Boast Letter

We never send a boast letter with our Christmas cards but, while rude about the ones we receive, do like to hear peoples' news. So:-

"Dear All

I can hardly believe another year has gone by. It seems like yesterday when I sat down to give you last year's news from the ON household. What a busy year it has been! [Why do people write this twaddle]

The year started, as have the last few, in Northumberland with friends and we celebrated our fortieth birthdays in January with a fantastic party in the Signet Library in Edinburgh. Most of you were there. It was a huge privilege to be able to eat, drink and dance with so many of our friends and family in such a superb setting. It was a highlight not only of this year, but of the last 40.

The first few months of the year saw builders in this house and we are now firmly moved in to (and have messed up) the really quite good space they have created in our attic. The small child has moved up there and, at least for a while, kept many of her toys there. While the project had its bad days (twice flooding our downstairs neighbour who was really pretty stoical throughout; the constant complaints from next door about the noise - a bit much - we didn't once mention theirs when they did it; nights with buckets to catch the drips from the light fittings as the rain poured through the (admittedly) enormous hole in the roof) we quite miss the Bobs as they were christened.

We remain very busy at work although change is afoot. Mrs ON has served notice of retiral from her firm and, while she expects to continue to do some work for them, intends to have more time with the small child at least for the meantime. This gives us the ability to consider a house move and we are currently looking for a new house for 2008, probably in North Northumberland so I will become a commuter. I am strangely relishing the prospect of starting my working day a little earlier on the train and trying to bring some sort of regularity to my evening hours, which this year have been frequently out of control. This all seems like considerable upheaval after 10 years of very stable living, but at the same time life should not stand still and many people cope with far greater, far less self imposed, change. 2008 will therefore be exciting. Work has been its usual mix of company and commercial work, although the opportunity to work with my private client colleagues on a significant (and very last minute) heritage purchase of a house and its furniture collections was a highlight of the working year.

We are not wide travellers these days. We did however have a good Easter week in Belford (hot and sunny) and returned (being the creatures of habit we are) to Sardinia in the summer. We went to London in October to admire our good friends' new baby and hope to see them again next week for New Year.

Away from work we continue to try and spend as many week-ends as possible in Belford. We missed a lot in the early part of the year because of the building works here, but since April we have been a lot. We continue to enjoy the beaches and countryside. I have golfed sporadically and fished a few days on the Kyle of Sutherland rivers, the Ettrick and the Tummel; we continue to garden away; and have added to the already many pictures about the place. I have limited the feeding of my D Y Cameron habit to one etching and, just this week, a really nice drawing - I feel very virtuous at having resisted a fantastic oil of Iona Abbey seen in London in October. Again because of the building works we didn't see many people here in the early part of the year but have, since the summer, eaten and drunk too much with at least some of you and have been fortunate to have been away for week-ends with some of you. We remain involved with a number of organisations away from work including CHAS, Queen Street Gardens, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and the Muir Maxwell Trust.

The small child continues to love school. One of the serious downsides of a move is the need to move her. She has persisted, mostly with enjoyment, with the piano and riding lessons and has many friends, through school, but also more widely through Brownies and ballet. She is on the whole great fun and a general life enhancer.

Christmas sees us as godparents, tomorrow, to my brother's daughter. We will all be there bar my youngest brother who has emigrated to Australia - holiday opportunity there. They arrived a month ago and have settled down quickly. Otherwise our families change some, but not greatly. We will see them over the next fortnight and are looking forward to it.

Roll out the goose and a decent bottle of burgundy. Have a very happy Christmas one and all and all the very best for 2008.

Lots of love

ON"

Pass me a bucket!

Festive cheer

It is my office party on Friday night. I am not going. My non-attendance is not as a result of being a miserable old curmudgeon, although I am, but as a consequence of being invited in June when Christmas is completely beyond my contemplation. I would happily compromise on venue (indeed I would be happy to revert to the days when it was a drunken standing up affair in the office) not to have to think about it until at least October. It is now a casualty of two too full diaries.

