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As I said, I probably had more wine to drink than was necessary over the course of the 12 hours that I was at the wedding. By the time I left I wasn’t stupid, or dangerous, or legless, just a good, healthy tiddly – as were most of the other guests. So it was time to go – at around midnight I said my good byes, walked a ways away to the car park, and stood waiting in the dark for my taxi.

A young lady stomped by, turned at the back of the barn, and sat down on a low wall, clearly in a snit. She was followed by an angry young man, pleading and exhorting with her, and as she beagn to yell at him and he started accusing her, I gotta admit, my first thought was, “Oooh, goody. Drama!” and I chose not to move away (to be fair, I was there first and I was waiting for a taxi exactly where I said I’d be). As they continued arguing other young men came up and started to – I dunno – take sides? – yell at them both? – threaten the young man? I must admit, I was quite enjoying this.

Then things got physical – the shoving started, then the pushing, and suddenly I realised I was in the trajectory of the punch-up. I tried to move away but with my sprained ankle it was hard to get very far and then – yup, wouldn’t you know it – I was in the midst of things. One hard shove and down I went, onto a low wall, into a flower bed, and against the wall of the barn.

The crowd scattered like buckshot. One of the men did help me up (I may have been a tad rude to him when he started brushing me down), and I just stood there, stunned. (I’ve never been in a fist fight before, you see.) The venue staff were wonderful, asking my taxi to wait while they washed and bandaged my bleeding hand, and then off I went back to my hotel. All over, nothing to see here, folks.

It wasn’t until morning that I discovered the state of the clothes I was wearing, stained and scraped from the plants and the brickwork (they are at the dry cleaners and the jury is still out as to their fate). And it wasn’t until much later in the day I discovered the scrapes down my back and legs, along with the bruises and the goose egg on my head.

Now, the fact that I chose to stay in my room until one minute before check-out watching cooking shows and packing, and then settled at a table in the pub for five hours people-watching and reading a book, had much more to do with the sprained ankle than it did the barroom brawl (altho I did share the story with the bar staff, who were quite entertained). I left the hotel at five and headed into the city for my second dosa dinner of the week. Then off to Euston Station for the Caledonian Sleeper home.

I gotta say – while getting shoved about and knocked down in a stranger’s fist fight was neither the best way to end a beautiful wedding day, nor the best thing for my already damaged ankle – it does make for a good story (the women in the lounge at Euston were riveted).

Norma could fall anywhere: the aisle of a plane, a pub in Oban Scotland, a park in Hershey Pennsylvania, her own living room. I feel legacy is important, so I have chosen to carry on the tradition. I once broke my foot at a Raptors game (I wasn’t playing), I sprained my ankle while standing still at work chatting with a colleague, I own my own crutches, and most recently I did a Chevy-Chase not-quite-stumble-and-save on Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when, Friday afternoon, strolling along Trafalgar Square towards Charing Cross to get the train to Tunbridge Wells, I found the only piece of uneven pavement and fell, spraining my left ankle, scraping my right knee and wrenching my right foot. Well splendid.

Thank you to the lovely people who helped me up, found my glasses, and saw me on my way. I found the Boots (Shoppers Drugmart) in the station, bought a tensor bandage and painkillers, and limped to my train. Taxi-ed to the lovely hotel (expensive, slightly posh, but with no elevator or air conditioning), and instead of spending the rest of the afternoon/evening exploring Royal Tunbridge Wells, I proceeded to numb the pain in the bar, then off to bed early to sulk and suffer.

I had booked a hair appointment for Saturday morning at a salon 200 yards up the street (I could see it from the hotel’s driveway) because it would have been an easy walk. Right. No taxi was going to come for a 200 yd journey and I didn’t want to have to walk it both there and back, so I went into the hotel restaurant and asked if any of the staff wanted to make a tenner and drive me there. The barman said he would but didn’t want payment (so kind), but then a patron stood up and said he’d take me, while his wife ordered their breakfast. Honestly, people are so nice.

I did still have to walk back from the salon, which was fine, I just walked very slowly. The worst part was finding a gap in traffic to cross the road. 🙁 Then change into my outfit for the wedding. Not the cute outfit with the stacked heel slingbacks – no, that was a pipe dream now. Instead into a more practical ensemble that showed off my sensible flats and bright white tensor bandage. Taxi-ed to the absolutely lovely outdoor venue and tried not to be ‘that woman’, hogging all the attention with her tale of woe on someone else’s special day.

