Something About This Time Of Year...........

An East Lothian Sunset

Hullo ma wee blog,

There's something special about this time of year. Lots of bloggers have mentioned it this week. Weather changes, temperature cools, light softens, days get shorter as seasons slowly turn. Summer's morphosis into Autumn is on the way and this morning leaves are being buffeted by wind and rain. The grass at the front of the house is strewn with windfall pears which the birds are gorging themselves on. At the back of the house the swallows, who have nested under the eaves for the first time this year, are efficiently feeding the second brood of the season in preparation for the all too soon departure to warmer climes.

The land around is a brown and green patchwork of fields that have been shorn or are waiting the attention of the harvesters that slow morning traffic on country roads. Fields seem full to bursting point with bales of hay. Harvested fields are industriously ploughed by farmers eager to sow the next crop. Fields of potatoes grow strongly in the red East Lothian soil and evening roads reverberate to the sound of tractors and lorries loaded with hay-bales being moved to storage. Livestock too seems to dominate areas as huge numbers of sheep and cattle graze on fields of lush grass.

For me it's a time of naive reassurance. The garden fruit trees have been groaning with the weight of the crop they have grown this year. Heavy branches bend earthwards and early windfalls have been scooped up with relish to be rushed to the kitchen. The glut of apples and pears is upon us and neighbours and family have been warned of imminent arrivals. Link this with the bounty that's evident in the harvest all around and it's easy to ignore thoughts of gobal warming and the sooth-sayers or doom and gloom merchants of agricultural and economic disaster. Surely if the land is capable of producing such huge bounty as this year there can't be too much wrong with the climate? With a summer behind us thankfully free of warnings of water shortages, it's all too easy to put thoughts like those to one side at this time of year. Mother Nature is fecund and ripe. Everything is therefore in balance. Everything's OK. Forget the worries. Time now for many to plan that holiday jetting off to sunny climes for winter sun and cheap booze. Time enough for me simply to enjoy the moment, to savour this all too short period of transition as the seasons continue to turn inexorably through their cycles.

The light in the evenings is superb and my camera is never far from my hand. You can - until today at least - comfortably wear T-shirts right through till night time and thoughts of central heating are still weeks away. Evenings can be enjoyed spent on the patio with a book and a glass of something until light forces us indoors.



It's got to be one of my favourite times of year and I know how fortunate I am to be able to spend it here in this lovely little corner of the world. 'Coastkid',  a local blogger friend who's tales of cycling in this area I follow with interest, is a talented amateur film maker and regularly posts some wonderful GWF's {great wee films} of his treks hereabouts. A couple of days ago he and his helmet camera captured much of the essence of East Lothian in these short weeks with a wee film which happily he's allowed me to post for you here. Drop by his blog or look him up on you tube to catch more of his fabulous GWF's.

See you later.

Listening to Vangelis 'conquest of Paradise'

Stormy Dunbar Photos

photo by Billy Main

Hullo ma wee blog,

Following on from this mornings post about the weather, here's a link to some photos of the effects of the storm on Dunbar from local photographer Billy Main. These ones are taken yesterday.

see you later.

In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb........

That's what they say about March normally anyway.......

Hullo ma wee blog,

This mornings trip to Dunbar for the lovely G's train to work started earlier than normal, planned after last nights storm delayed return from work, taking into consideration the flooding already becoming problematic on the A1 past Torness power station at 7pm on the road home.

I listened to the hooligan wind screaming around the house last night from the warmth of bed thinking that I couldn't remember worse in the 8 years we have been here. I woke several times across the night yet wasn't tempted to follow my nocturnal habit, to head for the kitchen and night time comfort of coffee and blogging, happy for once to stay comfortably imprisoned by the several hundred banshees at the window and their howled demands to be let in. The wind kept me awake as the house creaked and groaned in her fight to keep us sheltered and my thoughts were swept in many directions but always, always came back to shrieking Mother Nature angrily demanding my attention. Jess, determinedly shouldered deeper into the duvet at our sides as she found her own ways of communing with sleep. Easy for a cat. The lovely G slept easily too. {I have often thought she may be part cat herself}. Eventually, as she does, sleep quietly claimed me and took me through to an early rise.

It was clear that things hadn't changed for the better as I peered out at the dark and the gloom this morning. Mother Nature still in angry voice, the trees in the garden shaking hard to loosen night from their shoulders, rain beating against the front of the house and, barely seen across the garden and drive, our enormous hedge swaying and twisting in the melee like some wild, threatening wall of malevolence straining to break free of the earth and launch itself in a suicidal charge at the house. I shuddered and made an unusual-for-me plan to head back to bed after the trip to the station, to seek comfort and solace in warmth for an hour or so. After all, I don't intend to spend much time out in that if I can avoid it.

