the running wave

This thing about Scottish weather - I just have to disagree.  What could be better than this?

Today I took Tilly for our first walk round the block since I got home.  The early morning haar was in, wetting every blade of grass, leaf and cobweb.  I could hear the water dripping off the trees and visibility was hopeless. Aren't plants amazing?  The roadside verge below has recovered from its repeated blitzing during June.  When I left for Australia there was just a strip of chewed up wayside plants and grasses.   By mid-morning the haar had been burnt away by the hot sunshine.  It has been the East Fortune Air Show today.  The airfield is about three fields away and rather than cough up £20 a ticket we took ourselves to a good vantage point, looking across the valley to watch one of the highlights of the day.  Bang on 1.15 pm the Red Arrows tore across the skies from the Edinburgh direction and then proceeded to zoom and scream around for the best part of 15 or 20 minutes. They were breathtaking.     A...

I flew home from Australia earlier this week.  I left my beloved family behind, standing and waving at the International Departures gate, by that bleak place where you go through into the no-man's-land of air travel.  It was so hard to say goodbye, and to see that eager little face of my youngest grand daughter, with her hand held up to wave farewell.  I don't think she really understood that I was going, but I did.  The only consolation was that we will back in a few months time for Christmas and our son's wedding to his lovely lady. The two flights were painless, the long hours whiled away reading, dosing fitfully, watching a couple of films and eating airline food.  The second flight was during the hours of daylight and zooming along at about 32,000 feet I looked out of the window and realised we were flying over Iraq. Hmmm.   A curious arrangement below, I am not sure what is going on here!   The course of the River Tigris was clear to se...

It's my birthday today.  I've never had a winter birthday before, which just goes to show that life is full of new experiences! We drove up to Daylesford for lunch.  It's a lovely little town just over an hour outside Melbourne, and a popular destination for people who like food!  We had a happy day wandering through the town, meeting a couple of friends for lunch, and then back to Melbourne for a birthday Skype with my family at home! During the Skype session my birthday cake appeared and my little Melbourne princess helped me to blow out the candles.  The wee girl decorated the  Mississippi mud cake  and I have to say I am extremely proud of her efforts and think we should all have the opportunity to admire her creativity!

I will be leaving my lovely boy and his girls on Tuesday, so just a handful of days left to have a scoot round to some favourite haunts before I fly home.  When I left the house on Thursday morning the sun was shining, but by the time I was standing on the station platform, two minutes later, I could see a big black wedge of rain cloud heading my way.  By the time I reached Armadale station and was walking down High Street on my way towards the legendary Chapel Street, big fat drops of rain were being blown around me.  It wasn't long before the weather became quite impossible and I ducked into a cafe for a peculiar mug of hot soup (grey dishwater and khaki kale) and a piece of sourdough bread.  Well, you get what you pay for, and in Melbourne $5 doesn't buy you much!  Anyway, it was warm in there, and the soup was hot, so it was money and time well spent while the rainstorm blew over.  After that I continued my walk in sunshine until I reached Chapel Stre...

On Wednesday I threw off cares about the cold and wet weather, to brave a day in the blustery city, with a visit to the museum principally in mind! Sitting on the wall of the train station waiting room was a rather wonderful moth.  That was a good start to my day. This is a bay fig tree growing in the parkland near the Melbourne Museum.  I think it is the most magnificent tree I have ever seen!  It's enormous.  Goodness knows how many people it would take to hug its girth! Inside the museum I went straight to see the butterflies again.  I remember them from our last visit.  Their iridescence is breathtaking and I am so glad it appears to have translated well into a photograph or two. I have included a photo of this bivalve fossil because it is 390 million years old!!  It was found by a local miner on Mount Matlock in Victoria. The photos below show extracts from The Federation Tapestry, a series of ten panels designed ...