:: picture show

A great year for raspberries; the garlic and gooseberries weren't bad either.


Not raspberry jam (though I did make two batches from my own fruit), it's blackcurrant, using fruit from Chad's allotment. Yum.


Pic from the day Faye and I walked along the canal path from Ratho.





These are from the day Bertie got thirsty down at the marina and thought "Well there's all that water down there..." It's a steep seawall, slippery with seaweed, and I was terrified he was going to break a leg. Or drown. He thought the floating seaweed was solid ground and kept trying to climb on to it. Oh, and the water tasted funny, apparently.


Also a bumper year for wasps. This hole is on a path at Blackness.



The grand parade on Ferry Fair Saturday. Bertie stuck it out for the pipe band and one brass band, which is not bad going for him.


The weather has been ridiculously bad -- this was also during Ferry Fair week. That's a fun fair down there, next to the historic Forth Bridge! Tourists still flocked to stare at the visible bits of bridge and listen to the trains rumble over. Poor devils.


Great year for mushrooms. I picked some little puffballs recently and had them for lunch. Not bad, though not very mushroomy.


Furniture turns up in the oddest places.

:: rain rain

It's been raining and miserable for what seems like weeks -- culminating in a mudslide that blocked the main road north for more than a day -- but finally there are signs of a change. This afternoon the sun came out, hurrah! The garden's a jungle, so that's a priority for tomorrow (ie later today; it's just gone midnight), but it's also Ferry Fair day, with a parade, the crowning of the queen and a re-enactment of Queen Margaret's trip across the firth, so I'll have to make an effort and get up early.

Work is going to be all-consuming for a while: I should be off on Sunday and Monday as well, but I'll be working. I'm taking Wednesday off, I think. However, the good news is that I'm getting a promotion, and hopefully a decent pay rise to go with it.

I need a slight cash boost at the moment too: the car broke down on Sunday and it cost £230 for a new ignition and starter motor. On my way to work I noticed the electrics weren't working, and once I got there it wouldn't start again. The breakdown service towed me back home at the end of my shift, and I was a few very rainy days without wheels, including my day off. It would be nice to replace it with a newer car, but with all my extravagant travel plans that's not really on the cards.

I'd better get back to my work. I'll post a few pics tomorrow. Honest!

:: no lights

My car has thrown a wobbly, and I suspect it may be down to the haar. Driving in to work this afternoon I quickly noticed that the electrics weren't working. No indicators, no radio. Alarmingly, when I put my foot on the brakes, the battery warming lamp comes on and the petrol guage suddenly drops to zero! I stopped at the nearest petrol station and checked the water and oil, topped them both up, and drove on. I was running late and I'd left my phone at home - stoopid or what.

I managed to get to work in one piece - though there was a heart-pounding moment at some traffic lights when I realised that the terrible racket I could hear was coming from my car. I thought I'd better pull over and investigate, but I barely touched the key in the ignition and the noise stopped. On reflection it was the same kind of racket you get if you accidentally turn the key when the engine's running, which leads me to suspect some kind of electrical shorting-out. Hence my suspicion of the fog, which has been particularly thick over the past couple of days. This afternoon it was also windy.

If there are still no electrics when it's time to leave for home at 1am I'll call the Green Flag man and get him to sort it. Can't drive home without the radio!!

The fog is amazing. Yesterday and today both the bridges were completely invisible. The poor tourists still flocked to look at them -- they ended up listening to trains rumbling overhead. All you could see was the bit of pier behind the Hawes Inn.

:: now what'll I watch?

Big Brother is over, wah! Nadia the Portuguese transsexual won, Oh my GAAAHD! as she said several million times. I've been very brave and come out as a BB fan at work. Everyone here is extremely sniffy about it -- but then they don't watch it, so what would they know?

I love The Onion so much: it never fails to make me laugh.

Back in real life, the weather's been rubbish, muggy and misty. The fog does offer spectacular visual effects on the river: one night all you could see of the Forth Bridge were the floodlit piers; the whole upper structure was just airbrushed out.
There has also been a lot of very heavy rain, so the lawn is growing rank and lanky again, and the weeds are prospering. Almost all the fruit is finished. There are still blackcurrants ripening, but I'm leaving those for the birds. There aren't enough for jam -- I went to a friend's allotment last week and picked enough for ten jars, yum. I wish I'd made more raspberry jam, it really is delicious, and very easy to make.

