festival crowd enjoying the start of the sunshine.


The poshest portaloos I've ever had the pleasure of...


Ice-cream in Scotland?

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

Taxing Inheritance

This post is an homage to Pat, sort of. She's always dotting about with her camera and showing us lovely places, and as I actually went out yesterday I thought I'd share my findings like she does. I Saw the polar opposites of Scottish heritage and some pigs.

First up I went to a post-grad symposium at Elshieshields* tower, a beautiful fifteenth century house tucked so expertly away in the countryside, only fourteen miles from here, that after two hours of looking for it I gave up and came home. It took Stevie and his sat-nav to get me there. I've always pooh-poohed sat-nav: 'all one needs is a brain and a map!' but yesterday I was glad of it, the place was well worth changing one's mind for, momentarily. Reverend Dr Ann Shukman (who, incidentally has the best hair) inherited the house from her uncle, the historian Sir Steven Runciman, nine years ago in a state of some disrepair. She has done an amazing job of restoration and now hosts academic and spiritual gatherings there. It is certainly a place for contemplation. I have to admit, though, that the extent of my contemplation was, 'all that dusting!'

Here is a view from the top of the tower, which is part of the main house, onto the cottage in which the symposium was held, and beyond to the less formal, more interesting, gardens:


After Stevie picked me up we went to the port at Annan to get new tires for his car. As he sat in the waiting room I wandered off. It's not that I don't like tire workshops, I do, but I had noticed something more interesting outside. The whole area is near derelict. Opposite the tire place is what was once a huge building but is now a walled meadow. Nature is reclaiming the space. I have to say, I find that quite pleasing. The area hasn't quite been abandoned by humans: a small terrace of houses is being done up, there are still a few businesses in operation, and in the creek was a working fishing boat in good condition. And then there was this one:




Isn't it gorgeous? There is something about the way timbers start to separate, and paint peels like the scabs of old wounds, that is quite beautiful about old abandoned boats. The interiors rusting, the plant-life that has self-seeded, the whisper of a no longer uttered name. And there's the colour. There are lots of little harbours in this area and I spend quite a bit of time wandering round them in the summer; boats still in use are all number of colours: red, orange, yellow, blue, but only abandoned boats are this colour, and they all are. At least it seems that way. This vibrant bruise blue-green, sometimes with a hint of red amongst the peeling layers, is the colour I most come across on boats that have been left to rot. Are people who choose this colour more likely to give up their watery fantasies, is this the colour of boat undercoat, or does all paint become this colour if left to its own devices?

Once the tires were fixed firmly to the wheels of Stevie's car – which I realise now is a very similar colour to the boat – we went to pick Bob up from work. Bob works at Broom Fisheries where he deals with all their website stuff – if you click on the link you'll see his handy-work. He developed the website from scratch and, like an artist, he is still perfecting it. He also deals with customers and suppliers, and collects eggs from the chickens. Carole, his boss, has just taken delivery of four saddleback piglets so I went to say hello. They are the cutest things.




* the house has no website of its own but I thought this was interesting and it shows you a nice picture of it.

Saturday, 6 June 2009

True History

So my family came to stay: two sisters, brother, and their various additions. I didn't get the group photo I wanted, I tried on the evening they arrived but Angela wasn't letting the camera near her after her long sweaty journey, and by the next day we had settled into familiar mode and I forgot about recording.

Apart from my best friend and my son my siblings are the only people I can be entirely myself with, without worrying about causing upset, so it was a welcome relief to spend some time with them; like getting out of the hot, stuffy, polluted city to the mountains or coast, suddenly breathing is easy. Like when we were kids home from school, with the added benefit of being able to cook a decent meal. Actually being with them is a bit like having three mums, I know that as long as I have them I will always have three distinct places of refuge and will never have to go hungry. I put on three pounds during the course of the week.

We mostly just hung about chatting – and eating – though we did have two trips out, one to Edinburgh where we did a tour of the Vaults and then went for dinner; the other to Drumlanrig castle which I hadn't been to for some time but liked so much I went back with Stevie once they had gone.

