My tormentor

Blood pressure monitor. Gr.

:: playing catch-up

Erm yes, I went to London, just a few days. It's always the same - I think how marvellous it will be to go away for a break, make lots of plans in my head, etc. Finally I book the time off - hugely complicated in this instance because one of my colleagues had taken voluntary redundancy and had to actually stay on longer to fill in for me. I contact friends, make vague plans, book the dogminder... and then nothing, until I suddenly realise it's only a week away and frantically book some transport, which because I left it so late turns out to be madly expensive and un-green (ie Easyjet). I've also left it too late to book anything like theatre or ballet, gah. And in fact I've gone off the whole idea and would rather stay at home.

But despite all that I did have a lovely time. I stayed with Rona, who is a great host. As well as a bed, she gave me an Oyster card and a list of cheap-and-tasty cafes, and off I went.

My first stop was Sir John Soane's museum, which I'd always wanted to see. It is wonderful, literally - full of wonders. It's hard to pick out any one thing, but for me the jaw-dropping surprise was in the tiny picture room, probably six feet square. I was peering at one of the Rake's Progress series when the attendant started unlatching one of the walls. It opened out to reveal yet more paintings - more Hogarth, some Turners, a Fuseli... and then he opened the next set of leaves. More paintings! He turned to the back wall and set about opening that - it really was astounding. The place is so small and dense with treasures they limit the number of people visiting. Because I went on a week day I didn't have to wait long, but apparently on Saturdays the queue winds right down the street.

I also visited the Tate Modern, loved the Roni Horn exhibition there, and the British Museum, where I enjoyed the Shah 'Abbas exhibition and visited old favourites like the mummies and the Assyrian panels and sculptures. One day I took to the river, boated up and down, hopping off at various points and hopping back on again. It wasn't as good as the Batobus in Paris, but still fun.

I also went on a G20 protest march, the TUC one on the Saturday. It was very decorous and uneventful, in contrast to the later demonstrations in the City, where a man died of a heart attack after being shoved over by a policeman in riot gear.

And so back to Edinburgh, where I collected a skinny old Bertie from the dogminder - he had looked particularly thrawn when I left. The other "guests" were an elderly incontinent labrador and a demented bearded collie that kept trying to hump him. I don't think B had a very restful stay. He ate a huge amount when we got home and then slept like a dead thing.

I had a burst of energy and did some gardening - mowed the "lawn", planted onions, swept and scraped moss off the sit-ooterie and scrubbed all the garden furniture. The next day it rained. Sigh. But it looks lovely. I'm growing spuds this year too.

Health news: I've been having regular blood pressure checks for a while now. The only time they've been in the normal range was when I was on holiday, so now the doctor wants me to wear a 24-hour monitor. You wear a BP cuff that auto-inflates every hour. Friends who've worn them say it makes sleeping difficult! A clinic at the hospital organises this - I should get it within a couple of weeks.

I'm pretty sure work stress is keeping my blood pressure up. It's been awful since the end of last year when the economy started going belly-up. Yesterday we had a leaving do for one of my workmates who's taken voluntary redundancy. Another one of the chaps and I went shopping with a big plastic bag full of money we'd collected for him - we got him a TomTom satnav thing and some book tokens, he was delighted. We are going to miss him so much! They've opened the book for redundancies again - sort of tempting, but there's not much work out there and I have a mortgage to pay.

I got a mug with this on it, and it's my motto now:

:: on the river

The Thames at sunset.

:: marmalade

I got out my jam pan again today - this time to make marmalade. What a faff it turned out to be! But worth it, I think.

The first step is to get the right kind of oranges. Not navels, they're too sweet. It has to be seville oranges, which are too sour to be good for anything else. But the thing is that seville oranges are only in season for five minutes, and that brief season has never before coincided with me feeling like making marmalade or having a recipe or even the other ingredients.

So, I when I saw Nigel Slater's marmalade recipe in the paper a couple of weeks ago I tore it out and thought, I wonder if you can still get seville oranges in the shops... but didn't actually go looking for them.

Then Faye came to stay for a few days and on Saturday, a full week after I got the recipe, we had lunch at the local farm shop. And guess what they had on sale? Seville oranges. I vaguely remembered the recipe so bought 12, for the princely sum of £1.46. Obviously on a roll now, I found a bag of preserving sugar in the back of the cupboard, plus I had a couple of lemons and a good stockpile of jars.