Planning for Pinky's trip is advancing: it's very exciting when it gets down to choosing what kind of car to hire and looking at hotel websites. I want to leave as much flexibility as possible so we can respond to local conditions etc, but you can get good bargains on the internet. I've got some guidebooks too.

Time I did some work.

:: bertie goes awol

On today's walk I was distracted by Taffy's long-winded dissertation on how he could manage to insulate his static caravan, and Bertie took the opportunity to have another go at finding the black and white cat that lives up The Forbidden Path. There's a gate at the top of the path, but there's also a gap at the side of the gate just wide enough for a skinny greyhound to slither through.

Once I'd whistled and yelled long enough I stumped off up the path myself in pursuit. Through the gate is a little private lane for a row of railway cottages. At the gate of one of the cottages was a woman I'd met before. "Are you looking for Bertie?" she asked. "He's out the back. Just come on through my house."

So, carrying my bulging black binbag and litter-picker (it was a working walk), I walked through the back door, down the passage, through the livingroom, greeting the grandchildren as I went, out the front door, across the garden (large rabbit looking nervously out from hutch) and out the front gate. No sign of Bertie.

I called and whistled and yelled and he hove into view. But then he caught more cat-scent and was off down someone else's garden path. More yelling later and I finally had him collared. So that's another section of the walk where he has to be leashed now.

I've been very busy lately, doing all kinds of dull and domestic things, and a few more interesting things. Which I may write about later on. Right now I'm off home.

:: I am still alive

I just haven't had time to write anything -- it's all I can do to keep up with emailing.

Faye's been here for nearly two weeks, in between jobs. She whizzed up to Arran for a couple of days -- it's a great place to visit, with really varied scenery, and not far to drive.

I still don't have time to write much! But I will make an effort over the next few days.

:: bookings

Last night I got busy with planning the great expedition of Sept-Oct 2004: Edinburgh to Paris to Bordeaux to Biarritz to San Sebastian to Bilbao and back again, via London. The plan is for me to fly from Edinburgh to Paris, where we stay for a few days. Then we get the train to Bordeaux. We collect a hire car there, and after exploring the area for a few days, drive to Biarritz. Then we move on to San Sebastian at some point, and make it our base for explorations & expeditions. Then back to Bordeaux, train back to Paris and ...

This is where it gets slightly tricky. The plan after that is to go to London/Oxford for a few days. So I thought, ok, I'll book Pinky a return on the train; I'll get a single flight from Edinburgh-Paris and get the train back to Edinburgh from London. Or whatever.

It turns out that while flying Edinburgh-Paris-London-Edinburgh (with a stay in London) will cost £266.20 (including taxes), flying one-way from Edinburgh to Paris will be £476.20 (including taxes). Yes, that's £201 just to avoid flying from Paris to London to Edinburgh. This sort of thing drives me into a Colonel Blimp-like frenzy of harrumphing: "Stuff and nonsense! How dare they!" etc. I remember something similar for train fares.

Which brings me to the next thing: I can't book any train tickets. Not the ScotRail sleeper, not GNER, not Eurostar, nothing. It's too soon. I'm being too impatient. Hold your horses, they cry, it's only July! September is months away yet.

So I haven't booked anything yet.

Tonight I might have a go at booking my flight to NZ next year.

:: foiled!

On Friday night, Bertie had a brilliant idea. Like most of his ideas, however, it contained a flaw.

The problem was how to get home with a hedgehog in his mouth. You could nearly hear the wheels turning as he stood there trying to work it out. He wanted to go home. But if he got anywhere near me I'd take the hedgehog off him. Ah ha! He'd go home alone. He sped past me and ran down the street -- just about the naughtiest thing he's done in a long while. He was so pleased with himself! "Ha ha! It worked! I'm home, and I still have the hedgehog!"

But here comes the flaw. He hadn't worked out how to get into the house. As he stood at the front door waiting to be let in I clipped on the lead, knocked the hedgehog out of his mouth with my foot and dragged him inside.

Damn! Damn damn damn!