This city (when it is not raining the way it is this evening) looks fantastic at this time of year. The lights in the trees in Princes Street Gardens are understated but beautiful. They somehow enhance, rather than overshadow, the slightly more garish lights of the big wheel and "Winter Wonderland". We wandered through the gardens on Sunday having been to the superb Joan Eardley exhibition at the RSA in busy crowds of people at the German (-ish) Market. It was dry and cold and the sun had set, leaving odd bits of light behind. It was soon enough to contemplate things festive.

Confused again

I have had a strange Sunday night. It is very unusual for us to go out on Sundays - sheer force of habit - we sharpen our pencils and polish our shoes for the week ahead in this house. Tonight we have been to two things. First we went to a book launch. It was very interesting. It was at Valvonna & Croalla, by any standards an institution; John Bellany illustrated the book (he is one of my favourite artists - I can't really afford his work, but have a watercolour and a screen print); he spoke (indeed read, but got away with it, because he is genuinely a great man); Philip Contini of V&C sang at 10 minutes notice, beautifully; someone read the poems - I'm sorry I can't remember her name - she read at another book launch we went to recently so its unforgivable that I can't remember who she is - my wife will know because her Granny revered Scottish actresses - I can only remember Elaine C Smith. It was a very Scottish evening in a literary and artistic kind of way.

Then we went to a party for the Muir Maxwell Trust which is a charity which raises funds to relieve suffering from childhood epilepsy. It was held in a really smart venue in central Edinburgh. The last time I was there is sold good beer. Tonight there was champagne, canapes and celebs. There was a persistent photographer - we are not photogenic! It was a very nice party, but very different from the book launch in almost every way.

I suspect neither event is me really. We had fish and chips for supper and felt better.

Selling the family silver?

One of the limited privileges of working in my office is that we have some good pictures. They are not all ours (one or two are borrowed) but most of them are. I and one of my partners form the Art Committee. I went to the Edinburgh College of Art Alumni Centenary Exhibition last week. Many of the artists in our collection were represented. I vowed to try and appreciate our pictures a bit more. On Friday we sold two (not borrowed ones)!

We have an emerging philosophy of buying work with some relevance to the work we do by Scottish artists, or from Scottish galleries, with whom we have a connection. We have a very small budget, hence the sales. It is the first time in a long time we've sold anything and it feels great. They were good little pictures, but if we are going to try and move the collection on there is no choice but to sell things that don't sit within it or simply act as wallpaper. For so many people what we have is irrelevant. We are keen to acquire some things that people notice - whether they like them or not is irrelevant. What matters is that the working environment for staff and clients is enhanced, even if only by having something to talk about. This week having sold we have the opportunity and the budget to buy something. The money is burning a hole in my pocket.

Happy Holidays

I did say the visits would be occasional! For some reason holiday times seem to become overwhelmingly hectic and getting to a computer accordingly difficult. Half term in this house finished last Tuesday. We came home just in time for our daughter to go to Brownies on Tuesday evening- she goes to Brownies: we go to the pub, returning for her an hour later to breath beer fumes over Brown Owl. It is an established pattern.

The week before we go away is always all consuming work-wise notwithstanding the fact that one is now never truly away in the sense that emails follow everywhere. We need real deadlines (flights to catch; distance between us and the office) or we just stay put.

This time we had a deadline, in that we had friends for lunch and Alwinton Show on the Saturday, but no distance so we ended up back in Edinburgh on Sunday, collecting our daughter on the way to the London train on Monday morning. We had a great time in London - the parks looked beautiful in their autumn colours, the sun shone and we pottered about in a thoroughly touristy manner - Sound of Music: Terracotta Warriors; Tower of London; Hamleys. We remembered while we were there that we had friends coming to stay on the Thursday. It was great to see them - their son fell in the sea (but had spare clothes); we golfed in almost isolation on a fantastic sunny afternoon; we ate too much good food; drank too much Co-op Beaujolais and generally caught up with people of whom we see too little. Its strange how life changes without any sort of plan so that people you used to see three times a week you see three times a year. They went home on Saturday after lunch leaving us alone until our return home on Tuesday.