By the time we were ready to leave for our journey, inky dark had turned hard grey, the added light doing nothing to make the scene beyond the window pane any more inviting. Suitably bundled in protective clothing we made eyes at each other as I opened the door and we stepped out to drive and car, immediately assaulted by a face full of wind and rain that stung and took the breath away, sharp intake of icy cold and a wince at stinging cheeks, loud exclamations as we slammed car doors shut against the reality of the day.

We ploughed through the flooded bottom of the drive and emerged onto the rain and wind scoured road, were blown up the hill and out of the village, the sea barely discernible from my favourite viewpoint on the crest of the hill. The car was being buffeted like I have never felt before. You see programmes on extreme weather on TV and this could have had its own slot. The A1, as we joined it, was eerily quiet and I immediately thought that a mile or so ahead we would be faced with blue lights and barricades closing off the section of the road most prone to flooding by muddy water off the fields on either side of the road, as it sometimes is, but surprisingly as I coaxed the car on we met nothing like that. The road which I fully expected to be 'hoodlum' with water was difficult for sure, but passable with care, the road in that section thankfully sheltered from the worst of the wind. The car continued to be pounded by wind and water as we drove on and at times I thought I was actually in a boat, the way the car was pitching. I have never driven in conditions like we met on the most exposed mile or two along the coast, and found myself thinking of lorry drivers until I looked at the sea in the increasing light. It was literally almost indescribable in its violence and seeming intention to wipe the land from its face. Normally this is a placid coast, but sea anywhere can be vicious at times. I thought I had seen all its faces until this morning. It was truly frightening and I uttered an ' Oh my God' to the lovely G beside me and turned my thoughts to any out at sea in that terrible storm and for the lifeboatmen who are a treasured part of our communities hereabouts.

The radio told of countrywide storms, lorries jack-knifed and overturned, multiple accidents, roads closed through flood and fallen trees, of snow so heavy that power lines had come down across Northern Ireland as we carried carefully on our way through roads unusually quiet of traffic, our headlights probing the gloom to show sparkling rain blown horizontally across our path or crashingly head on into the windscreen. A morning of biblical proportion. I dropped G off at the station to find cancelled trains replaced by emergency bus services which would considerably lengthen her journey to work. Despite an offer to drive her on to Edinburgh I was dispatched homeward with a kiss and a 'thanks for getting me here'. A stop for my morning 'Hootsman' newspaper saw me bent almost double in the wind tunnel of Dunbar main street, battered by rain between shop and car. The return journey as eventful as before with the wind at my back occasionally threatening to jolt me into oncoming traffic, or so it seemed, until I turned once more up the drive to the house and its comfortable warmth and companionable cat sitting patiently at the french doors looking askance at the lack of birdlife so necessary for a felines perfect contemplation of day.

As I stepped from the car I lowered my head against the wind for the few steps to sanctuary and received a final benediction of driven rain turned sleet on the top of my head.

March......

In like a lamb and out like a lion more like.......

So much for day four of 'British summer time'
Brrrr!!

See you later.

Listening to - the kettle boil so I can thaw out.

Merry Christmas, Darling.........

Cape Wrath Lighthouse.

Hullo ma wee blog,

As I get older I like to hear or read news, whether its newspapers, evening news programmes or news bulletins every half hour on my favourite radio station. It keeps me in touch with whats happening around the country, nation and around the world - well what they want to tell us about anyway, but that's another post -and somehow I feel better for it; grown up, able to have an opinion on whats happening, informed and more appreciative of far away places and goings on, perhaps even moved to want to persuade my government to do something or to change my ways to help reduce global warming or change my view on some part of current affairs.

I remember my parents always being determined to hear the 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock news from the BBC and as a child not understanding, and as a teenager scorning their need to listen to 'gossip' and 'hearsay' about folk and places they would never meet or visit from our parochial lifestyle.

I have come to to wryly appreciate some of the odder curiosities that drop out of news now and then to trigger my senses of fun, irony or just plain sarcasm.

The header for this post is the start of an imagined conversation between Kay Ure, and her husband John, who live in, and run a cafe from, the lighthouse keepers cottages at Cape Wrath at the tip of Scotland. Cape Wrath is the most northwesterly point in Scotland, and boasts Britain’s highest sea cliffs. Customers face a ferry ride and a three-hour trek up a stony path before they reach the most isolated café in Scotland.

