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.