The weather's still pretty awful. I went for a walk in the Pentland Hills today & got drizzled on. It's quite chilly too.

I have a new hobby: litter-picking. The woman who started the Cleanferry campaign dropped off my litter-picker the other day, and I've had a couple of sessions clearing up rubbish. It's astonishing how much there is, once you start picking it up.

:: binland

I should have taken a photo. On Tuesday, a council van arrived in our street and unloaded our nice new brown wheelie bins, especially for recycling garden waste. It was rubbish day, so all the green wheelie bins were already out. It was particularly spectacular given that they left a brown bin for each of the flats across the road -- the street was a sea of bins!

A neighbour later said she'd tried to talk them out of leaving bins for the flats -- the grounds are kept by contract gardeners rather than the owners themselves. But the council workers said they were just following orders. Some of the bins are still sitting out in the street -- there's nowhere to put them!

I'm very pleased with mine, and immediately did some weeding and trimming. Then the storm broke, and since then the rain has been lashing down almost without a break. The raspberries are just about to ripen, so it's been maddening to watch the canes being battered by gales. Wah!

On the work front I've decided to stop moaning and grizzling and whining and adopt more of a Positive Mental Attitude. I've always been an optimistic person, but lately work has been getting me down. Not any more! Realistically I have very little to complain about, and I'm taking positive action on the things that are wrong. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

:: sorry 'bout that

What a time it's been. Work has just been insane, busy and stressful. I won't say much more about it here, suffice to say I bought lottery tickets today. I haven't been sleeping very well, then I sleep in and then have to bustle around getting everything done before work. Urgh.

A symptom of work stress is that I've become addicted to Big Brother. It's a cracker this year -- viewers called the police at one point! I know hardly anyone else who watches it. "What's the point?" sneered one chap. Hello?!? What's the point of Coronation Street? It's entertainment. Duh. Desmond Morris watches it.

One of the proofreaders the other day circled the word "hippest". Hip, hipper, hippest. "I've never come across it before," he said.

The QEII was in town the other day. First clue was a gaggle of elderlies at the bus stop, all dressed in shades of beige, white and stone. They were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones had decided to catch the train into Edinburgh. The ship is parked at Hound Point, and the passengers are ferried to the Hawes pier. Someone told them just to go up the steps behind Hawes Inn to get to the railway station. "I thought I was going to die!" gasped one lady I met while walking Bertie near Dalmeny. Neither she nor another couple I rescued could find the station, though they could hear the trains stopping there.

The weather has been wonderful, hot hot hot and sunny. Then yesterday it clouded over, and today it's pissing down with rain and cold enough to see your breath. I've had a couple of good walks (hood up, wishing I'd worn gloves), a hot bath and watched a bit of BB, and now I'm going to whip up some beef stroganoff. No idea why ... a whim in the supermarket. Fillet beef, mushrooms, sour cream and noodles, mmmmm. I haven't cooked it for probably 20 years.

:: Phew

Finally, a day off. Three days off, actually. It would have been five, but they're short-staffed, so I'm having to work on Sunday.

Right now I'm going to walk Bertie, then go shopping for a wedding present for a couple I've never met, but whose wedding celebration party I've been invited to, then I'm going to a film. I'm not sure which one ... but probably The Day After Tomorrow. It's had rubbish reviews, but I love a disaster movie. Either that or Troy. It's also had rubbish reviews, but I love an epic.

Then I might do some housework, mainly because Fiona's coming round tomorrow and the place is fairly grimy. The window-cleaner came this morning, so I need to at least clean the dog-snot off the inside of the windows.

:: terrierism

The first thing Ozzy did on arrival was to run straight under Bertie (yes, that's right, under) to his food bowl. Bertie's food bowl. And he stood there eating steadily while Colin handed over his luggage and we chatted. Bertie just stared in amazement. I finally had to haul Ozzy's nose out of the trough, at which point Bertie nipped in and finished off his dinner -- he doesn't usually eat much during the day and likes to leave himself a late-night snack. (The solution was to put Bertie's bowl on a high stool, and to give Ozzy some of Bertie's bikkies in his tiny wee dish.)