Kay left home on the 19th of December to travel to Inverness, over a hundred miles away, to do the Christmas shopping, and was only reunited with her husband yesterday afternoon, having been trapped by the bad weather. John managed to get to her yesterday having finally made it across the Kyle of Durness in his boat and crossing the remaining miles of snowy road in his 4 x 4 all terrain vehicle. They are planning to have their Christmas dinner together today. A lovely story full of human interest and just the kind that gets my attention. I bet they don't dream of a white Christmas again any time soon.

And I hope she didn't forget anything off her shopping list......

Today too, I see in the Scotsman that one of my favourite singer songwriters of years past, Billy Bragg, is urging people to join his facebook campaign in his refusal to pay their income tax in protest at the bonuses to be paid out to RBS bankers unless they are curbed by the govt. Its fantastic to see that the socialist firebrand of years past is still fighting the good fight even though he is greying round the edges a bit. It made me think of my favourite album of his 'Talking with the Taxman about Poetry'. All great stuff, full of fire and brimstone, bursting with energy and righteous indignation.

So why do I feel a wee bit piqued that he is doing it all on facebook from his cosy farmhouse in Dorset.

see you later

Listening to Jackie Wilson 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher'

Driven to distraction

Jess {L} and Bailey {R}
Hullo ma wee blog,

As the lovely G has departed in a workwise direction once more this week, all the better to keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed in my stay at home lifestyle, I have not been as quiet as expected but have had to do a fair bit of driving in some of the worst weather I have encountered in all my years on the road.

My friend M, he of the twice broken leg, had to be taken to hospital in Edinburgh when his leg swelled alarmingly in the plaster cast. On being seen he was immediately told he was being admitted and given an operation as the leg was too badly damaged to be only in plaster. {Take a tip then folks and never break any bones in Fife - cos hospitals there don't know how to treat them properly}

This left us with a problem as his heart medication was back at home so I ended up doing a dash back to Dunbar with housekeys to collect medicines, clothing and other essentials driving back again to Edinburgh and got back home that night through perhaps the most atrocious blizzard I have ever experienced with cars skidding all around and just getting through part of the A1 as the police closed it off. M's wife who was with me was unusually quiet for some strange reason.

Just taking G to the station has had its challenges with icy roads untreated for days and fresh snowfalls on top, but with proper time and a bit of care its been done safely and now the snow ploughs are out, but with no grit for any of the roads.
This mornings drive took more than 20 minutes rather than the usual 10 as the road conditions dictated extreme caution but its an enjoyable challenge non the less, although I wont be travelling if there is much more snow or continued lack of grit as it may get to the stage where the car might get stuck, but that will be assessed on an ongoing basis. I don't fancy being stuck in the car in the snow.

An hour later and I had to take Bailey in -8c conditions 20 miles to the vet for the second time in a week. She has rapidly lost appetite and weight. Last weeks blood tests showed anaemia but normal kidney and liver functions and a further few days of rest and close monitoring showed no real improvement. Today she has a high temperature and further blood tests showed some signs of an infection but all other signs are again stable but with the anaemia still unchanged. So antibiotics injected and pills, an appetite stimulant and advice to get back to the vet if there is no significant improvement over the next two days. He seemed genuinely perplexed and concerned. Its been hard to move without her trying to climb aboard for the last few days as she want to be held and stroked all the time. Hope this does the trick though. She's a great pal. Even now she is determined that I stop typing and pay attention and hands are being nudged and a whiskered faceful of purr machine is my constant companion at the kitchen table.

More snow is falling as I am posting this.

Wonder if its going to be a little or a lot.
Another challenge for the morning. Ah well.

see you later.

Listening to Band Of Horses 'The Funeral'

dreich, dreich, dreich........Braw!

Hullo ma wee blog,

Happy New Year to you by the way.

Oh well, the forecast about snow I made came to nothing and the weather instead has been as curmudgeonly as me lately, sending sleet, rain and strong wind to batter the house and buffet the trees in the garden. Sunlight has been sparse and most of the days have been cold, grey and dreich, not the sparkling start to the year I was hoping for.