That just left the muslin bag. Muslin - where do you get muslin these days? My one and only piece of muslin was a tiny square I got with some skin cleanser. A kitchen shop, maybe? Searches brought up all kinds of weird
jelly-straining solutions and even a dainty, Delia-approved cloth (as small as my facecloth),but not plain muslin bags. Then I had a brainwave - I thought of those muslin cloths you use with tiny babies, to protect your shoulder from burped-up milk. Visited Sainsbury on the way home from work one night and bingo, there they were: five giant muslin squares for a fiver. The woman at the checkout said, "I didn't think you could still get these!"

So last night I started to make marmalade. One of the oranges had started to go off, so I threw in another lemon. First, trim the peel off the fruit and slice it up. Squeeze the juice from the pulp into a jug. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy! An hour later and I was still peeling and chopping and squeezing, hands sticky and stinging. At long last I was done and put the whole lot together in my biggest pot: peel, juice and water to make four litres, and the pulp and pips bound up in a muslin square (previously washed and rinsed).



That sat overnight. The rest would be a breeze compared with the preparation, I thought. I got up early this morning, ready to knock out a few jars of marmalade before walking the dog. Poooooooor Bertie. Once I'd decanted the whole lot into the preserving pan (you're not supposed to leave acid mixtures in it for too long I read somewhere ... though I can't find anything like that on the net) it took over half an hour to come to the boil. Then it simmered for an hour while I had breakfast. After that I was supposed to fish out the bag of pulp, let it cool and squeeze out as much juice as possible into the pan, add the sugar and boil the whole mess fast for quarter of an hour, until a spoonful set in a saucer. Ha ha ha!!!

I should have known better - in fact later on I looked up Nigel's recipe on the net and saw he'd added some extra stuff ... like that this stage could take longer than 15 minutes. A lot longer. It took forever to wrestle with the pulp-stuffed muslin (hot! hot!) and melt the sugar in, and then get the mix boiling again. By the time gotten sick of waiting for the mixture to wrinkle on the saucer and Bertie was definitely sick of waiting for a walk, the windows were running with condensation and the kitchen and I were a sticky mess.

I poured the marmalade into the jars and bolted the lids on - done! Bottled sunshine. I have to say it does taste lovely. Really tangy and fresh. And it might even set.

In other news, I went to the doctor this afternoon about my bunions - or at least the one that occasionally causes me to shriek with pain as I put in the clutch. He wasn't in the least bit interested ("The surgeon won't want to see you until it's MUCH more distorted, red and inflamed."), but did take my blood pressure (the conversation idled around from feet to knees to weight) and it turns out to be too high. High enough to catch his attention. So now I've got to go to the practice nurse (though I'd rather have a real one, ha ha) and have my blood pressure taken next week and the week after.

I didn't tell him about the marmalade.

Weather: It snowed madly in London and the south-east and now it's snowing madly up north. It has not, as yet, snowed madly in Edinburgh. We had a few flurries, followed by slush. Quite annoying.

:: An annoying day

First off, a nice sunset at Blackness Castle:



I blogged this from the phone, but for some reason browsers don't like it and eventually the photos go away. A mystery. So I sent the photo to flickr and linked back to here.

Anyway, the walk at Blackness was a nice interlude in an otherwise fraught day.

First off, I broke a tooth. And this is complicated because my dentist "sacked" me a few years ago when he went private. I should have gone straight to a local dentist and signed up to a dental plan. But of course I didn't. I have an absolute horror of dentistry, having had awful experiences as a child at the hands of school dental nurses with slow drills and quick tempers.

But now I have to have a dentist. And because my work situation's a bit wonky and because I already pay National Insurance, preferably an NHS dentist. But dentists who are taking NHS patients are rare beasts. I turned to the NHS itself for help. The website ("NHS Lothian at your service") had a couple of numbers to ring to locate your nearest NHS dentists.

The result was the same at both numbers: it rang a few times, a recorded voice said "goodbye" and the line went dead.

So I got to work compiling lists of dentists and phoning them, starting from the one up the road and working my way out. Very cunning, those dentists. It turns out you have to have a "clean bill of dental health" before you get on a plan, ie you have to have all your teeth fixed before they'll afford you the privilege of paying up to £40 a month for any subsequent dental treatment. And the prices!! £75 just for an initial examination, without any treatment.

