Home from Edinburgh

I’ve been away and now I’m back. And I’ve had an idea! But I’m going to do another post tomorrow and do my idea in that one. Today I’m going to bore you with all my photographs and traveller’s tales.

Now, readers, this may be a shock to you as it was to me, but, the UK continues above North Yorkshire. Yes it does! There’s a whole other country up there. I’ve visited it once before when I went to the Isle of Skye which I remember chiefly for its very assertive sheep, but I had never been to a city. Well, now I have been to Edinburgh for my aunt’s 50th birthday (this is not Aunty Kath. I have a lot of relatives. Sometimes Partner turns to me as some remote hill tribe in Afghanistan is discussed on the news and says, very solicitously, and do you think they might be related to you, Susie? He is very sarcastic. I don’t listen).

The angel of the north as seen from the A1. It isn't a real angel. It's made of metal

We saw the Angel of the North on the way up. This is also called the Gateshead Flasher, oh those cynical northerners.

Edinburgh castle

Gosh aren't we high up. Mum and dad keeping an eye on things

We had a look round Edinburgh on the morning of the royal wedding. We didn’t feel we’d missed anything because a woman in the Scottish Parliament gave us a brisk run down on the wedding dress and the dresses of all the major female attendees along with her thoughts on republicanism and the need to discipline children.

Blossom!

Edinburgh is about 375 miles from Cambridge (for those of you in the US, I know this isn’t very far to you!) and even the weather is different. They still had blossom on their trees even though ours dropped off a couple of weeks ago. I notice things like this, I do not pretend to be interesting.

I think the trams run for about 6 feet and then stop and possibly this is not the best possible use for all the money that has been spent

We were plunged right into the centre of a controversy. Edinburgh is having a new tram system and something has gone wrong. I felt I was on familiar territory here, as Cambridge is having a new guided bus system and something has gone wrong. Even the leader of our council now seems to have given up on the guided bus, when questions were last asked, she said, I do not care about the guided bus, frankly I am so over the whole affair and you can all stick it up your collective bums because I am going to the pub. I paraphrase but that is the gist so I hope they are having better luck with their trams in Edinburgh.

Always eat the free biscuit

After the party. Tiaras from Tesco (see hypocrisy in tomorrow’s post), stylish clutch from Ascension, Rowan Studio booklet from Jenners in the centre of Edinburgh which had Bargain Wool Packs. Jenners appears to be a branch of House of Fraser. House of Fraser in England has no bargain wool packs! How can this be fair? Clearly this is what comes with devolution. I am packing my bags!

Always make time for a coffee. View from the coffee shop. On the plus side we got free chocolates, on the minus side a fan blew in dad's ear

Afterwards we called in at Alnwick. This is were the Harry Potter films were set and it is very pretty. If you are ever in the area, there is a wool shop in the centre which had free – yes, you read that correctly – second hand knitting magazines, and also there is Barter Books which is a great big bookshop in the former railway station. It is fantastic! I took one look and began to despair of ever getting my dad out of it but eventually we prised him away from the second hand folio editions and got him home.

I have essentially been asleep since I got back to Cambridge because we were very busy, and also there was a Sausage Incident. I will not go into this in detail, I will only say that the man who was doing breakfasts in the B&B did not understand our accents, and we did not understand his. He was very, very helpful: but a lot of dipthongs were involved, and it resulted in quite a long exchange regarding whether I was anticipating the inclusion in my cooked breakfast of either bacon or beans, and my mother being presented triumphantly with an Unwanted Sausage. I imagine that man is sitting now, perhaps in the very nice back garden, saying to his wife, ‘Goodness me! That woman wasn’t clear at all about whether she wanted bacon or beans! They do have strange accents, don’t they?’, only all the vowels will take half an hour to say. So when I got home and discovered that David Cameron had said socialists have no sense of humour, I thought, well, that’s as maybe, but I’ve just spent the last three days laughing solidly about a sausage. I’m not sure whether that proves his point or blows it out the water.

See you all tomorrow!