We ran straight back to Northumberland on Friday night. We have had our house there now for exactly four years - I know that because I saw Johnny Wilkinson kick his World Cup winning drop goal in Ikea as we sought (and managed) to acquire the entire contents of a house in under an hour. My bank phoned on the following Monday to ask if someone had stolen my credit card! We had many hopes for it and have not been disappointed. One was that our daughter would spend at least some of her time on the beach. She emerged on to the beach at Cheswick this morning, with her picnic on her back and her trousers rolled up and just pottered along consumed by her own thoughts - makes it worthwhile in itself.

Living better

I had a whole day in the fresh air yesterday. I don't fish many days a year, but on Friday spent a day on the Ettrick. Fishing conditions were not great with low water and bright sunshine, but the countryside looked fantastic in the warm autumn sunshine and, were it not for the fact that I am instilled with a sense of fishing duty ("You'll catch nothing without your fly I the water"), I would have been happy sleeping under a tree. I went with a friend and client, we took a lot of food (6 pies in 6 hours), a bottle of red and a few pounds for beer. We stopped at the pub for an hour in the afternoon (too bright to fish we told ourselves) and chatted idly with a fishing party from Yorkshire. Were it not for the fact that I seem to have bent the undercarriage of my car driving across a field (I should have known better fishing, like golf, being a walking, carrying game) it would have been a near perfect day.

Tomorrow I am going to Kelso Races, another favourite day out, again in the fresh air, although I fear in the rain. If I am feeling really determined to live better I will golf first - Goswick at 7.00, Parents for coffee, Kelso at 12.00. Its tight but do-able schedule.

Living badly

I seem to go through periods of living badly - too much work and too much work related eating and drinking. The next week or two (in fact three if you count half term week which follows them) look like being more sensible. The latest bout of excess ended on Friday. It has involved some late nights in the office; some dashing around the country both north and south; a lot of lunch; and in one week dinners on consecutive mid-week nights. Its not exactly going down a mine or walking the streets of Bazra (and I am grateful for both) but it takes its toll in its own way. I always, at the end of a period like that, feel less like doing it ever again.

Friday night was however only work related in the vaguest sense. I am a member of a small dining club. It is connected with the WS Society of which I am a member. It exists (the club; not the Society) for the sole purpose of having an annual dinner in the Signet Library. The Library is a beautiful building with one of the most stunning Georgian interiors in Edinburgh (and hence Britain and the World). My wife and I had a joint fortieth birthday party there in January which was fantastic and it was a huge privilege to have so many of our friends together in such a superb setting. The club uses one of the Library's smaller rooms and Friday night was its 30th dinner. The room is beautiful, lit by candles only, with the Society's silver in use; our guest was a distinguished, interesting and controversial retired member of parliament - he spoke with conviction and stimulated conversation; the chairman (elected annually to chair the dinner) was one of the founder members and was able to produce the letter he and three colleagues wrote inviting the original members to join; the food was first class and the claret (which the club buys ahead using a wine levy on members) incomparable to what I usually drink. It was a great occasion and a suitable way to mark 30 years of the club. Saturday I was hungover again!

Week-ends away

I have just returned from Northumberland to a wet (for the first time in the best part of a month) Edinburgh. It is probably wet in Northumberland too by now. Since May (when our builders went away) we have been in Northumberland at lot at week-ends. This is not unusual - we just seemed to be there much less in the early part of this year. Our week-ends there have a familiar pattern - we leave here on Friday evening if we can; drive down the A1 (never failing to be stunned by the view down the coast to Lindisfarne and Bamburgh Castles from just north of Berwick); arrive, light the fire, eat chips and drink wine; take our small child to her riding lesson; go to the beach; read a lot of rubbish in the papers; occasionaly golf (badly); visit something; go back to the beach; read a lot of rubbish in more papers; come home usually on the other road, sometimes dropping in on family somewhere on the way. We often (although less lately) have friends to stay and enjoy showing them beaches and castles.