I phoned and phoned and phoned, getting more and more despondent as the apparent cost of fixing my tooth mounted. Finally, a cheery receptionist said, "Yes we take NHS patients." I almost fainted. The appointment's not until next month, mind you, and it is 15 miles away. But still!

I could have annoyed myself still further by doing what was on my schedule before the tooth broke: giving Bertie his weekly treatment shampoo. But I think that would have broken me. So instead we went for a nice walk at Blackness. Because it was such a nice walk, with lots of friendly dogs and walkers for Bertie to schmooze, I took longer than intended and had to race around when I got home, getting ready for work.

I needn't have bothered: there was a whole new set of roadworks in place on a major road on my route, the traffic was crawling along. This is for new gas mains, same as the roadworks that have closed off the street I work in, which means I have to do a big complicated circuit around streets choked by roadworks for the trams - and by traffic that's doing a big complicated circuit around my work street and a couple of other major thoroughfares closed by tram works. There are also various random roadworks - for example there's one little side street that's crucial to my circuit that is sometimes blocked off because of building construction work.

What with all the hurtling around earlier, I didn't prepare anything for my dinner - I like to take a salad box or sandwich or something, because the canteen food is really pretty dire. Tonight's offering was big dish of mince with a pastry top, simmering in half an inch of fat - served with chips, of course. Ick. But it seems I won't have the chance to turn up my nose much longer: the canteen staff were told today that from March it's closing at 2:30pm. Not only that, they're all being sacked and will have to reapply for a much smaller number of jobs - 13 staff, 4 jobs.

And then tonight was hard, hard work, from go to whoa. I'm on my own tomorrow as well, so it will be even harder work.

However. The moral of my day is, no matter how annoying it was, at least I'm not having to compete against my workmates for a new job (yet). And at least I didn't have to slosh around in the Hudson River after my plane crashed.

:: bertie update

Bertie had his second treatment shampoo today. He's dim enough that he walked happily into the bathroom; but he suddenly remembered that the last time he was in there Bad Things happened, and tried to back out. There followed a mad struggle, with lots of flailing and swearing, and finally splashing. The third bath will be even more entertaining.

He's on his fourth course of antibiotics, the infection not having completely cleared up. The vet also told me to give him 1,000mg of evening primrose oil a day, so that's on order via the internet (only £18 for a year's supply, not bad!).

The vet and I had a bit of an argument over his diet. She thought he was looking a bit skinny and asked what I feed him. When I told her half a pound to a pound of meat, raw or cooked, plus as much high-quality kibble as he wanted, she tutted and said, "No, no, dogs shouldn't eat meat." Eh? "They're not designed to eat meat." I'm sorry? "They should eat dog food." We had this discussion as I was grappling Bertie on to the scales, where it transpired that he's not underweight after all. But she still insists he's not getting a balanced diet.

I explained how the last time he lost a lot of weight was before I went away on holiday, when I had to feed him dog food at regular meal times because I was training him up for life with the dog minder. There's only one brand of packet food he'll eat at all now - Nature Diet, 100% natural and of course madly expensive. Liz reported that he didn't eat at all for the first couple of days and was picky after that. He used to like Butchers - only the tripe flavour - but he's gone off that. The only kibble he likes is Judge's Choice Greyhound Maintenance (By Royal Appointment). He'll be enthusiastic about other brands for a few days, but then turn up his nose - and he'd rather die of hunger than eat Bakers Complete. He's as picky about treats: yes to Frolics and Markies; no to Gravy Bones and Winalot Shapes. He's crazy about Greenies Smart Sticks at the moment too - they're teeth-cleaning treats made with green tea ... and of course they're insanely expensive.

So, with all the effort I go to to give Bertie tasty, nutritious food, you can imagine how thrilled I was to be lectured on how he shouldn't eat meat. I had visions of a wolf in the pet supermarket, leaning on its trolley as it reads the labels: "Hmmm... carrots, rice, ok. But lamb - I don't think I'm meant to eat lamb..."

To reassure myself that I'm not going mad, I did some internet research and found that while dogs are classed as omnivores and can eat grains and vegetables (unlike cats, which are carnivores), their diet should be based on .... MEAT. The only caveat about giving fresh meat was that dogs might eat too much of it and become obese. Which is not really a problem for Bertie.

:: happy new year!!