It was a beautiful wedding: the bride & bridesmaids were gorgeous, the groom handsome, my cousin very chic, and her husband dapper in his kilt. I had a great time – met some lovely people, drank too much wine, ignored the throbbing ankle, and just generally enjoyed myself.

Until a barroom brawl broke out in the parking lot at midnight, and I ended up in the middle of the melee.

(I’m getting quite good at these cliffhangers, aren’t I?)

I never really liked paintings with people in them – I always preferred landscapes, or city scapes. Art like the Group of Seven, or the Impressionists. But in my 20’s I read Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, and it made me think about portraits completely differently. I still prefer non-representational work, and if any prints in my house do have people in them I prefer them to be somewhat indistinct or off in the distance, but since reading that novel, I will seek out portraits in an art gallery and really spend time looking at them, and thinking about them, about the subject, and about the artist.

There’s a wonderful British TV competition series called Portrait Artist of the Year (its companion series, Landscape Artist of the Year is equally wonderful). My sisters and I watch these shows and discuss the portraits we see in them. The winner each season is commissioned to paint a famous person (Alan Cumming, Hilary Mantel, Tom Jones), and the portrait is hung in Scotland’s National Gallery, or Ireland’s, or most often, The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London.

London’s NPG has been closed for over three years, but I found out last week that its re-opening was Thursday. So, slight change of plans – now Friday was to be a morning visit to the Portrait Gallery, and the afternoon to the National Gallery next door. After yesterday’s British Museum crowds I was concerned, but, I have to accept that major London venues aren’t going to change just for me. (How annoying)

OMG – it was wonderful. More than made up for yesterday, far fewer people, actual air conditioning, and room upon room of amazing paintings and sculptures. It was an absolutely great visit. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that after lunch (champagne & duck at the restaurant Ochre, a part of the galleries), I ditched my original plan and went right back into the Portrait Gallery for a second visit. I saw kings, writers, scientists (see below), the famous & the infamous. I also missed a great deal – I had really thought this would be my last visit to London, but after today I want to go back to the NPG and to the skipped-over National Gallery. BTW, all these museums and galleries are free – gotta love the U.K.

It was hands down the best day. Until I fell in the street and sprained my ankle.

I had curated a list of places I wanted to dine, based on foodie podcasts, YouTube Channels, and the restaurant critic for The Guardian newspaper. I managed to hit most of them over the course of the week, although I never did find the Thai restaurant Kiln, in spite of going up and down the same block 3 or 4 times (I know it wasn’t just me – I passed some young business men and heard, “I’m pretty sure it’s along here – that’s what Google says.” and I have to think they were talking about the same place).

Right outside my bedroom window was the Berwick Street market, full of all sorts of international food stalls. Over the course of my stay there, I had the chance to watch these stalls do set up and take down from the comfort of my hotel bed, and I learned a lot about the hygiene of these places. My God, the attention to detail – copious soaps and detergents, constant running water, taps of near boiling water for rinsing, scrubbing and polishing – if you have ever wondered about food safety, well these guys are in a league of their own. I had coffee one morning at Soho Dairy and a salad from Jerusalem Falafel with the silkiest hummous imaginable.

The restaurant I was anticipating most was a Sri Lankan restaurant called Hoppers. My last year at BMO was in Brampton. While I enjoyed all the exceptional North Indian & Pakistani restaurants that my colleagues took me to – it was Sri Lankan and South Indian food that blew me away. Nilgiris and Gurulukshmi became my two go-tos in Peel region for dosas – so good. Of course, Orkney is not exactly the epi-centre of the south Asian diaspora – I mean, the tarka dhal and aloo Bombay were perfectly fine, ditto the Indian restaurant just up the road here in Braidwood. But, like almost every Indian take-away in Scotland, they serve North Indian cuisine. So when I saw the owner of Hoppers on my favourite food channel (Sorted, for anyone interested) making dosas, I had to go.

The owner Karan happened to be there yesterday afternoon, and overheard me talking about how much I love dosas, so he made a point of sending over some chutneys and sides as a wee treat. My dinner was even better than I had hoped – so much so that I have booked to come back for dinner on Sunday.

