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Wow.  It really doesn’t take much to lose momentum does it? (At least for me.)

I had company in July and got out of the habit of writing my blog (I tend to sit down to write maybe three times a week on average).  CB was only here for one week – but that was enough time to knock me off my blogging track. 

And then, once something like that happens, at least in my case, it becomes bigger, and bigger, and bigger – a molehill of a task I normally enjoy turns into a mountain of guilt over a backlog that I dread.  Every evening for the last week or so I’ve said, “Tomorrow I sit down and start catching up on my blog.”  And next thing I know, it’s the next evening, and I’ve done nothing.  Again.

Anyhoo, I’m back on track – will start posting regularly again. And to show that I haven’t just been sitting around staring at the telly, I thought I’d share a photo from the Devil’s Beeftub – a hollow in the hills of the Scottish Borders.  Covenanters, cattle rustlers, Reivers, and Jacobites have all hidden here.

This is a half a kilometre deep – to give perpective, that ring of bricks in the lower right is at least 60′ across

Everyone who comes to Scotland wants to see Edinburgh, and rightly so. There’s a castle, a palace, the ugliest parliament building imaginable, and that’s all just in the Royal Mile. I thought I was fed up with Edinburgh, having done that Royal Mile many many times, and only went to keep my friends/tourists company. I prefer Glasgow.

But I have to say, this most recent trip was an eye-opener for me. Edinburgh really is a study in contrasts: the old city (archaeologists believe Castle Rock was first settled in the late Bronze Age – that’s old) that the tourists love vs the New Town (built in the 1700’s) full of shops and restaurants; a major urban centre with quaint fishing villages and towns attached; crowded, cobbled streets vs huge tracts of land (if you know, you know); and free museums and galleries on every other street corner (only a slight exaggeration).

It’s taken me almost two years in Scotland and countless visits to actully start to appreciate Edinburgh.

Of course, the nice weather helped.

And I still prefer Glasgow.

One of Scotland’s more interesting, but lesser-well-known-outside-the-country, cultural attractions is the World Heritage Site called New Lanark. Founded in the 1780’s by some philanthropic mill-owners, and further developed by one owner’s industrialist son-in-law, it was an early experiment in progressive, socialist-yet-still-capitalistic, reform.

The mill owners believed that workers should be treated fairly, particularly the children. They created a small town, complete with school, church, nursery (the first in the world to be supplied by an employer), a store with reduced prices, and a full-time, on-site doctor. Obviously, by our standards, the ‘progressive’ working conditions were still appalling (deafening machinery, ten hour work days, children workers, and cramped housing), but compared to other mill-working towns around the UK, the employees were very fortunate indeed.

Robert Owen believed children deserved an education and he paid for their schooling until the age of 10, 11, or 12, at which point they started working at the mill, ten hours a day. In spite of what we would think of as horrific child labour, New Lanark became known around the world for its forward-thinking approach to mill-work, an example for factory owners throughout Europe and the Americas. This ‘village’ with its working mill existed until the early 1960’s, and in the late 1970’s it was turned into the most remarkable museum, historical site, and parkland.

Five years ago my sister & I visited New Lanark and were both impressed with and enterained by the set-up. When you first enter the mill, you’re directed to a ‘ride’ – one of those swinging pods like at DisneyWorld, locked in place, and sent along to hear the story of ‘Annie’, an 11 year-old Victorian mill-worker. Of all the things we did on that holiday, that was the one that has stuck the most in our memories (well, except maybe my Dad tripping on the beach at Berwick – we Reids find the weirdest things funny).

So, when my friend CB came for a holiday, I knew we had to go to New Lanark. And Annie didn’t disappoint. As well as hearing the story of Georgian/Victorian mill workers, we saw the machinery, the store, the school, and some of the homes (hovels by today’s standards, but a step up in Victorian times). And the setting is stunning – set in a valley with rivers, trees, walkways, and gardens; it really is beautiful. CB was as impressed with the site as my sister & I had been – well worth the trip.

*When I wrote my sister to tell her where we were going that day, her reply was: “Oooohh, the ride where you get to experience child labour in a thrilling way….Whoo Hoo.” Nailed it.

No, these are not ‘Mother’s Little Helpers’, and no, I don’t have a problem. This is currently what my medicine cabinet looks like. It’s not as dramatic as it looks: there are Vitamin D pills (I live in the far north); anti-seasickness tablets (I lived on an island); paracetamol (I’m clumsy); anti-histamine (Scotland had a very high tree pollen count this past spring); and naproxen (last year’s bout of bursitis).

Notice they’re all in blister packs. All meds, prescription and OTC, are sold this way in the UK. Even some vitamins. This seems to be a safety measure to ensure people don’t overdose.

And I’ve just found out that you cannot purchase more that two packages (a total of 32 pills) of paracetamol at one time. If, for example, you and your husband are going on a two-week trip, you with a recent injury (say a sprain), and he with occasional back pain, you can’t just pop into Boots and buy a 50-pill jar of Tylenol. You would have to go to Boots and get two boxes of 16 pills each, then head over to Tesco and get another two boxes there. And if you use the self-checkout on the way out of Tesco, your paracetamol will be flagged, and a sales clerk will have to come over and approve your purchase there. Interesting.

Well, this morning I did it. I started looking up flight dates, times, and costs to return to Canada. The window I’m looking at is the first two weeks of November. That’s at most 122 days. Sigh. When did that happen?