We had a walk and then it was bedtime. But hey, who can sleep in a new house? It's much too exciting! He barked at the neighbours arriving home at 1:30am, he barked at distant voices at 2am. At 4am he found Bertie's squeaky toys. It was like that the whole weekend: Ozzy manically excited by everything, Bertie so laid back he seemed comatose by comparison. When Bertie caught a hedgehog last night Ozzy's excitement went right off the meter. We were right under the bridge at the time, so his hysterical yipping could probably be heard in Edinburgh. He's a very cute dog, but man is he hard work.

Colin was picking him back up this evening -- a relief for me, and I imagine for Bertie too. He likes sleeping even more than I do!



In case you were wondering what Oz looks like -- he's the same kind of dog as Toto. Hence the name.

:: oz

Oz is staying the weekend! Oz is John and Penny's dog, a Border terrierist. He's very cute, and he and Bertie get along famously. John and Penny are in the US for their daughter's wedding (she's getting married in Las Vegas, in the Starlight Chapel), and Colin and Jenny are minding Oz -- but this weekend, Jenny's away and Colin is rescue-boating at a regatta all weekend.

I'm working on Sunday night, so Colin will let himself in to collect Oz.

Work is just insane, I'm so busy. I'm on top of things, but just barely. I'm having to make inhuman efforts not to burst into flames. I've got Saturday off, then back into the maelstrom again from Sunday to Wednesday. I was then due to have a gloriously long weekend, from Thursday to Monday, but am having to come in on the Sunday. Grrr.

That's all for now, I'll try and post pics of Oz and Bertie together, they look really cute.

:: the big blue

I finally finished painting my bedroom over the weekend and moved back in last night. It's very blue.





Also over the weekend I had a good go at the garden, front and back. I mowed and weeded and strimmed for hour after hour, and it's now looking reasonably cared-for, in a ragged sort of way. My mower doesn't have blades, it has a little plastic tag that whirrs around, and it leaves the grass looking a bit chewed. Also, the hedge is a bit wobbly -- I have no idea how people get their hedges looking so neat.

And finally, I went for lots of walks. The weather was lovely, warm and sunny.





The weekend's over, though, and I'm back to work tonight. It's going to be a very, very hard week. From Thursday I'll be on my own for a full week, with only Saturday off (normally there are at least two of us, and often three). The bonus is that from the following Thursday I'll be off until Tuesday -- a mini-holiday!

:: forgot to say

Bertie didn't need a biopsy -- the swelling's gone right down & is nearly normal. He's got another vet visit on Friday.

I was going to go sailing on Monday but it was too windy in the afternoon. Colin came over in the evening but when we got to the marina the red flag was up, meaning we'd be confined to the harbour area. There were three Wayfarers booked and a school group, so we decided against it. Apparently the waves were 3ft high out on the river. Ulp.

:: ticking boxes

I sat down with my Palm today and forced myself to do things I'd put in my Task list (instead of sitting in the sun eating strawberries and reading a computer magazine). It was quite satisfying to tick the little boxes and see the Tasks disappear from the wee screen.

So, dear Mother and dear Janos, you will soon be getting birthday cards. I've got an appointment for a smear test, and my mortgage update is done. Tick, tick, tick.

One thing I haven't bothered to put on my task list because there's no chance I'll forget to do it is: Paint the bedroom. I finished the papering on Monday and plan to paint on Saturday. The only thing is, I couldn't resist dabbing a bit of paint (B&Q Fresh Sky Blue) on from the test pot ... and I don't like it. It suddenly seems very bright. Changing Rooms bright. Plus the brilliant idea I'd had for a home-made bedspread (ivory brocade with butterflies on it) was blown out of the water by the discovery that it would take 10 metres of fabric -- let's see, at £19.95 a metre, that's ... aeiii! I'm thinking of waiting until I go to Paris & buying something in Montmartre -- there's a whole street of wonderful fabric shops there. Or I could just do curtains in the butterfly brocade.

In the meantime the spare room is a disgusting tip, with piles of clothes everywhere & too much furniture.

:: further update

The swelling is going down slowly, so I've asked them to put off the biopsy until Monday. That's my day off, so I'll be able to ferry Bertie around and hold his paw while he gets over the anaesthetic.