This week-end we have walked on the beach at Bamburgh. We went to Thropton Show. We walked today at Cheswick, where there were no signs of the many golf balls I accidentally fire over the dunes from nearby Goswick. The weather has had a tinge of autumn about it; the trees are turning and the hedgerows fantastic. The views south to Lindisfarne and beyond this morning were spectacular with the wind whipping the tops off the waves and the sky marbled (almost as beautifully as some of the marbled eggs in the Thropton industrial section). We are aware that living like this has a certain degree of unreality about it - it is almost like being on holiday every week-end or two. Except its not. It is a part of how we lead our life. It takes a bit of effort. We have proper homes in both places, both equally full of our stuff and each comfortable enough to be lived in properly. We are in Edinburgh most of the time, but do much of our living in Northumberland. I can't quite decide whether its the best of both worlds or a compromise. I'm not sure I have a compromising nature. Oh hell - confused again.

Garden Plenty

It has been a poor summer in our garden. It has been a bit neglected. We were stuck here in the earlier part of the year as we had work done on our house and since then have been making up for lost time away. The garden has had to do its own thing in a not very easy summer. It is a good spring and early summer garden, but usually struggles its way through July and August. This year it has remained green (with an occasional flower) until now. Veg has not done; annual flowers have not done; the grass has grown but not with its usual vigour. Today however it yielded a surprisingly large harvest of plums and damsons (which it usually does only every second year). Accordingly we have been in chutney and damson gin production. My granny lived (indeed was born and brought up in) the Lyth Valley and both damsons and sloes (that other great gin flavourer) were plentiful in her house. I was surprised to find damsons growing in our garden, but will be happy to be able to toast their existence in a few month's time!

Show Time

This is the first day at the week-end when I have woken in our bed in Edinburgh since late June. While I love being away at week-ends, it is good to be here. It is a beautiful morning newly light at 6.30; from my windows I look out across tree tops that remain green in late August; and here at least this city is quiet, save for the pounding footsteps of Sunday morning joggers. Not far from here (comfortable walking distance) festival goers in rented flats, hostels and hotels will be pulling bedclothes over their heads, cursing the amount they drank last night, yet planning at the same time their itinerary for the day. In three or four hours time they will be on the streets, clogging the pavements in a colourful, culture seeking mass. I like the fact that they are here and enjoy this city, but I love it when they go home. The first week in September is often sunny, but cooler, the visitors have gone and the city returns to its normal, workmanlike (perhaps even dour) self. While all this is culture is fine that it truly this city at its best.

We went on Friday night to stay with friends in their cottage in Glenshee. It is in a great spot with superb northerly views towards the higher hills at the north end of the glen. As has been our habit over the last few years we went to the local highland games and (sadly FMD depleted) agricultural show. We went to another highland games earlier in the year as we were in the area and were bearing a vague invitation to the chieftain's tent where we were looked after splendidly. The chieftain (while perhaps at first glimpse looking like a caricature of a highland laird) is probably the most impressive individual I have ever met, charming and with a sharpness of mind that belies his 87 years and with records as a sportsman, academic, soldier and businessman, coupled with an involvement in the communities he inhabits in Scotland and London, which, while most importantly (although I suspect not to him) amazing achievements, say much about this supposedly busy generation's relative lack of contribution. We enjoyed both games, and in this miserable summer the sun, quite properly, shone on both of them. It is the Glendale Show on Monday. We had planned to take the day off (no bank holiday here) and go, but work has intervened. I hope the sun shines on it. We are working hard on retaining flowers and encouraging any form of vegetable growth, in what has been a poor growing summer in our garden, for our village show at the end of September. Last year we had our most competative friend staying. We are not sure we can handle the pressure to perform this year.