I’m not exactly lying. But I have noticed over the past ten weeks that when people ask me where I live, instead of saying “I live in Carluke”, I have taken to using the phrase, “I’ve been living in Orkney for the past couple of years.” Of course there is nothing wrong with living in the Clyde Valley, and I am incredibly grateful to my cousin for giving me this opportunity. But can you blame me? I mean, let’s face it – a remote Scottish isle in the far north has far more cachet that a town just outside Glasgow. Which would generate more interest on your part: “I live in Inuvik.” or, “I live in Oshawa.”? Exactly. Fortunately, the perfect continuous present tense can blur quite nicely with the simple present tense, so I don’t feel I’m truly lying to people. Misleading? Possibly. Lying? Of course not.

My Mum was a very good cook (actually latterly Dad was pretty good too, but this is about a memory of childhood). My sisters and I have very distinct memories of how Norma prepared white fish like sole or halibut. One way was to poach it on a dinner plate in milk then use it in a fish pie or pudding, using the milk in the sauce. But the one that sticks out, that we’ve actually talked about on and off for the last couple of decades, was breading fish fillets in orange crumbs of some sort. We all remember it vividly – we even associate the same recipe with our Grandma Reid making it too, although that may be a slightly less clear memory; if ever my Dad mentioned his mother cooking something, my Mum would snort derisively and say, “Your mother? Cook? Ha!”

I think we all liked these orange fillets well enough, certainly none of us has complained while discussing it. A couple of years ago, I finally found a box of the breading, Ruskoline in a store and brought it home. LIke all childhood memories, it hadn’t quite stood the test of time. You know, you go to your high school reunion only to discover the classrooms and halls are much smaller that you remember. Well, same idea – while the fish breaded in Ruskoline tasted the same, clearly we had amplified the orange-ness of it in our memories. Turned out to be more of a pale coral. Ah well.

Last Thursday the fish van came by as usual (see previous posts), and I bought several halibut fillets. Just as I was paying, the fish monger (there’s a word we simply don’t get to use as often as we should) asked if I wanted some breading with my order and produced a baggie of virulent orange crumbs. I mean electric orange. OMG! We were right all along! Those fillets of our youth were orange!

So last night I had electric orange fish, just like when I was little, along with courgette and tomatoes from my cousin’s allotment in Kent. Childhood memories live on. *As an aside, he didn’t charge me for said crumbs, it’s just all part of the service of having a fish van pull up outside your house once a week with fish caught that morning in the North Sea.

(*Ignore the broken fillet – it tasted deelish.)

Last month I found Scout out in the back garden, quietly nuzzling a dead bird. Yesterday, I saw her fussing about at the foot of the far garden wall, but gave it little thought. Until I saw the big black lump in the middle of the closer patch of lawn a couple of hours later. WTF was that? It seems she had unearthed the carcass of a dead crow (Jeez those things are big) and had dragged in into the middle of the backyard.

This morning was garbage day, so I grabbed a large plastic bag, one of Uncle Ian’s many coal shovels, Marigolds (yellow rubber gloves), and a face mask (overkill? probs) and headed out. After much swearing and swerving on my part, and complete disinterest on hers, I got the corpse into the bin.

Why do they come to Uncle Ian’s to die? I’m starting to miss the dead seals from Orkney.

Last year a very good friend sent me a surprise package from home, full of Canadian goodies and red & white party decorations. The All-Dressed chips and President’s Choice Mac & Cheese were gone within the week, but I hung out the decorations last July 1st in Kirkwall, then carefully packed them away and brought them south with me for this year.

When my friend Jean & her husband came to Glasgow last month, they asked what they could bring and I said graham cracker crumbs, so she brought me two hefty boxes – wonderful. They don’t have them here, and crushed digestive biscuits just aren’t the same. So this morning I decorated the house and made Nanaimo bars for the neighbours. I can’t stand Nanaimo bars (too sweet and I hate coconut) but from what I understand most Canadians do love them, so they seemed like the perfect Canadian treat to share, and I’ll have some to give my cousins when they visit next week.

So thank you Michele for my lovely decorations and thank you Jean for my ingredients – and Happy Canada Day, everyone!

Another item on my bucket list was travelling on the Scotland-England overnight train, the Caledonian Sleeper. It goes from the highlands to London and back, and their Club Car Class is quite swish.

It is known for its meals as well as its roomettes and in a perfect world I would have taken the train from Inverness – the train from there leaves after 8pm and gets into Euston twelve hours later. This would mean being able to take full advantage of the dinner car, as well as a leisurely breakfast in the morning – and they allow dogs in the rooms. But, the opportunity never arose while I was living in Orkney, so this week I settled for second best: taking the 11pm train out of Euston which would get me to Cartairs at 6:15am.

I limped into Euston Station after my lovely dinner at Hoppers, hoping the Caledonian lounge would be open – it was. Had a great visit with Kim from Calgary and Sandra (?) from Australia, before we headed down to the train. Of course it was at the other end of the station, and of course my car was the 13th of 14 cars. I limped along past the friendly, smiling staff – just as I got to my car, one staff member saw my limp and said, “You should have asked for assistance at the gate.” Really? Not one of the dozen or so staff I passed before thought to mention this? Ah well.

It was a peedie wee cabin, spotlessly clean and fully set up. A steward came by and said the bar car would be open another hour, but as it was five cars back, I didn’t see much point. She took my breakfast order and told me an attendant would be by at 5:30am to help me take my luggage to the dining car. Perfect.

I had the best night’s sleep and in the morning woke to a beautiful day. I watched the scenery roll by as I dressed, and then headed to a delicious breakfast of hot smoked salmon frittata with hollandaise, and a cup of tea.

Got off the train at Carstairs Junction and my new friend Caroline drove me home. A lovely ending to an eventful week.