I hope everyone had a better Hogmanay than me - I've got the cold that's been doing the rounds for a few weeks now. I'm at the hacking cough stage, and I've been trying to take it easy because I've got a ticket to Handel's Messiah tomorrow at St Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh. It's put on every New Year by the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union, and one of my work colleagues is a soprano. I've been a couple of times and it's great. Everyone brings along a picnic and you eat it in the interval. Normally it's held in the Usher Hall, but that's being renovated so this year it's in St Cuthbert's. I don't want to be that annoying person coughing through the whole thing...

Today I went to another traditional event - the Loony Dook right here in Queensferry. Normally it's at noon, but this year the tide was too low at noon so it was put off until 1.30pm (not that I realised that - I thought I was late, but in fact I was early). I read afterwards that there were about 600 dookers.



Some of the costumes were fantastic - there were pirates, hula girls, nuns, gangsters, even a Zaphod Beeblebrox. This was my favourite:



The front of his thong was "anatomically correct" - really, really funny! If you click on the photo and look at the biggest one in "all sizes" you can see the reaction of people across from me. Priceless.

I took a little movie too - spot the kiwis! There were loads of Antipodeans there. I think Loony Dooking is like running with the bulls in Pamplona.



It was seriously cold, frost on the ground - rather them than me!

Bertie had his own dooking yesterday. He has a mystery skin condition and the latest treatment involved a medicated shampoo that had to be left on for ten minutes. (I'd had the camera out in the freezing cold on a walk for a couple of hours and it steamed up when I took it into the bathroom. Tsk.)



It went a lot better than I'd anticipated. He didn't struggle too much when I dumped him in the tub and stood reasonably quietly while I wetted him down and worked in the shampoo. He did try to climb out a couple of times during the ten minutes of waiting, but on the whole was very good about it. The result was great - he's all lovely and silky smooth and soft, just like a shampoo ad! And scab-free, for now.

It's all very tedious though. At first - as reported in an earlier post - I thought there was something wrong with his back, because he flinched if you stroked him, to the point of almost collapsing. So the vet prescribed painkillers and spoke worryingly about tumours on the spine.

But then one day after his walk I took off his coat and his back was covered in a kind of dandruff. On close inspection, the skin on his back was all scabby and reddened. Plus he was nibbling away at his flanks. Back to the vet, who took skin scrapings and prescribed antibiotics. The talk was now of mange - oh dear - though the vet had her doubts because he wasn't itchy enough, the scabby bits weren't in the right place (should have been his mouth and legs) and his hair hadn't all fallen out.

As a precaution I replaced his duvet and boil-washed his bedding and jacket. I also started putting him in a T-shirt at night.



The skin scraping results came back negative for mange. The scabs were from a "bacterial infection" - a bug that dogs have on their skin all the time but that can get out of control if they're run down or elderly. More antibiotics were prescribed, a longer course this time. I also ordered Bertie a new jacket (washing the old one had stripped out all the waterproofing) and a house-coat.



Last week he finished the latest antibiotics and was still scabby, so the vet (a different one - there are two of them at the Queensferry clinic) prescribed another course, a steroid injection, plus the shampoo. Oh and she said I shouldn't put Bertie in a house-coat. "They're not designed to wear clothes," she said - though she did concede that it was ok for him to wear a coat outdoors in the subzero weather we're having. Greyhounds do need coats in the cold - they've so little body fat and such thin coats they need a bit of protection.

Despite all the inflammation and scabbiness and medication though, Bertie has been in good spirits throughout, with undiminished appetite and energy. He loves his walks, especially in his favourite parks, and people are always exclaiming, "Eleven! Really? He doesn't LOOK eleven!"

So - another new year. This one is going to be challenging for me. I'll find out in the coming month just how challenging - there's a chance I'll be laid off, but at the very best my working patterns will change dramatically and not in a good way. I'm keeping as positive as possible and counting my many blessings, but I can't help but be nervous about what the future will bring.

:: Best of British craftmanship

This made me laugh out loud - I can only assume it's meant as a joke.

:: let it snow let it snow let it snow

There hasn't been any snow to speak of here, so at the weekend I went off in search of some - and found it! Lovely thick deep squeaky dry snow, at the Hermitage in Perthshire.





Bertie was notably reluctant to stand around posing, or even to stand around waiting for me to take photos - any lingering and he was barking impatiently. It was fuhreezing! Especially if you're just wearing a coat. In other countries they are better prepared for arctic conditions.

:: funny dog story

I took Bertie to the vet this morning. He's generally in good health, but over the past week or so had developed some kind of weird back pain. He was walking fine, not limping or anything, zipping up and down the stairs, stretching, the whole works. But any time you touched his spine or flanks, he flinched. Really flinched, dramatically, with his whole body. Ow! That hurts!