Plain consumption

I don't think I am extravagant. I hate shopping and swore a couple of years ago not to buy anything material that wasn't either (or preferably both) second hand or capable of lasting for at least my lifetime and preferably some of the next generation's. This seems to be an expensive approach to retail and I don't always manage it - it is not a shopping philosophy which for example lends itself to the acquisition of boxer shorts.

I am however susceptible to pictures. I bought a Northumberland seascape on holiday which now hangs here to remind me where I would rather be and, a week or two ago, succumbed to a picture of fox hounds with which (even although I don't yet have my hands on it) I am absurdly pleased. I have told myself repeatedly ever since that this is the last picture I will buy. I need no more pictures. I am going instead to buy a sensible, grown up house in which to put them. I appreciate that with houses come walls and, with walls, come pictures, but I will resist (and indeed be too skint to do otherwise!)

Time consumption

The week-end before last we went to stay with my parents and brothers and sundry others, invited for a day or two, at a lodge in Perthshire. We did something similar last year when, among other things, we played golf for a stone collected from the beach as a trophy worthy of our limited efforts. This year the stone has been mounted on a wooden plinth surrounded by a carefully engraved silver band - we didn't really rise to the occasion in golfing terms. Among the party were various children - my own and my nephew and nieces. When our daughter was born my mother commented that there was little which consumed time like babies, not in the sense that looking after them kept you busy (which of course it does), but in the sense that one can occupy hours simply guddling about with them. Its fair to say we guddled about a bit with toys, monster chases along corridors and general entertainment of, and peace keeping among, the under 10s. Sadly one day they will beat us and carry off the stone!

Last week end I wandered along the beach searching for cowries - it is an equally time consuming (although considerably more useless) activity. I had assumed it was a private obsession until I read an article about others equally pointlessly engaged in The Telegraph a year or two ago. My granny always had a small glass of them on a telephone shelf in her hall. She never seemed to have more than half a dozen and we would occasionally go to the beach with her to look for more. We were delighted at the week-end with a haul of twenty four. Our daughter gets cross if the scores are unequal and so in the interests of a quite life we share.

Writing

I am conscious that for many people blogging is a writing thing. I write (or at least draft) a lot - pages and pages of technical documents; long letters of advice; emails; notes; reports. I do it all day (and sometime all night) long. None of it has any literary merit! I enjoy the writing on the blogs I read - it is funny; moving; thoughtful; entertaining; informative. People frequently take care to select a subject and write about it in a way which will make the reader want to read it - not always but mostly. Last week I had to write a letter to a friend whose child had died suddenly overnight - how do you find anything sensible to say?

...and back to work

We came back from holiday today. We sort of came back from holiday last week as well, but only for long enough to identify a problem with our electricity, cut the grass and go away again. We have had a lovely time. Sardinia was beautiful. We stayed in a place we'd stayed in before and the sun shone and the food was fantastic - that's about where our holiday needs end provided we have enough books. Last week we were in Northumberland and while the weather was (at best!) mixed we had a great time. We visited Flodden Field ("field" being the operative word) one of the few historic places we hadn't visited in North Northumberland in spite of driving past it almost weekly; went to the Harry Potter film in Newcastle; played bad golf; walked on the beach; collected cowries (a family obsession); had visitors to stay; and had a really good time last night at the Stars of the 80's concert at Alnwick notwithstanding (in fact almost as a result of) the weather - Ooh Heaven is a Place on Earth.

Tomorrow we go back to work. I have had a deliberate policy of not being copied into emails to avoid the temptation to look a them. I find holidays deeply unsettling. They give me a glimpse of how life could be better (not that its strictly bad) and then chuck me back to where I was a week or fortnight before. I live so much better on holiday - I eat properly, I vaguely exercise and I have time. Almost more than ever I feel a need to do something about it - to simplify my life and make it better for us all. The only thing that seems to stop me is a vague fear of change and some people don't have the luxury of choosing to change. I suspect we do and should.

