A visit to Aberdeen

On Friday Toadlet and I travelled to Aberdeen University Undergraduate Open Day. There being a direct train all the way from Glasgow made it an easy journey. We had time after getting to Glasgow to go to a cafe for coffee and cake and for Toadlet to get on with a school assignment on recession in the Eurozone after the banking crash in 2008. She was asking me some questions about it which I was attempting to answer when a Canadian at the next table leant in with his somewhat rambling but interesting version of the story. We listened politely. Then Toadlet finished her essay. I asked her if she needed to make a fair copy to hand in but she said no. Would that I had ever been able to write a school essay so easily! I think schoolkids today are given more rigid guidelines about what is wanted in their essays than we ever were though.

I finished my cake (eight out of ten); Toadlet finished her croissant (7/10); we moved on and caught our train.

Arrived at Aberdeen we bought Subway butties and ate them sitting on a bench in Union Square. That is, I ate mine, hiding it in its paper wrapping from dive-bombing gulls between each bite, and Toadlet ate half of hers and then had it swiped out of her hand. I'd better not write down what she called the gull! 

I had booked us into a hotel on the outskirts of the city so we caught a bus and walked the last bit. No pavements. Clearly 'normal' visitors don't arrive at that hotel by foot. Just as well we live a bit off-road anyway and are used to rough ground and pathless environments. Our room was comfortable and the food at dinner time was fine.

At breakfast next morning the helpful and chatty waiter commented that he liked Toadlet's Gryffindor sweatshirt and showed us the Death-Eater tattoo on his forearm–clearly another Hogwarts fan. When he left to serve others I said: "He's friendly". 

"For a Death-Eater", said she. The waiter thought it was hilarious when I told him and said: "I've been called worse!"

We ordered a taxi to take us to the university campus and spent an interesting day finding out about the courses Toadlet wants to do, accommodation and other studenty things. I think she found the old buildings sufficiently Hogwartian to be acceptable. Click on the pics to enlarge them.

The new Sir Duncan Rice Library has its own awesomeness.

The Sir Duncan Rice Library,
University of Aberdeen

Looking up through seven storeys in the library

On our train journey home we sat with two young men, also teenagers I reckon. Perhaps they'd been to the open day as well. I always book seats in trains' Quiet Coaches so we were all irritated by a young woman's long, loud, wittering phone call. Eventually, after encouragement from the young ones who were all irritated by the constant blether, ("Do it!") I spoke to the young woman, reminding her that it was the quiet coach and that people booked seats on it so that they didn't have to listen to other people's phone calls. She said, "I'm talking to my nan", as if its being her nan made a difference. I said, "The rest of the train is at your disposal for talking to your nan so please take your phone to another carriage." She said she couldn't do that (I've no idea why) but she did end the phone call very shortly afterwards. The coach then settled into the low murmur of normal conversation between passengers and the soft snoring of a child who had been taking part in a figure-skating competition and had flaked out.

Steps to the pond

Toad decided to dig a pond in the summer of 2008. Toadlet (7) helped by leaning artistically on whichever tool he wasn't using. The chickens investigated.

Then the pond triangle, at the lowest part of the garden, was left to go wild. Toad is not really a gardener so upkeep didn't cross his mind before he dug the pond. I was too busy struggling to get the rest of the garden, which measures about 90x30 metres, and which had been neglected for about twenty-five years, under some sort of control. Then my energy ran out and I've had to pace myself. And Toad still isn't a gardener 😁. If I leave him a polite note, giving him plenty of notice to get used to the idea in advance, he will mow a section of lawn on a sunny day like today. Given the bogginess and the slope of the land that's a hard job so it helps a lot, leaving me time and energy to hack my way into the pond triangle in what I hope will be a sustainable way.

I made the mistake at first of cutting the many old and monstrous rhododendrons down. I now realise that it's probably better to cut them up, that is to raise their canopies and prevent any side branches from bridging and rooting, which is what Rhododendron ponticum likes to do.

So now I am cutting between the rhododendrons that were planted long ago for a hedge and am going to let them increase in height but not in width.  Another of the pluses of this approach is that I can see the pond from the inside the house.

Making a footpath and sight path to the pond

Today, at the steepest part above the pond, I made a step. I'm dead chuffed with it; never made a step before. I found a suitable piece of wood next to the washing machine (as you do if you're me and have a cluttered old wash-house full of things that might be useful one day, and things that are already useful, I hasten to add!) and walloped some very dead branches of rhododendron wood into the ground to hold a stone and the wood in place. I think I'll make another step down from that too because in wet weather it can be very slippery down there and there's no point increasing the rate of erosion if one can avoid it. There's another similar piece of wood in the shed. As I hack back the overgrown bushes I'm making woodpiles. There will be bonfires in due course.



All these piles are now bigger than they were when I took these photos and there are two more green ones.

Below are two pond watchers a year or so after it was dug.

 Meanwhile, on another garden step, one of those going up to the shed, this year's first Boggy Brae violet is flowering. Wild cherry trees are beginning to flower too.

Wild cherry blossom