:: update

Bertie's blood test came back clean: no sign of an infection. So he's booked in for tomorrow morning (yes, he's letting himself out quietly so as not to wake me -- well hell, the clinic's practically at the bottom of the road, only one busy street to cross!) and I've been told to starve him from 9pm, because he's probably going to have a biopsy.

Of course I've been hitting the internet and have diagnosed a sialocele, a salivary gland cyst. How impressed will the vet be when I trot that out? Not very, I suspect, so I'll just let them get on with it. But it's good to know he's not about to keel over.

This morning the swelling seemed to have gone down a bit, so it may even just get better on its own.

Yesterday I had my hair done and whizzed round town doing 50 things, all in blazing, sticky heat, and roared off home thinking I would have time to mow the lawn before meeting Fiona. It started raining at Barnton. Fiona and I had had equally knackering weekends so gratefully agreed to put off drinks. I should have rushed upstairs and at least primed the bedroom walls, but instead I whipped up a lovely tasty dinner and then joed out -- after walking Bertie.

:: poor dog

Yesterday morning while out walking Bertie ate a lot of grass and honked it up. Uh oh. I checked him over and noticed that the glands on one side of his neck were swollen. Uh oh. I phoned the vet and whizzed over to Linlithgow for a consultation. He's not keen on the Linlithgow surgery because one time I left him there and the evil vets knocked him out and he had to wear a boot for weeks afterwards. However he was pleased to discover that the other pet in the waiting room was a rabbit in a cardboard box. Also the next pet in was another greyhound, hurrah. Lucky old rabbit owners.

So the vet had a look and couldn't see anything down his throat. His other glands are ok and his temperature's normal. She gave him two shots, antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory. The vet said the antibiotic shot "might sting". Well, apparently it hurt. It really really really really hurt. He squealed and cried and cried and cried. He cried so much and so loudly that the receptionist came in to see what was going on. He cried so much that the other greyhound howled along. The vet gave him a biscuit, and he managed to eat it without stopping crying.

I've got to take him back in tomorrow morning, and if he's not better they'll knock him out and have a good look down his throat. I fear it might be a hedgehog quill stuck down his throat. He isn't any better today; in fact his neck is more swollen than yesterday. He's not eating as much of his dry dog food as normal, but he is managing to choke down a huge quantity of treats. He's in good spirits, chasing rabbits and bouncing around, and his nose is still cold and wet so I'm not too worried. But I feel a massive vet's bill coming on.

I've nearly finished stripping the wallpaper off my bedroom -- ghastly business -- and I should finish tonight. Tomorrow I've got the vet, then I'm getting my hair done and going to the Christian Aid booksale in George St, then in the evening I'm meeting Fiona for a drink. But that could change depending on whether I have to collect a zonked-out dog from Linlithgow -- they don't have an operating room at the local branch. The bedroom's going to be blue. Eventually.

Last night I went to a great concert, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sea Sympony, plus Elgar's Sea Pictures and a couple of other things. A woman at work is in the chorus and she flogged us tickets: John, his wife and I went. We'd also been asked to go by Martin, who knows someone else in the chorus, and he was there with his son. We all met up in a pub & had something to eat before the concert, then went back to the pub afterwards. We had to move pubs because it turned out that Martin's son is barred from the first one! He's not a ruffian, just a free spirit.

:: back due to popular demand...

No, Bertie's coat is not still green. He scrubbed himself up and down the hedge while it was wet and then dried off on the carpet. Oh the joys of pet ownership.

In other news ... well, nothing. I've got a couple of good books on the go (All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland and Ilium by Dan Simmons) and sped-read another, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Oh, and I've also started Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. I recommend them all, though Ilium is only for hard-core sci-fi fans. Having said that, it has inspired me to download Homer's Iliad from the net and store it on my Palm. How sci-fi is that? I've got four other books on there, plus all my addresses etc, several photos, calculator and what-have-you, and plenty of room left. Twenty years ago I was all excited to have a computer with two floppy disc drives (and they really were floppy); now I've got a library in my handbag. I love technology.

I had a lovely letter from Uncle Jock, who sounds in good spirits despite having 10% kidney function and a crook ticker. Dog tucker, he reckons, but he's not letting it get him down. I've resolved never again to whine about my arthritis.