If you touched a particular spot on his spine, his back leg would start scratching in reflex, and he'd sometimes half collapse. On the other hand, I discovered he appreciated a back massage - I was feeling along his spine for lumps, fearing the Big C. All his muscles were tense and shivering, but he leaned in for more back-rub.

So I took him off to the vet, which meant getting up early on a fiercely cold morning when I'd much rather have stayed in bed. I explained to Fiona that he seemed healthy enough blah blah, apart from this: and took off Bertie's coat and touched his back.

Nothing. He stood like a rock. I touched his flanks - nothing. "Oh, he's not doing it!" I babbled, as if he was supposed to start tap-dancing or speaking French. I poked and prodded, but he remained staunchly flinch-free.

So I explained, and Fiona felt along his back and confirmed that his muscles were flinching even if he wasn't showing it. I reckon he was scared to show how much pain he was in in case he was whisked off for surgery.

Fiona says it's probably arthritis in his spine, and that the muscles are tensing and hurting because they're having to hold the spine in a different way to keep it from hurting - the back-rubs help ease the muscle spasms.

So he's now going to be on painkillers long term. Anticipating this, I'd printed off a prescription form for an online vet pharmacy: the vet charges £15 for a 30ml bottle, while online it's less than £25 for 180ml. So even with the prescription fee of £7.50 it's far cheaper.

There's always the possibility that it's not arthritis but a tumour on his spine. But he's very healthy, as I say, eating well and enjoying life. So - fingers crossed it's not going to develop into anything that will spoil his fun.

In other health-related news, Faye is recovering from her op. She's more sore than she'd anticipated, so she isn't going to come up to Scotland until January, even though she says she's "bored out of my brain".

:: delofted

I kept up the pace today, loading the car with cardboard and polystyrene even though there was a gale raging and rain lashing down. I got a freecycle taker for the loft panels and he collected them straight away, so that was a bonus. Then I took the rubbish to the tip ... sorry, took the recycling to the community recycling centre. Actually it was pretty good - lots of enormous bins for absolutely everything, all well organised. I got lost on the way there and drove around aimlessly for a while trying to remember where it was. Then suddenly remembered my new phone has internet - and googled it! And found it! I do love technology.

I even managed to post Faye her dressing gown, and I only got her letter this morning. Whatever happened to my procrastination habit? This is kind of weird, this efficiency business.

So now I just have to find homes for the carpet offcuts and CD shelves. I'm also going to have a hard look at the sheds, see if there isn't more stuff lurking in there that could be recycled or freecycled.

:: What i've mostly been doing today

Clearing out the loft seemed like such an easy thing to do. How wrong I was.

I was under the impression that there were just a few cardboard boxes up there. Oh, and that bit of carpet. And some left-over packs of laminate. And the old lamp and the CD shelves and Pop's old suitcase. And the floor panels and the old doors. And actually, there were like about a dozen cardboard boxes, big ones, and they were almost all full of smaller cardboard boxes and/or polystyrene blocks. Poor Bertie was very worried indeed as the boxes came hurtling down through the hatch, followed by packs of laminate and floor panels.

It was terribly tempting just to give up, but I plugged on, stymied only by the three old doors, which are huge and about an inch and a half thick. After I'd hurled everything out I clambered back down and spent another hour or so separating the boxes from the plastic and polystyrene and bagging everything ready for recycling. So that's it - I'm never leaving this house. I don't have boxes for anything any more.

I've also filled the shed up with the bits and bobs I'm keeping. The rest is in the hall, waiting for me to list it on freecycle. And THEN I got out the vacuum cleaner and dealt with all the fluff and dust. Incredible.

:: keep reading!

I've done some more travelogue ... I'm up to the second day in Thimpu now. Just a couple more days to go!

Day 14: Kolkata to London to Edinburgh to Queensferry... sigh...

The wake-up call was 4am, followed by a waiter with a pot of tea - Darjeeling of course. He brought the tray in, I tipped him and waited for him to leave. "Please, let me pour," he said. "No thank you, that's fine." "Please, madam, allow me the privilege." Good grief! I just wanted to let the tea draw.

We were away too early for breakfast, so the hotel made us up boxes, with a sandwich, juice, crisps and so on and we ate that at the airport. Amazingly I had a row of three seats to myself again! Very comfortable. And the flight was fun too because it was daytime and I had superb views of somewhere hot and dry - possibly Afghanistan.