The Vaults are supposed to be haunted and our tour guide told us all sorts of stories of people who experienced strange happenings during or after visiting them. One of the rooms is considered to be so spooky that most people refuse to enter it. We were told of a woman who suddenly fell to the ground and had to be taken to hospital, a man who discovered scratches all over his body once he got home, and spontaneous mobile phone activity. Our tour guide refused to go near it and only my niece, Lois, her father, Paul, and me were brave – or foolhardy – enough to enter. Later, as we were mooching about looking for a restaurant, a bird we didn't see but which must have been very large and very sick emptied its bowels all over Lois's pale pink mac. Luckily it was machine washable and she was able to wear it again for our visit to the castle later in the week.

Over dinner one night, cooked by my brother Eugene following some of our mother's recipes, Angela told of how her best friend was hijacked by one of her husband's less lovable traits: he had a habit of trimming his toenails in the sitting room – bad enough as far as I'm concerned – and rather than gather up the clippings and put them in the bin he'd just toss them behind him. She was vaguely aware of this but for whatever reason didn't beat him about the head and make him stop. The couch was one of those huge corner things, too heavy for (let's call her) Louise to move, so the vacuum cleaner never got behind it. Then they moved house. The kids were at school, the husband was at work, and Louise was alone with the removal men, cleaning each room as they cleared it. When they moved the couch, there in the corner, was a monumental pile (seven years worth) of (let's call him) Nigel's toenail clippings. The men dropped the couch and everyone stared in horrified disbelief. No doubt in years to come Louise and Nigel's two children will talk over dinner about the day they moved house and mum ripped dad's head off when he got home from work, and wonder.


Paul in the spooky room.


Lois at Drumlanrig in her newly washed pink mac.


It was Angela's birthday on the Tuesday and the kids knocked up this cake for her after breakfast in their bedroom.



They had bought the sponge cake and what they thought was ready rolled but turned out to be ready to roll icing so they had to roll it out with a hairspray can.

Monday, 1 June 2009

I wish I fished

This is definitely a day to go fishing, in all the years I've lived in this town I have never experienced such summer-is-hereness. It's a make the most of it day so that's what I'm doing, I just popped in to show you this: my rather spectacular angelica:


Once the sun remembers where it is and things go back to normal I will regale you with family visit stories; don't let me forget to tell you the pile of toe-nail clippings one.

Friday, 22 May 2009

Family Matters

I have one brother and two sisters. Both sisters have husbands and one also has two young children. They are my entire family now our parents are both dead. And, they are all (+1) coming for their holidays to my town tomorrow for a week. Luckily the sister who organised the whole trip is sensible enough to realise our little house can't cope with so many people, so they have rented a holiday house about two seconds walk from here. It should be great, we don't see enough of each other and we all get on really well.

Today I cleaned the house from top to bottom just in case one or more of them decides to pop in, but mostly I will be walking round to them, hopefully. Not because I don't want my family in my house but because the minute I have guests I go into hostess mode and get all stressy about making sure everyone has what they want: drink? are you hungry, let me fix you something? Either that or I have too much to drink and forget people need to eat at all. A rental house levels the playing field as no one feels any responsibility for any one else.

The last time we all got together for any length of time was Christmas 2006. We rented a large house on the coast and all pitched in to make it the best Christmas ever, and it was. I'm looking forward to seeing them immensely, but I know for a week I won't get any work done and, I won't get any blogging done. I will mostly be being fed by my sister and drinking wine and chatting in that way you do only with the people you grew up with.

So, I'll see you in a week or so.

PS I looked for a photograph of all of us together for this post but couldn't find one, I'll try and get one over the course of the week.

Sunday, 17 May 2009

Cupboard Love

I garden mostly in containers as pretty much everything I put in the ground dies. I have no idea why that is. I do put things in the ground but only things I don't mind losing. I would mind losing my onions so I needed something big enough to plant them in. I searched garden centres but found nothing that was both big enough and affordable and was about to give up when I remembered this old cupboard.


Perfect.

Only once I had filled it with top soil did I realise it was hideous so I scrabbled around and found some left over paint from our recent kitchen overhaul. It looks much bluer in the sun than it does in the house, but I rather like it. Anyway, at last the onions are in. I do hope better late than never applies here.