A day trip to Edinburgh

On Thursday this week I got the train to Edinburgh to meet DivingDaughter for lunch in the National Library of Scotland (good butties) and some granny friends for tea at the National Gallery (good scones). On the train over I finished the book that one of my gran friends had lent me quite some time ago: Hellfire and Herring by Christopher Rush. Though great on social history about the fisher folk of St.Monan's in Fife, it's quite a densely written book and so short bursts of reading it were usually enough. There were some descriptive gems like these:

July was a blaze of blood red poppies

heavy with the smell of elderflower

and tall with nettles and willowherb,

waving at us from the dry ditches

and the kirkyard burn

where the loosestrife ran free.

August threaded our noons with dragonflies

and stroked our faces with thistle seeds.

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DivingDaughter had good news about a new job she has acquired after some self-financed extra training in software development. She's off on a trip to Nova Scotia to visit a friend there before the new job starts.

DD took me up steep stepped wynds I'd never walked along when I lived in Edinburgh, mainly because when I did live there I had young kids and my trips from five miles out from the city centre were normally by bicycle to visit a shop or two on a Saturday, when their dad was available to watch them, and home again without too many diversions. Other times I'd be taking the kids on the bus to the house of a friend whose kids were the same age, and we'd often go for a walk to Holyrood Park. Exploring the city along steep stepped narrow wynds were not really a practical option even if I had ever thought of it back then!

We stepped into St Giles Cathedral for a quick squint. I hadn't been in there since I was a student and had time between trains. The ceiling of the nave looked as if it had been recently painted. There was scaffolding in parts where, we presumed, more repair and restoration work was being done. It struck me as a 'heavy' and somewhat oppressive building, lacking the light lofty spaciousness of some similar and much older churches. 

Then it was down through Princes Street Gardens, the slopes of which are carpeted with crocuses.

We sat with the spring sunshine on our faces for a little while before DD went her way

and I joined my friends in the National Gallery cafe.

After a chatty meetup and a filling tea (I particularly liked the smoked salmon on scones idea), three of us went for a wander around the gallery looking at paintings.

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One of my favourite Scottish paintings is this one by Sir Francis Grant. 'Daisy' made us think of Jo March in Little Women when she only had one decent glove to wear to a party so carried the spoiled one in her hand. She also reminded us of the Scottish ballad The Road and the Miles to Dundee, which you can listen to via the link.

The portrait and the mouse

For the portrait Toad is painting of me, I had to dig out an old kimono that I used, in the warmer climes of southern Britain, to use as a dressing-gown. It has lived in my old student trunk for quite a few years because it's rarely warm enough to wear it in the frozen north 🤣. Seriously though, living on the Boggy Brae requires roughs and scruffs most of the time.

The trunk's lock got smashed on its very first trip up to Dundee from Lancashire, sent up in advance as one did in those days. One of the student hall of residence sub-wardens helped me get it to a mender in Dundee and, 40+ years on the trunk and its replacement locking hasp live on in good health.

The photo shoot got a bit tedious so I started messing about. The Lastolite that Toadlet was commissioned to hold seems to have deteriorated and bits of its metallic side flew off and filled the air with specks of dust. They won't appear in the portrait.

Toad is doing the painting in the den 'studio'. This morning he thought his painting mediums had exploded out of the cling film cover. One had disappeared altogether. The one on the left (the white blob) is made of linseed oil and chalk. the other, which had been to the right of that but was all gone, was made of linseed oil and fused silica (it's called oleogel).

Then he noticed the well chewed squidgy ball...

...and that some of the paint had been eaten off the canvas. The mice must be hungry! The paint that was eaten was oleogel with ultramarine blue paint. Portrait progress below.

The mouse traps will be baited with peanut butter. Only if they turn their noses up at that will we resort to posh, artistic bait. Toad has just said he's glad the rest of oleogel was in a tin. "They might have chewed through a tube". (Try saying that fast).