And I had visits from Merle, Desi, Susan, Lynda and Denis, and visited them ... the most sociable flight I've been on in a long time.

At Heathrow I was really pleased I left so long between flights - it took an age to get to T5; it wasn't just a train trip, I had to change trains! And the security routine was quite something. The thing I hated about the terminal though was the shops - it was all designer and swank and swish, but hardly anywhere to get a coffee. The few cafes had giant queues. My advice is to open a couple of traditional tea shops, with lovely big pots of tea, plates of cakes and proper sandwiches. Crazy idea.

Finally, at last I got on the plane for Edinburgh, with a chatty, witty chap sitting next to me who made me feel glad to be going back to lovely Scotland.

Day 13: Paro to Kolkata

Up very early and off to the airport after breakfast for our flight back to Kolkata. It was a gloriously sunny day, so we finally got a look at the mountains the clouds had been hiding.





It was sad to be leaving after what felt like a lightning tour, plus there were a lot of things we didn't get to see because they were closed. But here we were, flying up and away - in a Druk Air plane of course; only the national airline flies from Paro. Tshering wasn't even getting the rest of the day off - he was collecting his next group later on. They were about 30 Americans on a super deluxe tour. They normally fly by private jet but had had to hire a Druk plane for Bhutan. Gopal was driving back to Phuntsholing to collect his next party.

The temperature in Bhutan had been perfect - not too warm, not too cool. Kolkata was stinking hot, hotter than before we left for the hills. And we were back in the mad honking traffic, the frantic pace. I was almost tempted to stay in the hotel, that cool, hushed haven of marble, maybe have a swim in the pool. But I was in Kolkata! Can't waste the day lazing around! Ajay offered either a river cruise or a tour taking in the botanic gardens, a Jain temple and a place where they make religious statues. Desi fancied the river trip but no-one else wanted to so she fell in with us - and was sweet enough not to say I told you so later on!

We had a bit of a rest - I went and did some emailing in the beautiful business centre - and then met in the lobby for the tour. The guide, a woman whose name I didn't catch, took us to the gardens first. It was mildly interesting - there's an enormous tree there, except it's more like a grove of trees. It's a banyan - aerial roots come down from the branchs and turn into trunks, so the tree gradually expands into its own forest. It was gloomy under the foliage so my photos aren't up to much.



We actually drove around the gardens in the bus - very dull business. The Jain temple was next - Desi said they are usually beautiful, airy places, so I was looking forward to it. And then we hit the traffic jam. The beeping, honking, revving, smoking traffic jam. The guide tried to keep us entertained by sharing her philosophy of life. "I think it's important just to take people as they are... when I meet someone new I accept them for who they are, and if they don't accept me as I am then that's their problem. So many people have expectations about other people...." blah blah blah, on and on and on as we crawled along in three raucous lanes of buses, lorries, cars, taxis, tuktuks, rickshaws, scooters, bicycles.





I was just about ready to kick the door open and run for it, but the people up the front of the bus were apparently rapt, soaking up every word. Merle, however, was slumped with her head in her arms. I caught her eye and rolled mine, and now we were the bad kids in the back seat. After a hissed conversation about how ghastly this was, I took the intiative and interrupted the guide's monologue to ask when exactly we would get to the temple. "I don't know, the traffic...." she waved vaguely. I explained that I was very tired and that our wake-up call was at 4.30am and I for one would quite like to have dinner reasonably soon.

It turned out that the people up the front were just as bored/hot/tired/annoyed as Merle and I and chimed in with requests to please just go back to the hotel if we couldn't get round the traffic. So after an age we managed to turn off on to a smaller road, and suddenly we were hurtling along, whizzing past all kinds of interesting-looking places, including the book market that we'd been meant to see on our first day in the city. In what seemed like no time at all we were at the hotel. The tour had taken about four hours and we'd seen almost nothing.

I went straight to the restaurant with Merle and Desi, and after a Fawlty Towers display by the waiters (to be fair, I think there was a change of shift as we were trying to order) we had a delicious meal.

And so to bed... oh the bliss of that bed!

Day 12: Taktsang (Tiger's Nest) Monastery

The last full day in Bhutan was the highlight of the trip: a walk to the famous Tiger's Nest monastery, Taktsang. The brochure for the trip had a photo of Taktsang on it, but after looking it up on the net I doubted we'd visit it because of the long walk, and it wasn't clear from the itinerary if we'd have time. So I was thrilled when Tshering said we'd be going there.

