It’s been a patchwork of time since I last added anything here. The utter boredom of shop-sitting then the pleasure of getting the g’son back happy from his ‘exped’ with his class. Three nights away in tents, orienteering, kayaking, gorge walking, climbing walls, raft-building etc. etc. on, according to him, half a beefburger a day and a few baked beans. We worried - would he cope? He coped wonderfully well being an outdoor sort of chap who is no stranger to being wet and cold all day. He’s not afraid of much the physical world can throw at him, is practical and great at organisation. By the time night came they were all so exhausted that falling asleep wasn’t a problem and as he was put in a tent with a boy who is claustrophobic he had someone else to think about other than himself.
Photos show him laced to a pretty blonde girl for the three-legged race.
So that’s all good.
Saturday C and I had a day that almost passes for sophisticated pleasure in this part of the world. Coffee and cake (gluten and dairy free for C) at Johnstons of woollen fame and usually the only shop I can walk into without wanting to buy anything because it’s bound to itch (yes, even the cashmere). This day, quite unexpectedly, a wonderfully huge necklace of blue painted wooden beads became mine. We browsed through children’s clothes wondering if they were a good buy for the naming ceremony in Cornwall. On the whole we decided no, the parents need the money more than Little Lord F’s. Pity though. I’ve decided money makes me happy and lack of it detracts from life’s pleasures, so sucks to the moralists.
In the afternoon we went to the private view of an artist who painted sky-scapes rather well, but I was much more moved by the Pimms and tiny cucumber sandwiches than his paintings. It’s SUCH a long time since I had Pimms and the newly rediscovered Jillian in Cambridge has been talking about the succession of luncheon parties she’s going to at the Cambridge colleges just now, Kings, Girton, Clare, Jesus, Emmanuel, etc. etc. quaffing champagne and toying with strawberries on each green lawn until I am wondering why on earth I ended up in this anti-cultural corner of the world where Pimms and cucumber sandwiches sans crusts hardly exist....
Bitter thoughts.
Back to the practical: the car now has four new tyres and its brake pads have been found to be safe (the warning light keeps coming on but that’s the wiring apparently). I’m 'good to go' for the Cornish expedition, which is going to include a detour to the Banksy exhibition. Just need to earn a few more shekels. A ‘new collector’ of old books helped toward that end yesterday, may his pocket book flourish.
To pass the time in the shop I’m reading Evelyn Waugh 'When the Going was Good'. I rarely, or never, read travel books but his has the Waugh style and he was less interested in the minor details of ruins and sites than in the vagaries of his fellow travellers or the local grandees. He’s always worth reading. There was a Waugh moment at the school sports day come to think of it, when the starting pistol failed to fire and the master in charge started fiddling with it, looking down the end and so on, then managed to get it to fire when inappropriately pointed at a child. No harm done, but I couldn’t help thinking of the master with the starting pistol in ‘Decline and Fall’ who shot himself in the foot which later went gangrenous and had to be amputated.
On the creative side very little has been happening. All writing is frozen at the moment. Sitting in the shop is draining the creative juices. The most I have done is set up a celebratory window for Forres Week which, amongst the usual tributes to a town that for the North of Scotland passes as quite pretty, displays the pages from the 1776 manuscript of the Edinburgh Synod as ‘Local Minister of the Gospel in Sex Scandal.’ Barry, the very agreeable minister from the church opposite has yet to spot it and comment.
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