But on the bright side its been perfect for staying indoors listening smugly to howling winds and hailstones pattering windows. So far we have quietly been catching up on movies bought but not watched. Yesterday we caught up with 'Mamma Mia' - one the kovely G had seen at the cinema and had been given as a present during the year. {for maximum brownie points I might add. Clever boy, Al} I had successfully resisted attempts to be present for a ceremonial screening {thus losing any hard earned brownie points} until now. Grudgingly I had to admit that I had quite enjoyed it but not that I was humming along quietly {which I was} Then we watched 'Burn After Reading' which, like most of the Cohen bros movies, I found hilarious and totally fascinating, and finished up with 'Beowulf' which we enjoyed too but both agreed that Ray Winstone was miscast - even for an animated version - as his East end London accent exclaiming "I have come to kill your monshter!" was hilarious.

After a late breakfast we didn't feel like anything other than some cheese, fruit and biscuits for dinner. Its not been a holiday of gorging ourselves this year at all and the freezer is still groaning with Christmas goodies.

Today we ventured out between vicious wintry showers for a wee walk down the cliff path to the harbour at Cove, well wrapped and protected from the worst of the elements. A short stay to watch the waves crash over the harbour wall and marvel at natures strength and the ability of seabirds to cope in such extremes and we slowly made our way back up the hill, thankfully with a tailwind, to warmth and sanctuary once more, able to feel virtuous as we took off hats, coats and gloves, stamped our feet and began to rub life back into tortured cheeks and frozen noses.

Now having thawed out we are getting ready to go and visit some friends locally. They should have been coming here but sneakily hubby managed to break his leg in two places at work on Tuesday.

What some people will do to avoid coming to see me.........

see you later.

Listening to Madness 'Welcome to the house of fun'

The Last Post 2009.........

Hullo ma wee blog,

My lovely G has today off and doesn't need to go back to work for 5 whole days. Having had a fairly busy Christmas we have elected to raise the drawbridge here in Robertson Towers and told the guards to set phasers to 'malky'* for the duration, set the mantraps in the grounds and I have deliberately not fed the crocs since September - just after I put the Christmas sprouts on - as apart from a few choice and probably unfortunate souls, we have decided to cut off from reality and self indulgently have the time to ourselves in secret, selfish, self indulgent self indulgence. Not tradition and not the way I was brought up {in a small village it was open doors for everyone all the way through to 3rd or 4th Jan} but 'Jings' I'm looking forward to it.

Nibbles will be nibbled, drinks will be drunk and thinks will be thunk. Baths and naps will be taken and walks may very well be walked. Cats will be stroked and fires will be poked. I may even be adventurous and blog a blog - who knows?

In many ways its been a bugger of a year and I'll be glad to see it scarper off over the horizon never to be seen again. Its been a testing time not just for me but for my lovely G and I want to try and show her how much I appreciate it by a bit of pampering, a bit of emphasis and a lot of sucking up.

The weather has put on its white coat once again and some of the snow has returned to garden and drive and with skies dark enough to show its intentions for the next day or so. Its the ideal cover to advertise a no travel policy to far away folks who always expect us to visit but rarely return the favour {maybe I should read something into that} and certainly never if there is a whiff of bad weather in prospect.

So we're going to coorie doon {snuggle down} for a day or two together. Supplies are in and the fire is lit. Falling snowflakes are counting down the last few hours to the turn of the year.

Let it snow Big Man, let it snow..........


Happy New year everybody, all the best for 2010. I wish you everything you would wish for yourselves.

see you later.........

Listening to the year ticking off........

*malky - An act or instrument of extreme violence.

Where day and night split

Hullo ma wee blog,

My lovely G is just behind me as I step from the house out into the drive and unlock the car for the short 10 minute trip to Dunbar and her morning train to Edinburgh and work.

Just a normal day.

The wind had been loud and loutish during the night with some periods threatening to reach so far into my consciousness as to wake me thoroughly but thankfully stopping at just being a reminder it was there. But by 4.30 I was awake for the day and, as there is no point in me staying to harrumph and wake the lovely G with my tossing and turning, I followed my habit and got up to head for the kitchen and my chair at the table in the corner by the patio doors. The wind, decreased in volume, was still hard to ignore through the double glazing of the doors and windows. Early reports on the radio were full of dire stories of heavy rainstorms and flooding further south and west and a sad report of a policeman missing when a bridge collapsed while evacuating folks from some of the rural areas worst affected. Cockermouth on the Cumbrian coast, a town we know quite well from previous visits, appears to be at the center of the worst weather and has had 12 inches of rain in 24hrs, the worst since records began.

The first thing I notice on opening the car for us is that the morning is warmer than over the last few weeks and the sky has an incredible feel to it this morning. Its deep with colour and still night to all intents, an inky dark brooding mass of seething cloud.

