Wee lead slippers

The Valentines Issue

Anyway, as I was saying before Typepad rudely lost my previous typing: my weeks these days are split between the work days and the non-work days. Interesting things only happen between Friday lunchtime and Sunday night. Friday morning has some potential since I don't need to drag my arse into Edinburgh and this week I finally got round to using part of Mandy's Valentine's pressie - a wee frying pan for making heart-shaped things (the chocolate disappeared instantly). I suspect they had something sweeter and more romantic in mind but I think it's just made for a cholesterol-choked fried egg (on homemade sourdough natch). 

 

Was off work sick on Thursday, finely catching the cold that the kids have been carrying around for weeks. I don't want to think that my decision to cycle to work on Monday, in spite of my spectacular level of unfitness, had anything to do with my snotting into work on Wednesday and collapsing on Thursday. Pure coincidence. But the day of nothing and sleeping was good and by Friday a.m. I was OK for the usual working from home.

Friday afternoon was a long-planned paddle with Jim in prep for our weekend of supervised paddling on the Tweed at the end of March. The original Ratho plan had to be slightly modified because the canal was pretty frozen up so we drove to Linlithgow and paddled around there for a while. Jim did a good job of holding a reasonably straight line.

   

Saturday finds the Crew off on a suicide bombing mission - err, no - a walk round the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park. The balaclava has a dinosaur on it - not some sacred text. And actually, since you're asking why Mandy's lugging the wee lump, Ellen spent most of the time on MY back but no one takes photographs of me being the family donkey.

  

Still, it only took about half an hour before Ewan started complaining of being too hot (true - we were all dressed for canoeing - there was two canoes on the car) and having sore legs (click on that photo and check the face). Games - I Spy (or the app iSpy or if you need therapy iPsy) and When Johnny Went Holidays - kept him going until Ice Cream.

  
 
Best photo of the day - Ninja Boy! Before the sore legs took over.

 

Dr Evil's small mistake

Aye, a weekend in the youth hostel at Minigaff (soon to have a lick of paint and be rebranded less literally but more sensibly as Newton Stewart) with some friens. Headed off on Friday morning stopping on the way in Alloway where the National Trust is doing its best to discreetly Disneyfy the cultural and literary colossus (aye, right) that is The Bard. Incidentally, I can only think of two other people known by a single noun - The Queen and The King. Ah the joy of the Burns Cottage. The sublime Tam O'Shanter Experience. The rubbish bins named after Tam's cronies.

But like a feckin' eejit I forgot to charge the camera before I went so the only photos that were taken all weekend were on film (aye, film. How retro is that?) so it might be another few months before they're seen - if they ever see the inside of Jessops. 

But Youth Hostels - how come they still exist? There's something wrong with accommodation when it's colder and less comfortable than camping. And it has to be said that youth hostels are a 1950s anachronism, created in the image of Enid Blyton heroes, wholesome boy scouts and bobble-hatted ramblers. Now they're slowly limping towards death. It's an old problem - for decades they haven't charged enough to maintain their old crumbling properties and now they're so crap that they can't charge any more than they do. So when death comes it'll be slow and marked by the fronts falling off of 30 year old kitchen drawers, unheated toilets and showers that either don't work or just dribble tepid water onto your shoulders as you stand shivering on the cubicle's cold metal floor. But we had a braw time.

Friday night was a laugh with Ewan being a wee card shark, playing poker with the men and actually winning some hands even though he was extremely reluctant to fold on some very bad hands. Luckily we kept him off the whisky so no one was shot.

Saturday was a nice wee walk around Galloway Forest Park with Ewan and Hannah on their bikes and Ellen and Malachy being pushed around in their buggies. A fine cuppie was found among the weirdness of Newton Stewart's Christian bookshop. The whole Jesus nonsense completely passed over Ewan's head so he had a bit of trouble understanding why he couldn't buy anything. Saturday evening, Ewan and a few of his wee pals learned to play Blackjack before their tea.

Sunday we head for home via the Cream O Galloway theme park, sorry, experience, err, farm. Not much to say about it. It's an adventure playground on a dairy farm designed to separate you from your money. And it does that pretty successfully.

But nae photies. Sorry.

The curious love of boxes

Aye, so, Friday and a trip to Costco. As usual the goods get loaded into cardboard boxes - apple boxes this time - and stashed in the boot. So far, so ordinary. Apart from the fine bargain that was had on the Macallan 10 year old fine oak. But that's another story.

So now we have two boxes. We also have two weans. The next bit's obvious. Yes, Ewan fills them with cushions to make them into seats for him and Ellen and the two sit in the boxes watching TV or playing Super Mariokart. Would you just look at the slack-jawed, dead-eyed expressions on those two. That's what TV does: keeps them docile and well-behaved. Love it.

 
 
But it wasn't all sofa surfing. Today was a family outing to Castle Semple to let Mandy have a go in the new canoe before her weekend of training in a few weeks. She did good. It's a lively wee bugger. Much more tippy than the big barge that I had Ewan and Ellen in. Ordinarily, paddling in circles wouldn't be considered a 'good thing' but when you're on your own for the first time, staying upright and dry is an achievement. Paddling in circles is great. Here she is flailing her big stick around. 'Fraid, I didn't take any pictures of the weans since it would only have been the backs of their heads.

 

York

Aye, so Friday was marathon trip from home to Lincoln (well, actually a motorway service station on the outskirts of Lincoln) to pick up a newish canoe and then back up to York to get Mandy and Ewan off the train before driving to Driffield for a couple of nights in a wee hotel. Phew. A ten-hour day in the car for me and Ellen and first class rail travel for Mandy and Ewan. Poor wee Ellen - where’s the justice? She seemed happy with chocolate and a Haahoo.

 

Woke up to snow on Saturday so obviously that means heading to the seaside. Bridlington has all the charm of a run-down seaside resort – the faded grandeur of the paint flaking Victorian and Georgian terraces that are now flea-pit bed and breakfasts; the long lines of gaudy “amusement” arcades with dance music blasting out of cheap tinny speakers; chip shops and donut stands with rancid oil in deep fat fryers that are just not hot enough to cook without saturating. Bliss. It looks even weirder with a dusting of snow.

      

It goes without saying that Ewan was entranced by the whole spectacle. If we’d have taken our eyes off him for a second he would have been straight into the hands of the Coachman and off to Pleasure Island.

York, on the other hand, reeks gentility and well organised history. The sort of place where philosophy students sit in coffee shops getting epistemological and discussing the extra characters available on an iPhone keyboard if double-tap and pinch. Turn any corner and there’s some 12th century relic, a massive bit of church or a section of the old city wall staring back at you. So you have to wonder why, in a place where history is round every corner, there was a massive queue at the bloody York Dungeon. Anyway, a lovely wee compact tourist trap though it does take some fancy footwork to avoid the Death Race pensioners on their mobility scooters.