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.