As we head off down the driveway and on to the road out of the village and turn towards Dunbar we change direction and at the top of the hill the first hint of real dawn is threatening to follow the slim slit of grey and pale gold showing on the horizon way off out into the North Sea. A few minutes later and clouds appear in the increasing light away on my right, out across the water beyond Torness power station. A long line of low cloud almost the visible length of the estuary, it looks like something a child would paint on a picture of seascape, not quite real somehow,with a clear but dark sky above, but its there none the less. As we move on I am thinking about those clouds, how unusual they look and it occurs to me that they look like they are parched and hungrily sucking up sustenance from the sea close below, perhaps to replace what they unloaded on the land during the night, but urgently, before they are noticed and chased away by the wind coming in off the water.

The radio leads us through the inane chatterings of a changeover of DJ's and by the time that's over we are reaching the outskirts of Dunbar with its dark grey roads glistening iron hard and slick with last nights rain. The light now is perhaps my favourite time to drive; neither dark or light and the headlights having no apparent visible effect on the road ahead, but a marker to see and be seen by. Its a time that lasts only for a few precious miles in the morning or evening. A time to be savoured, at least by me. This is the time for the deer, the fox and the morning birds, the hare and the heron, with the last of the predators gone or going and the stragglers of nights life anxious to be away out of sight.

Each morning, the station gives me the opportunity for a curmudgeonly tut at some hopeless driver, holding up the rest of us with his inability to find an out of the way location to disgorge his passengers or for a thoughtless pedestrian stepping into harms way. And of course lets not forget that sleepy cyclist with the death wish and no lights. Perhaps its the horn blowing that is his real alarm call. One of these days one of us is not going to stop in time, I guarantee it.

Soon G is is gone from my side leaving the memory of a kiss lingering on my lips and a breathless "see you later" to prepare me properly for the day ahead. I turn about to retrace the road back to the A1 and home, past Cromwells camp site and the battle stane memorial to that sair fecht in 1650. I think its incredible that the battles of 1296 and 1650 took place on pretty much the same piece of land and with the same auld enemy. It seems to me they sit like quotation marks either side of the start and end of Scotlands forlorn fight for Independence.

As I drive past the stone, sitting hump-backed and largely ignored by the side of the road, the night colours are still solidly there on my right out the window and on my left the steel grey of day has charged up with the wind. Somewhere above me is where day and night split. Night still clings on by the fingertips but soon it will be gone, chased beyond the horizon by the cloudy battalions of dawn to regroup, re-arm, and reappear.

See you later.........

Listening to Mike Oldfield ' Five Miles Out'

Its a Beautiful day.............

Hullo there ma wee blog,

Its such a different day from yesterday when there were the first of the real gales coming in off the sea. The first real taste of the coming Winter so far. Trees in the garden were wrestled backwards and forwards and most of the remaining apples torn from their grasp leaving only a few stubborn signs of plenty behind. An overdue reminder that me and my wee hessian sack should have been active before now.

As the lovely G had a rare Saturday off work we decided we would go to Edinburgh to begin the search for a new car for her. Her current car, the first she has ever owned just herself, is now almost vintage and although much loved is at the stage where the advice of our trusted mechanic was a salutary and refreshingly honest " If you bring her to me again I'm afraid its going to cost a lot of money to do what really needs to be done to keep her safe for another year "

And so we set off down the drive under the thrashing branches of the old pear tree and through a village wisely devoid of pedestrians and small children on bikes. As we leave the village the road crests a small hill and the sea is laid out before us. Its one of those seminal views for me and I look forward with anticipation to it every time I am in the car.

To me the sea always seems to reflect life in all its changing, complex ways and yesterday that life must have been in turmoil. The sea was a patchwork of vicious dark and emerald greens, heaving with thousands of white horses as far as the eye could see, a container ship in the distance the only sign of life. The road joins the sea near us for a mile or so side by side and we often can watch some hardy souls surfing.

{ Believe me, to surf in Scotland you have to be hardy! }

Today though there was not a soul and waves, perfect for surfing, crashed onto the beach completely unattended, slapping, angry and inconsolable, onto the sand in a petulant strop for needlessly having gone to all that trouble. Buffeted by the wind the car occasionally shook and shimmied on the road as we headed into town. Leaves, brown and gold flecks in the wind streaked horizontally across our view.

