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.
My peedie wee hotel room
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.
It has been a delightful week, weather-wise. (Well, also visitor-wise but that’s for another post.) Dawn starts at 3:30 am, and dusk ends at 11 pm, and we have had little to no rain.
Scout & I went for a long walk this morning, through the village, into the fields, and back through the woods. We saw (really, just I saw – she is oblivious) a half dozen rabbits, two deer, three dogs, one man, and zero cars.
Sunday morning in a Scottish village in June. Lovely.
I’m an okay, albeit erratic, gardener. Back home, every spring I start looking at plant catalogues, taking Scout for a walk through Terra Nurseries, and planning out my pots, annuals, and vegetable garden. I’m busy planting, watering, and weeding in May & June, I maintain some semblance of mowing in July & August, and by September I’ve lost interest and have hired a company to do fall clean-up in October.
I knew when I moved to Braidwood I’d have some work outside. My aunt and uncle have a small front lawn and a large, terraced back garden. I believe my aunt was all about the flowers, and my uncle was (rightly) very proud of his vegetable garden – a greenhouse full of tomatoes, as well as carrots and leeks being harvested well into late winter – just amazing. He was gardening until just a few months before his death, including climbing a ladder with a massive electric hedge trimmer last summer – my heart stopped when I came around the corner and saw that. And my cousin – well. Her garden in England is absolutely overflowing with beds, pots, and hanging baskets; and she and her husband are the president/treasurer (or something like that) of their community allotment (who knew allotments had leadership teams?). So when I arrived I was very intimidated by repairing/maintaining these gardens, patio, and walkways.
It doesn’t help when I see my nextdoor neighbours (all in their late 70s or 80s) out looking after their gardens for two or three hours each day. It’s even worse when I can see one tiny little couple (he has Parkinson’s) out helping each other up and down, digging and trenching, mulching and deadheading – all while I am inside making myself yet another cup of tea.
I have accepted that I am not going to begin to do these gardens justice. So we’ve hired someone to mow and weed, and I’m sure when Viv comes in July, she will show me how things should be done. For now I water, and watch the birds. C’est tout.
Scout often sleeps on my bed, but equally often will lie on a mat on the floor by my bed, with her nose sort of pointing underneath the bed. Last night I was woken just after 3 a.m. (side note: it was starting to get light outside – these days it’s only pitch black between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m.) by the sounds of scratching under the bed. I thought the dog was just rolling over or something, but then I heard a thump. I sat up and looked over the side of the bed. Over the course of the night she had shifted, and rolled, and managed somehow to get herself stuck fully under my bed. I don’t mean wedged in – there’s some clearance under there – she was just fully under the bed and not sure how to extricate herself.
Obviously, the first thing I did was to take a picture. I mean, come on. Then I tried encouraging her to come out, but she just wiggled about fruitlessly. I wasn’t going to grab her legs and haul her out, as that could hurt her. So I lay on my tummy on the floor in front of her and mimed dog-paddling, and lo and behold, she copied me and pulled herself out. And then lay back down on her bed and went to sleep.
It took me a while longer – it’s hard to get back to sleep after a full-on belly laugh with tears pourng down your cheeks.
It’s been one month since I left Orkney, and oddly, I don’t seem to think about it too much. Out of sight out of mind? Mostly when I do think about it is when it’s still light here at 10:00 p.m. or 4:00 a.m. – I had forgotten how far north all of Scotland is and had bemoaned the fact that I’d be leaving Orkney and missing out on the longest days of the year. (As far as latitudes go, it’s as if I’ve moved from Churchill south to Flin Flon. Carluke is still north of Moscow.)
I miss the friends I’d made there, of course, but I’ve been fairly busy settling in here and as I was already familiar with this house and neighbourhood, I haven’t felt any sense of ‘homesick’ for Orkney.
I’ve never been much of a Facebook person. In fact, the only reason I ever went on there was because I talked my women’s group in Milton into joining social media, so then I felt obliged to check in and promote our posts. But when I was moving to Orkney, it seemed social media was the way to find out about everything, so I joined several community pages. They were great – I found out about concerts, and beach clean-ups, and met at least two of my Orkney friends on there. (There was also the odd man with the 17-room house on Burray who wanted me to rent a ‘wing’ of the house from him, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Just realised I haven’t been on FB in quite a while, so opened it up this morning, and was hit with an absolute flood of Orkney updates – upcoming summer solstice events, updated menu from my favourite food truck, ads for the Community Fridge. A lot of people from away posting that they were moving to Orkney and looking for advice, just as I did two years ago. And then I was sad. Which is silly. So I’ve done the only sensible thing: I’ve Left group for all but one of the Orkney group sites that I was on, and for that last one, I’ve Unfollowed it so I won’t see posts unless I want to.
I have joined two Carluke/Lanark pages, which should help me become a part of my new community here.
When the removal guys came last winter to clear out the damaged furniture from the flood, they took away one piece too many. All the kitchen, living room, and dining room furniture had to go, as well as one bed. But, on top of all of that, they also accidently took away a bed frame that was supposed to stay – they did leave the mattress, which was good, but it now lies on the floor. Hmm.
My own bedroom furniture has filled the two front bedrooms nicely, and I’m quite pleased with how they look. But the wee back room with the mattress on the floor was getting on my nerves. It’s a crowded little room – my cousin doesn’t know it, but I’ve relegated a couple of pieces that she had set up in the front room to this third bedroom; I thought the living room looked nicer without them (I don’t think she reads this blog – here’s hoping). This means the back room is both crowded and messy.
So I went online and bought a bed frame without telling her. (If she doesn’t like it, she can donate it to charity when I’m gone; it was only £50.) It arrived on Friday and yesterday morning I unpacked it and started assembling it. According to the instructions, it should take two people one hour to complete. Well, they called it – it took me working solo 2 & 1/4 hours to bolt together 30 pieces of metal with 42 bolts using 22 washers and 20 locking nuts (I hate locking nuts). I put the frame in place, then dragged the mattress up onto the frame. See if you can tell why I spent the next several hours in a serious huff.
Why would it not have occurred to me that Uncle Ian used a 3/4 double bed? Why would I have thought to measure the mattress before ordering a frame? Why would I have crushed the packing box this stupid, ugly, oversized bed came in? How long am I going to sulk before I take the damned thing apart and package it back up? These are all questions with no answer.
Before anyone suggests it, yes, it probably would just be easier to ditch the current mattress and get one to fit the frame. But it is quite a small room, and a 3/4 bed really would be the better solution. (If you look to the right of the photo you will see the door which I am currently unable to close due to the size & position of the bed; every time I pass this open doorway, my hackles rise, and my mood drops.) I will return it, and I have seen an even uglier 3/4 frame which I will get around to ordering soon. Really, I will.
Postscript: Two hours after all of this, just as my mood was lifting, I looked out to see Scout lying in the grass in the backyard. Not unusual for her, the only things that were a little off were that she usually lies in the shade, and she seemed to have her head burrowed quite low. As I approached her to see what was different, I realised what was going on: she was lying in the grass quietly licking and gnawing on a dead bird. Of course she was.