Summer Holidays

We took our daughter ski-ing when she was one. We went with a group of friends to a chalet. Not the chalet we had booked - it had burned down. We all had one year olds. Ours was sick first. Not badly sick - just sick enough that you wouldn't want to leave her with someone else. We stayed with her and the babysitting rota (we booked too late to organise child care) devolved entirely to us. By then she had infected the others. We didn't have a terrible time but we did swear she would next go abroad on the school trip. We have since relented and so we are off to Sardinia next week-end assuming the Scottish airports are not off limits. I love being on holiday but dread the rush to get away, the travelling and the return to hundreds of emails. I particularly love the fact that we all want to go, the general excitement of going somewhere else and that for a whole week we can do absolutely nothing but eat, drink, read rubbish and swim. I find holiday a stark contrast with the bad lifestyle I seem generally to adopt. Every year I come back and tell myself there is a happy medium between overwork, over eating bad food and no exercise and holidays, but I seem to lack either the ability or, ultimately the will, to find it. We are spending our second week in Northumberland - last year it was hotter than our week in Sardinia: at present this year looks like a further swimming opportunity across fields of mud! With blind confidence I have booked tickets for the Picnic in the Park concert at Alnwick to re-live the days of my youth. I'm sure the sun will be out before too long.

Pottering about the countryside

I have had a strange week. I tell myself that weeks like this are unusual, although I do seem to have a few of them. I left home at 6.00 am on Monday to travel by train (the only efficient form of travel if you actually want to achieve anything while you move) for Thurso on Scotland's north coast. It is a long slow journey - a colleague made the train journey from Paris to Edinburgh as quickly the week before - but does give an opportunity for uninterrupted work. The view is also pretty good although frustrating as I travel along the rivers Tay, Helmsdale and Thurso all populated by fishermen as I tap at laptop keys. I went there to see people in connection with an excellent project with which we are involved at work. I met them, I slept in a friendly hotel and then I left Thurso on on the 6.50 am train on Tuesday to return to Edinburgh - another eight uninterrupted hours with the exception of polite chat with fellow travellers who were on their way to Berwick upon Tweed. I was jealous. I visited the office. I made a fleeting appearance in the office on Wednesday morning and then went out to clients. I went from that client to Perthshire where I joined a Scottish Wildlife Trust field trip to The Hermitage, had dinner, slept in a friendly hotel and then left Pitlochry at 6.00 am on Thursday to meet clients in Livingston. I went to the School Sports. I have been in the office all day to day and then I went home (via the pub!). It has felt, although has probably not been, shambolic!

Entertaining?

For the first time since "the Bobs" (as our builders were predictably christened by us despite all their names being Andy) left we had people for dinner last night. Our guests were drawn from what I think pass for the usual sources - work, university, parents from school. We had been to one couple's house for dinner recently and she had cooked fantastically so a degree of pressure to perform was being felt. While a back street driver on these occasions I enjoy the rituals of feeding people - finding and polishing silver; choosing drink; the hopeless hunt for muslin culminating in the decanting of port through a pair of tights; buying good cheese; rushing home; carefully washing such good things as we have afterwards; putting everything away through the morning haze of hangover (and yes I have the inevitable wholesomeness of the school coffee morning to cope with).

While I enjoy all that, the best bit is having people here, some of them people we used to see every week and now see all too rarely, and laughing. I can't at this point remember where the conversation went (it will come back and I'll cringe later) - I just know that, as it always does in this house, it descended rapidly. My broad philosophical approach to entertaining (if its sensible to have such a thing) is to put people in a place where they can have fun generally involving the consumption of drink, but then expect them to return the favour by doing so. We had a great time last night - good guests, who can come again.

The Edge of Summer

Today has been warm and this evening balmy. I drove home with the car roof down, it was still just light at 10.00 o'clock, the air smells of cut grass and one of our neighbours had a party in their garden. It feels like the front edge of summer.