We both agreed that after we had done what we set out to do, to check out if the governments scrappage scheme of £2000 towards a new car is better value than considering a fairly new second hand one, { Its not is our considered opinion now by the way } we would return home for what we have come to call a 'duvet day', firmly ensconced in the house together with a few good films and some munchies, a bottle of wine perhaps and a cuddle, sometimes literally, but not today, under a duvet brought to the lounge.

And that was how we passed the day yesterday......

This morning I left my lovely G warm and cosy under the duvet and crept downstairs about 7.15am for a coffee and a catch up with the blogs I follow and to have a wee bit of me time continuing the prep for the job interview this week. The weather is a complete transformation to yesterday. Calm, sunny, clear and bright sky. One of those days which fills you with optimism rather than the kind of awe and wonder that it inspired yesterday. A quick trip for breakfast croissants was like a journey through a completely different part of the world, full of life and people going about their day to day business, the sound of a village on a Sunday morning. The sea is glass, and the water seems to be tickling the beach so gently compared to the onslaught of the storm just a few short hours ago. The sun is warm on my face and the weather is a lady today, polite and considerate, revealing nothing of the stormy temptress within that benign exterior.

Its a day to be out and about. Just a moment or two to enjoy, before autumn continues is short hike to winter..............

see you later.

Listening to.........this.

A blustery day.

Been on my own today: the lovely G at work and out in the evening and the weather has been dour. Cold and wet with the rain driven across the garden by a strong wind. The skies have been sullen, dark grey and the day has seemed like one long cold evening. When I was young and living on the west coast I would have called it "dreich" and pronounced it "dreech" with the ch like in loch.
I had planned to be out in the garden almost all day. The hedges at front and back of the house have been left so long they are almost out of control and I am going to have to be ruthless when cutting them back. My fault of course, I have left them too long. My excuse was that there were several nests in the hedges, sparrows, blackbirds and a beautiful thrush with its ermine chest, and I wanted to wait until all the eggs had hatched and the chicks were properly fledged and away. I should in all honesty have done it before we went on holiday but of course I didn't and by the time we came back it had become a daunting task.
The front hedge is about 30m long and about 2m high and 1m deep, the back about half the length but almost another metre high. So I have been procastinating, prioritising other easier jobs ahead of it and now on the day I had cleared the decks to get it done I am forced to sit inside and look at them from the window, the wind pushing them to and fro as if showing me again how big the job is going to be. Its not nice to be mocked by a hedge you know. Not funny. The wind almost cracks as it whips across the patio doors in the kitchen where I am sitting just now. It sounds like thunder at times.
In an hour and a half I will be at the local station to pick up G, who has already sent me a text to say she is a bit squiffy thanks to the cocktails she and her pals have downed. It doesnt feel like a cocktail day to me though. This is a day for a whisky. Or rather this is a day for a malt, maybe a nice soft speyside to warm the mouth and stoke the inner furnace a little, or a nice salty iodine rich Islay malt like Ardbeg or Bruichladdich with the tang of the sea and echoes of cold nights kept at arms length by a good fire and a comfy chair. I'm out of my personal favourite Talisker at the moment with its peat rich scent,sharply tangy bite in the throat and its long spicy finish so I think it will be a speyside. Islay malts seem too much like a concession to winter for this time of the year, at least in my present mood this evening.
Ach, thats the phone. Back in a mo............

G has called to say she is on her way to the station in Edinburgh. She has had a couple of nice cocktails based on one of her favourite drinks. Krupnik is a Polish vodka flavoured with honey and she has just described a Krupnik and pear cocktail and another honey and cinammon concoction, so I suppose I can see at least the latter being ok for a night like this although she says that in Edinburgh even though its raining its warm and there isn't a bit of wind with the flags all hanging limp on the flagpoles. What a difference a few miles makes eh?

I haven't eaten since lunchtime when I decided to have the lamb curry I had made last night and boxed up into the fridge. It felt like the right thing for today but I didn't bother with rice, just a small supermarket naan bread that I found at the bottom of the freezer and heated in the oven to use to soak up the spicy meaty juices at the bottom of the dish. Nothing special, just lamb and loads of onions cooked slowly until it was all meltingly tender and dark with spice and heat. It certainly hit the spot but was more than I would normally have for lunch so it has been enough for the rest of the day, especially since it rendered me comatose for a snoozable post lunchtime hour and the fact that I have been a completely lazy git today.

Now though I'm looking forward to G coming home, a nice cuddle and the malt that has been teasing my tastebuds memory for the last couple of hours or so.

listening to............. Evanescence, Tourniquet

see you later..............