Remember it had been raining for the previous three days - the clouds had been hanging low over the hills the whole time. We were at a point the previous day when we should have been able to see the monastery but couldn't. But Tshering told us today was an auspicious day to visit it - the last day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar or some such. Yes, I just checked it and it is the last day of the eighth month of the year of the mouse (rat, actually). Very auspicious. So I was sure it would work out fine, even though the nay-sayers were saying nay very loudly.

Walking up steep hills for two and a half hours wasn't everyone's idea of fun - Judy was ill, poor thing, and Mike stayed on at the hotel to minister to her; and Merle the New Yorker was happy to spend the day checking out life in downtown Paro. Of the rest, just Susan, Duncan, Christine and I went all the way to the monastery. Desi, Denis and Lynday stopped at the cafeteria halfway up.

The day looked promising when we set out in the bus and soon we got our first glimpse of our goal.



The path initially was quite straightforward - wide, a little muddy but not too bad, and not too steep. I took it at a steady pace, enjoying the chance to have a good walk after so much sitting round in buses and cars. I was really pleased to have packed my walking stick, though Tshering had brought along some nice wooden ones. There were quite a lot of other people walking the path - a lot of locals, because it was an auspicious day, and a lot of tourists of course. And dogs! There were dogs all along the path.

At one point an American woman overtook me at speed, wheezing and puffing. "Hello doggy!" she yodelled at a dog that happened to be sitting there. "Hello doggy!" She completely ignored me - SO not cute! A bit further on I came across her again. She'd caught up with a friend, and they were having a wee at the side of the path! I was tempted to call out "Hello doggy!" A bit after that they overtook me again, again ignoring me, huffing and puffing. I finally passed them near the cafeteria - they'd stopped for a breather.

I'd love to come back and do the walk in spring - there were loads of rhododendrons and orchids on the way up, it must be really pretty.

After an hour's walk we got to the cafeteria - Susan in the lead, then me, then the others. We stopped there for a cup of tea and to admire the view.





The funny thing was that as Susan and I stood there gaping at the scene and taking photos, the American women showed up and noisily greeted the rest of their party. "Wow I'm really out of breath, naw, don't need the bathroom, took a leak on the way up, oh great, tea, is there anything to eat?" and so on and on, all at the top of their lungs. And while they yakked, the cloud quietly closed in, shrouding the monastery. "Hey, where's my view gone?" bellowed one of them, finally noticing. Hee hee. I did feel a bit smug.

There were cats as well as dogs at the cafeteria, all with well-honed techniques for polite begging.



Further up from the cafeteria the vegetation changed - now we were up among the clouds there were more orchids and ferns and spanish moss.







It was hard to get a really good photo of this - the colours were very rich and striking, russet and jewel green - these shots are a bit washed-out.

All along the path there were reminders that we were in a holy place. Bit of background: Taktsang got its name because it's the place where Guru Rinpoche meditated after arriving in Bhutan on Yeshe Tsogyal, his flying tigress-consort. This was in the 8th century. The monastery was built in the 17th century. In 1998 a good part of it burnt down (like so many buildings in Bhutan! a combination of well seasoned wood, devotional lamps and a lack of firefighting equipment), but it was rebuilt in what must have been an incredibly difficult project.

So, Taktsang having been a place of pilgrimage for more than 1,200 years, the pathway leads not just to the main monastery but to several other smaller temples and caves and retreats. The monks at Taktsang stay just a few months, but in some of the retreats monks come for three years, three months and three days. They have just one meal a day and spend most of their time in meditation.

Here's a holy spot with a collection of miniature stupas. These are little terracotta cones moulded with a hollow bottom, into which something commemorating a deceased person is put - it might be ashes, a photo or a piece of scripture.



I don't know what this was about - I like to think it was a nice little prayer rather than something like "take your litter home".



Not that they would say anything that crass:



And of course there were the dogs to keep us company.





At this point the path went from being reasonably easy going to being very difficult indeed, at least for someone like me with bum knees. I took a couple more ibuprofen and contemplated the view. At the point the path went very steeply down to the left of the picture below, then very steeply up again. I thought maybe they got the prayer flags across the gorge by shooting an arrow across with a bit of string tied to it; but no, they take one end and the string of flags and trudge down the steps and back up the other side.