I like the way the seasons change and am as happy with the move through autumn to winter, with its short days and dark journeys home (Edinburgh is a city particularly well adapted to those sorts of days), as I am with the lengthening days of late spring and summer. It is the variety I like and, by the time we have had one season, I am ready for the next one. I particularly like the front edge of each season, when the change is obvious and the new season fresh and ahead of us. Summer holidays are pending (not that I've got the length of booking mine), the parks are full of cheerful lunchtime refugees from hot offices and sports days, school concerts and doubtless exams fill the minds of children. It is too easy to wish time away - Friday beckoning on Monday, July holidays beckoning in June. I should try to shed sufficient busyness to enjoy time for its own sake.

The Garden

My father is and my grandparents are/were keen gardeners. Both sets of grandparents, having gardened in their respective (long established) gardens, created new gardens in their retirement. I'd like to create a new garden, ideally starting before I retire, but need to find somewhere I believe I can live for long enough to make the exercise worthwhile.


I hope that my Edinburgh garden, while undoubtedly suburban both in location and scale, is not in terms of approach. It is not a tidy, well thought out space, but rather a gradually developing mass of plants round a square patch of grass - lawn would be to flatter it. It has fruit trees and vegetables; we have planted new trees marking significant occasions or received as presents; it has a very smart bench (currently undercoat orange, but soon to be elegant white again), out of keeping urns, a wire sculpture of a pheasant (my 40th birthday present), a swing, a Wendy House and various compost sources, including a wormery. It fulfils a variety of functions: a place to play; a place to garden; a place to sit in the sun; a place to entertain (in our tent if necessary); a place to practice golf/casting; a place to dry washing! It has two peaks, April when it comes to life with blossom, daffodils, tulips and new growth and June when, in the late evening, it becomes an almost beautiful place in which you can't see the weeds for the plants and delphiniums, self seeded poppies and sweet peas provide a show of colour which, while not passing for order, might seem meant.

Being a hick

I go to London periodically. I enjoy being there for a day and generally take the sleeper down and back to maximise the time I am able to spend and people I am able to see. I attend a regular committee where I am one of only two Scottish attendees - the other is far higher powered than me. There is no doubt I am a hick. The others emerge from the tube out of the City; many of them seem to work in businesses that allow them to concentrate on the sort of policy issues the committee deals with; they see each other at similar committees; they have firm positions on things; they are a pretty impressive crowd. I emerge sleep deprived from the train with my pyjama's poking out of my briefcase; my business encourages my attendance but I am conscious of the cost of doing so and rush around trying to fit other London things in round about it; I rarely have firm views on the matters being discussed and many of them would be a mystery to my clients; everyone is kind about the effort I make to get there, but I am not sure they understand it. Today I am behind with my work and have blisters - I am therefore not sure I understand it either.

There are compensations - yesterday rather then take the sleeper down I caught the first train. The GNER East Coast route remains a civilised journey - at least for the first hour or so I pass through places I know and like - even glimpsing them from a speeding train reminds me that they are there. The London train is one of the few places I can work, uninterrupted for four hours, and be served a decent breakfast. To have done all of that and travel 350 miles, all before 10.00 am is good. The sleeper home allows me to have dinner in London with friends. My London geography is dire. Yesterday I forgot my A-Z. Looking for Victoria (close to where we were having dinner) I walked to Waterloo. On the day of the 7/7 bombings I set off on foot, blindly believing in my ability to walk from Mayfair to Wimbledon - I have never been so pleased to see a taxi and regarded the £45 fare a bargain. Why I walk so many miles in London I do not understand as the public transport system is fantastic - tomorrow I am going walking in the Lake District, assuming my blisters will let me.

Weekends at home

This is the first week-end since before Easter I have not been to Northumberland (even if one week-end all I did was drive down, collect a book, buy the Northumberland Gazette and come home). It is also the first week-end in six months that we have had no real signs of builders, albeit they are not quite finished. It has an air of normality about it. We are going out to friends for dinner; we are having friends for lunch; I am going to a meeting of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop which is running a project about which I am enthusiastic; and best of all I am going to buy a picture. I have traditionally marked my firm's year end by buying a picture and I have intended, for some time, to acquire a Cornish screenprint. I nearly bought (should have bought) a Terry Frost in St Ives three or four years ago. Today The Open Eye Gallery has an exhibition of St Ives artists and so I go, with the intent to spend, to decorate my new, now builder free, walls.

