the running wave

Who needs a dozen red roses from your beloved when you can have a .....  A rather more romantic and definitive way to express your enduring love might be this ... or this But I suspect most of us girls would prefer something from here today! Happy Valentine's Day!

Greetings from down under!  It's glorious today and it has been wonderful to swap a cold grey UK for a lovely hot and sunny Australia by climbing aboard the trusty steed pictured below and jetting off to the sun.   This was home for the next 24 hours.  No room to swing a cat of course, and after nearly 24 hours of sitting in such a confined space we were mightily glad to finally land in Melbourne late last night. We had a couple of stops en route.  Dubai and Brunei.  Been there, done that.  We decided that two stopovers makes the journey seem so much longer.  Last time we flew with Qantas and stopped briefly in Singapore but this time with two stops the rigmarole of getting off the plane, hanging round in an airport departure lounge, going through security AGAIN and so on is just rather exhausting!   Anyway, the important thing is that we are here and all set to do more exploring of this wonderful city, and of course enjoy every minute spent...

I have had a bit of a run in recently with one of the local gamekeepers.  They shoot ridiculously close to the garden and it is all a bit cavalier in my opinion.  This has happened before between our household and the shoot which leases the woods around our property.  We don't have a problem with the fact the shoot does what it does - well, we do really because we don't enjoy the knowledge that the pheasants and deer we see so often are being rounded up by the beaters and then shot.  It seems to be a callous way to spend a day but I do confess to enjoying a pot roast of pheasant, so I suppose I can't have it both ways.  At least the pheasants grow up in happy surroundings.   I struggle more with the shooting of the deer.  They are such beautiful and graceful creatures. However, I know that they do a lot of damage to the crops and have to kept under some kind of control, so we just have to put up with it.  We chose to live in the countryside afte...

I am hoping that by the time we come back from Australia, just before Easter, all signs of winter will have been swept away, gathered up by the icy Polar winds which are swirling around us this week, and swooshed off to some other destination.  I have been having some pretty teeth-gritting walks with Tilly this week and although we haven't had the new falls of snow which have blanketed the outskirts of Edinburgh, there are still smidges of white to be seen on the Lammermuirs. As I wrote in my last post, there is little colour in the landscape.  The skies are leaden and any blue sky which is brave enough to appear is pale and washed out.  The blue is so translucent that the colour doesn't even show up on my photographs so I won't include them here.  However, as I have walked down the drive recently I have been accompanied by three pairs of bullfinches, the males showing off their magnificent, deep peachy pink coloured chest feathers.  There has also been a cha...

There was a window of opportunity today to take a walk in some winter sunshine.  We have seen little of it over the past two or three weeks.  All the snow has melted now.  We didn't have very much in this part of East Lothian although the Lammermuir Hills to the south are still white in the distance. The winter countryside is almost completely colourless, grasses washed out and branches only just showing tiny new buds. There are occasional splashes of vivid colour. But there are also those longed for, magical, first signs of Spring and new life!  Wonderful! It was a good walk!

When I retired last Easter I was given some wonderful departing gifts by my work colleagues. One was a gift voucher for Leith School of Art .  This is a little gem of an art school in Edinburgh - well, Leith actually.  It is a place which is very close to my heart so I may have mentioned it before but make no apology for that!  It has been very much a part of our family life since we moved to Scotland and I hope it always will be.   My gift voucher has enabled me to attend a number of weekend workshops. The first was on the use of charcoal which I love to draw with.  I much prefer drawing to painting. The second was a two day course on lino cutting.  On the first day we had to dream up an image rather than use a still life and as I have a bit of a thing for Traprain Law, a volcanic hill in the middle of the East Lothian landscape, I decided to try and conjure up something from my memory.  Traprain Law is quite a distinctive shape and I see it every d...

A Happy New Year to you from the running wave!  I hope 2013 is a happy, healthy and peaceful time for you and yours. I am not quite sure what happened to November and December!  They have been and gone in a twinkle!  I was busy with all the usual  buzz of everyday life.  Also I stayed with my very dear friend 60goingon16 and then my brilliant cousin Sue down in the south west of England.  That was a great visit and I took lots of photos with the intention of writing some posts about this and that, but it didn't happen!  I got caught up in the all the pre-Christmas stuff which seems to be so time consuming and expensive!  Anyway, the festive season arrived and it was all very nice!  Quiet though, because the tribe next door were down south with relations so Mr Gaucho and I had Christmas on our own for the first time since 1975.   So a new year now!  It's sunny today, 1 January 2013, and we are heading to the beach for a walk....