I wish my niece had been able to join me in Soho; she might not have enjoyed all my restaurant choices, but we definitely would have found common ground somewhere and she would have loved the overall vibe of the neighbourhood.

*I had already taken the first bite when I remembered to take a photo. 🙂

The plan was: a day at The British Museum. In the past, any trips to London involved my not getting to see some of the galleries or museums I really wanted to (took me over 20 years to finally get to the Tate Modern). As I am invariably the one holding the map, this is in no way the fault of my travel companions – it just seems to happen this way every time. So, finally, after many visits to London, The British Museum.

Atfer a delightful breakfast at Maison Bertaux, I made my way to the Museum, wandering through gardens and stopping to listen to buskers. Got to the museum in time for the first of two tours I had planned on joining: Ancient Greece in the morning, Roman Britain in the afternoon. I was looking forward to seeing the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Sculptures, the Japan displays – lots and lots.

About 16,000 people live on the main island of Orkney. It seems 17,000 people visit The British Museum every day. Every day. And, in spite of the fact that artefacts should be kept in a climate controlled environment (or so I would have thought), the museum is not air conditioned. In fact, the huge glass ceilings, which make the museum beautiful to behold, add to the heat of those 17,000 bodies on a sunny day. One staff member advised me that the temperatures in the museum are a real concern and they hope to have the issue addressed by the end of the decade. Really? That soon?

I don’t like crowds; I don’t like heat. Not exactly a recipe for a fun day out. Oh dear.

Our tour guide of Greek antiquities was very good – we were jammed fairly closely together to be able to hear her and navigate the crowds – and we saw some amazing amphorae and kouros (thanks Miss Mayhew – I knew exactly what she was talking about). But after twenty minutes, I had to step away from the cozy little heat-trapping display nooks that we were visiting and find some air. I headed up and over to Korea, Japan, and east Asia, working on the theory that the farthest displays would be the emptiest and the coolest (they were). But as the morning wore on those rooms heated up too in the 28° sunshine. So I gave up. I couldn’t take the crowds or the heat, so I headed out, after a too-short detour to see the Rosetta Stone and Ramesses the Great over the heads of school children, with no intention of going back in the afternoon.

As I’m pretty sure this was my last visit ever to London, I’ll admit I was disappointed – I really feel that had the circumstances been different, I could have spent a wonderful day immersed in some remarkable history. But, even though the day was cut short, I did get to see some pretty amazing items, in a very beautful setting. That will have to do.

Soho is a very interesting neighbourhood. Cute boutiques, trendy restaurants, cafes & bars by the dozens, as well as sex shops and cinemas. I skipped the sex shops and the boutiques (still hate shopping – all kinds) and headed to a restaurant that had a good reputation, Balans. Snagged a sidewalk table, and proceeded to spend the next couple of hours sipping rosé, eating corn ribs, chatting with my ‘neighbours’, and watching the world go by.

I really fell in love with Soho – multi-cultural, young, busy, friendly – just a touch different from Orkney. It did occur to me that there were two specific factors impacting my impression: 1) the weather was fanstastic (mid-twenties) and 2) it was the longest day of the year. It was still broad daylight at 9:00 p.m. and I felt perfectly safe walking the streets on my own. I would imagine on a drizzly evening in October, it could give off a very different vibe.

People watching in a city like London is interesting. This gentleman walked by me wearing a Farrah Fawcett t-shirt, carrying a wicker picnic hamper, and carrying a pair of thigh-high, 8″ heels, fire-engine red Kinky Boots. A while later, Dame Harriet Walter (Succession, Killing Eve, Sense & Sensibility) strolled by, t-shirt & jeans, carrying her groceries.

It’s not all sunshine and pleasantries: volunteers were handing out these cards reminding people to be vigilant, particularly with their mobile phones.

My young cousin is getting married this week so I decided to incorporate a number of bucket list items and make a proper holiday of the trip. I could have just driven or flown down and stayed at a hotel near the venue – but I had other plans.

I had booked a train from a nearby town into Glasgow, and then first class (oooh) down to London. The lovely lady who was going to look after Scout offered to drive me to the station – I continue to be amazed at how kind everyone is.