Extraordinary things

Work frequently seems difficult. It involves the application of thought, often against the clock; decisiveness, often on behalf of others in circumstances in which the decision has direct financial or other commercial consequences for them; and a significant commitment of time. When it is really bad (I worked all night last Thursday) I tell myself that there are worse things and that, anyway, these periods of extreme pressure pass and are forgotten as one gets on with the next job.

One of the things I find most perspective inducing is the First World War, or more particularly the way in which those who fought in it seemed to cope, having been removed from ordinary life, with its extraordinary extremes.

My book club book this month is "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves - this is, if you'll excuse the pun, a choice of relative gravity after "The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman" which is what we read last month. I read, a year or two ago, Captain James Dunn's "The War the Infantry Knew". Both Graves and Dunn record, in different ways, the life in the trenches of The Royal Welch Fusiliers. It was a different age and lives and the attitudes of people have, of course, changed enormously. Both books however illustrate the capacity of ordinary people to do the extraordinary when required. So, if so many ordinary people could go off and live and fight (and frankly the going off and living seems extraordinary enough to me without the fighting) in rat infested, muddy holes in France and Belgium for years while being shot at, gassed and bombed by a hostile enemy, the odd night up in a relatively comfortable office, shuffling paper can't really be a problem.

Spring Days Out

The first blog I ever read was Wife in the North. I read about it in the paper and was initially attracted to it on grounds of geography - we have a small house in North Northumberland to which we make "occasional visits". I enjoy the writing and the humour and admire the brave decision to uproot and move to that part of the world on a permanent basis. It seems to have inspired an outbreak of blogging in the area - Mutterings and Meanderings; Mutterings from the Mill; Famous for all kinds of Wickedness. We have been in Northumberland this week-end (albeit briefly) and its beaches and countryside always ease my essentially fractious nature. Not even the relative busyness of the beach this bank holiday week-end Sunday morning could set back the feeling of better-will it always inspires in me. Hence...

I like the feeling of sitting in a warm car with the heater on after a cold afternoon in the fresh air; I like cheerful outdoor crowds eating, drinking and chatting with their friends. We have a number of regular spring time fixtures which, while not religiously penned in our diary, we tend to make more often than not - odd days fishing; various Point to Points, Melrose 7s. Today on the way home we went to the Lauderdale Point to Point - it wasn't' warm but the sun shone (most of the time); the wind blew across the hillside; and people met each other, chatted, scooped a drink or two and had a bet. I got back in my car, turned the heater on, felt my cheeks start to glow and cheered up.

First Visit (and hungover)

The idea that I might blog hadn't occurred to me until a month or two ago, but lots of you (as is bound to be the case as most people are) seem nice and sensible and, as I am rarely without some drivel to spout, but frequently lack the time to spout it I feel like joining in from time to time! While not the world's greatest fan of technology I love the way the Internet underlines the adage that "there is nothing new under the sun". As I randomly wander through it the extent to which we share experiences amazes me.

I have, tucked into a picture frame above my desk at work, a Social Stereotypes clipping of the Appalling Hangover from an early December copy of The Telegraph. I cut it out after an office Christmas party - it seemed apposite - and told myself my lesson was learned. This is, however, the second Saturday morning in a row which has, as a consequence of excess on Friday night, started poorly...but I've learnt my lesson?! The difficulty with hangovers is the feeling of seediness when contrasted with the relative wholesomeness of week-end activity (last Saturday very early I had to take my daughter to a riding lesson in a beautiful spot in spring sunshine; this week I am taking part in Edinburgh Gardens Open Day) and the consequent feeling of mild guilt. Chances of having forgotten about it by the time I reach for the corkscrew tonight - better than average! So to the penance of a few household jobs and being nice to garden visitors I go!

I hope this has worked - it all seems very straightforward.