But before we started down the steps we stopped at the butter lamp chapel. Ah yes, they have learned a thing or two: the butter lamps are kept well away from the monastery.



It was the sweetest little place, shimmering and cosy with the light and warmth of dozens of butter lamps. We lit one for each member of the party, plus one for Tshering and his family, and then Duncan lit one for his late wife - so he had to light another one to make it an odd number - it's auspicious.



I realised later that I hadn't taken a photo of the monk - that's his bare foot in the bottom left-hand corner! He was very nice, shy and smiley.

Then it was down down down the steps to the bridge across the stream at the foot of the waterfall.





Just past the waterfall is a tiny little pilgrimage site, Senge Phug, one of the nine sacred caves at Taktsang.



And then up and up and up and up to the entrance, where we had to shed our bags and cameras, submit to being frisked, and then put on our jackets.



Just when I was feeling pretty good about having made it there, I saw the next lot of steps leading up inside the monastery. Great big tall stone steps, two flights of really really steep steps. Just as well I was allowed to keep my stick! Off I went, up and up and up. And it was well worth it.

The main temple is a jewel box, a gleaming gem painted with images of the Buddha and Guru Rinpoche. There's a statue of the guru as well, and piles of offerings. Every detail is exquisite, the door, the door handle, the statues, the paintings. But the highlight was in one corner: a huge gilded door with a little window in it, through which you can peer in to the actual cave where the guru meditated. It is decorated and hung with white silk scarves, but it is clearly a cave, a deep cleft in the rock.

After viewing the cave, we each received a blessing from the monk - you give a donation, chose a symbol from a little basket and he tied it around your neck while murmuring a prayer. I have a phurbu, a ritual dagger, with a dorje or thunderbolt on the handle. It's more like a three-sided tent peg than a dagger, and symbolises the overcoming or cutting through of the three poisons of ignorance, greed and hatred. The dorje symbolises cosmic energy in its pure form. (Fascinating Fact: Darjeeling comes from Dorje Ling, Place of the Thunderbolt.)

Tshering made three full prostrations in front of the guru statue. He says if you meditate in this temple he will sometimes speak to you. "But so far, nothing," he said cheerfully.

We had a look out over the gorge from a balcony just down from the temple, then went around the corner and up some more steps to see the cave where Yeshe Tsogyal, the flying tigress and consort and enlightened being, the Queen of Bliss, meditated. No fancy temple, no gilded door, just a plain cave.

And then it was back down down down the steep stone steps. A Bhutanese woman coming down behind me said, "Same! Same! Sore knees!" and gave me a helping hand. We got chatting and she asked where I was from. "Edinburgh," I said. "I've been there," she replied. Her husband went to university in Scotland, studied agricultural science. She was murmuring mantras as we walked along.

For some reason I didn't take many photos on the way back down down down the stone steps and back up up up the stone steps - rather too busy staying alive!



The dogs were still tooing and froing along the path. They seem to have quite a nice life.





The cairns on the path reminded me of hillwalking in Scotland.



At one point we had to wait to let some monks go past with ponies carrying supplies for the monastery.



Finally we reached the cafeteria, where we had lunch. The food is all vegetarian, because it's a holy place. It's cooked on wood stoves in a very basic (and smokey) kitchen and served in a buffet in the large dining room. We ate outside.



The animals were quite restrained.



Just near the cafeteria some ladies were selling necklaces and so forth from blankets spread on the ground. They called out "shopping, shopping" as soon as we hove into view. I'd had a look on the way up and knew what I wanted - some yak-bone prayer beads. I negotiated a price I was pleased with and the seller was very pleased with. I got one set for Anthea and one for myself. I love them - they're very plain and simple and very heavy.



She's smiling with her mouth shut because her few remaining teeth are stained red with betel nut. She's a sweetie.

On the way back down the hill we came across a team of litter-pickers. I asked them to pose so I could send a photo to the CleanFerry group - litter-picking is one of my hobbies.



After the long walk I was pretty knackered but elated. The bus was waiting and we drove in to town for a quick bit of shopping before heading back to the hotel for a well-earned shower and a rest. We went out for dinner to a very nice restaurant in Paro - delicious food. There was a real treat in the buffet lineup: yak goulash. John will be thrilled to know that Hungarian cuisine has reached the furthest corners of the world! It was delicious, by the way. And it was a proper goulash too, yum.

After such an action-packed day I slept very well that night.