The train ride was great – started with ‘a full Scottish’ at 8:30 – which is basically a full English breakfast with haggis. Then cocktails at 11;00, and finger sandwiches for lunch at 12:00. The students across from me watched videos on YouTube all morning, and I read a book, but the elderly gentleman beside me had nothing. He just sat for the entire 4 1/2 hours. Very nice man, we all said hello when we arrived, and commented on the meals, or whatever, but other than that, he just sat. I cannot imagine doing that for that length of time without a book to read, or podcasts to listen to.

I had decided that I was going to limit my visit to Soho & Bloomsbury – no Westminster Abbey, no London Eye, no Tower Bridge for me, just a concentrated visit to the west end. I booked a cheap, cheerful, and clean hotel in Soho, offloaded my luggage when I arrived, and headed out for part one of my trip: shopping. I may hate it, but this was an opportunity to get some things that are hard to get in Scotland, So, off to John Lewis, Liberty, and a Korean grocery. Once the dreaded shopping was done, my evening awaited.

When I first joined our Orkney walking group over a year ago, one local told me about the National Entitlement Card (NEC), a travel card for Scottish residents of *ahem* a certain age. It granted me free bus rides in Orkney, as well as four free ferry rides per year. Nice.

It later turned out I could also use that card on buses inside the city of Edinburgh, although not, according to these same friends, for inter-city travel. Still pretty nice.

I’ve been taking Scotrail trains from Carluke into the centre of Glasgow or Edinburgh over the last month – great for shopping or sightseeing. I buy the tickets via their app. As my niece and I were heading into Glasgow last Wednesday, there was a man across the aisle from us. Not the same reasonably nicely dressed man who joined our shelter bench while waiting for the train; who came in, sat down, started muttering to himself, removed and replaced each of his shoes one at a time, and popped a couple of beers in the eight minutes before the train arrived.

No, the man we observed on the train was different. When the ticket attendant came by, instead of giving her a ticket or a QR code on his phone, he showed his NEC card. Hang on, hang on, could I be travelling for free on Scotrail with my NEC card? It seems that yes, I can. So not only is my travel within the cities free, but I can tour around Scotland for free too!

God, I love Scotland. (BTW, it is my understanding English residents do not have the same benefits down south – ha! That’s what they get for stealing our Stone of Destiny.)

I thought the biggest difference about Braidwood vs Orkney would be the scenery (and it is different – the Clyde Valley is more rolling, green hills with trees, tons of trees). But it turns out that’s not the case – instead, this week turned out completely differently from what was planned due to company arriving.

On Tuesday I met friends from Milton who were visiting Scotland. I took the train into Glasgow and took them to the Kelvingrove Museum where we saw Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross, had a lovely lunch and listened to an organ recital. A great wee visit before they head off on a cruise of the British Isles (that includes a stop in Kirkwall(!)). All of that was planned – it was the rest of the week that came as a surprise.

My niece’s Europe trip took a sideways turn, so instead of flying straight back to Canada, she detoured for a couple of days here. After leaving my Milton friends near their hotel Tuesday afternoon, I headed back into the centre of Glasgow to meet her getting off the bus. We has a great two days of shopping and dining in Glasgow & down in the southwest corner of Scotland in Castle Douglas.

Then the same day I dropped her off at the airport, I got a text from my cousin-in-law who was up in Scotland on business and had to stay on an extra couple of days for family reasons – could he come & stay & get some yard work done around the house? I never say No to people who want to do work around my home. The garden did not look at all the same after he left – he worked so hard, and was a great guest.

Over the course of five days I had four visitors – this would never have happened in Orkney – too remote.

I talked about the two-door entry system in British homes when I first moved to Scotland: outer front door, tiny foyer, solid inner door – my house is no different.

All of my neighbours (all whose front doors I can see when walking the dog) open their outer door early-ish in the morning and leave it open throughout the day, closing it only when they’re out running errands. I haven’t asked anyone, but it’s as if they are announcing, “Mrs. Beckwith-Jones is receiving visitors today.” My uncle did it too.

So, when in Rome . . . .

My cousin-in-law arrived yesterday and immediately asked why my front door was open. I said I thought that was what one did. He looked at me like I’d lost my mind (and he grew up in Central Scotland). So I am casting off peer pressure and going back to a safer way to live: front door closed and locked.