Tanglewood Tales.

I'm glad I don't eat beef any more. I could look this fellow in the eyes.

The Cornish wreckers!

Let's hear it for the official Cornish Pasty!

Now its recipe and the right to its name are both recognised by the EU.

Next it wll be knighted by the Queen.

I'm a great fan.

To drag myself back to the present (in which not a lot seems to be happening) I have happily discovered Tana French whose crime novels are a really enjoyable read. I’ve bought three so I can lay Reginald aside for a bit.

The film this week was a musical - I usually veto anything musical. The Ex likes opera but I prefer something with a story that moves rather than getting stuck on one line and one note for what always seems to me far too long. I suppose that makes me a Philistine, but it can’t be helped.

Anyway, for once I was given no option and, as is often the way, was amazed at the beauty and intricacy of it. Called “Sunday in the Park with George” the inspiration for it was the life of George Seurat the pointillist. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine (whatever 'book' means here?), it was a Broadway production first. It was filmed as a theatre performance (although I’ll bet the audience had to put up with lot of re-takes.)

Very very pleasing to the eye, the set is actually a huge representation of his painting, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" in the soft subtle colours of Seurat’s work and the story board is his short life-time, during which he was absorbed by his art to the exclusion of all else. He took more interest in the characters he was painting than in the people he met in real life. The people strolling in the park therefore come alive and get mixed up with the ‘real’ ones. The singing was not what I associate with fancy operatics but raw modern sore-throat emotional stuff, (often funny too). Never was a line repeated endlessly for the sake of the musical score.

The second half was an imagined homage paid by his great-grandson, also called George, also an artist with light and colour, but with all the 20th century technology available he has created what he calls "Chromolume 7," which emits light and colour waves. The homage is attended by the young Gerorge’s grandmother Maria, who is the child that George the elder’s mistress bore him (but he never took the time look at).

I was startled to see Data from Star Trek appear in it (Brent Spiner).

I didn't think Costa had had sufficient exposure so far in the nostalgia trail so this post is to show all the things he was doing in those days.
*Swimming in the River Findhorn.
*Sailing in Findhorn Bay.
*Counting his Christmas booty.
*Skiing. That photo was either taken by him or by his dad, not sure which. They went skiing in France a couple of times.
*Making a snappy waistcoat. (Really! He always was better with a needle than me. It must be the sailor in him.)
*Chilling with a coffee, looking remarkable like Sandy does just now.
*Going up in a glider. That has to count as one of the worst moments of my life watching him being towed up into the sky by a hawser.
*Learning to light fires and open wine bottles.
*And finally.... a few years on, now with the sort of dreadlocks you get from sun, sand and salt air and not combing your hair - ever. He's the cool one on the right with red trousers.

After ten years with the same printer I have just learned how to scan in photos. Good for me!

It seems I took far more photos in the past than I do now. This record of some of the houses we have lived in is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. There are four large biscuit tins and a box full of them. I never was any good at getting them into albums.

This house, inland and up the hill a bit, is surrounded by deciduous trees and plantation pines. It had cherry trees - guyans - in the garden. They are sweet and delicious but tiny.

No street lamps and almost no neighbours. When I stepped out of the house at night it was totally dark unless there was a moon. I have never seen the milky way so clearly before. I still miss the owls .

The bird table Costa made me for a birthday was visited by dozens of kinds of small birds, a sparrowhawk (after the small birds) a woodpecker (the black, brown, orange and white kind) and squirrels. Deer came through to graze although there was a high fence.

I rather wish I had stayed in this one, but there were still adventures to be had elsewhere.

We had a huge exciting bonfire, later finding out we'd had it just above the septic tank.

Arden House

In this house Chloë was nine months pregnant, her pony had a foal (not actually in the house, just up the road in a field!) And then we were proud first-time grandparents.

152a Findhorn. I enjoyed gardening here because it was such a small plot. The shed was Costa's and incredibly well organised inside - sorry we moved on Costa. That was the story of your life! (Although at about this time you started to leave home too - first stop Kinsale!)

The cat belonged to a neighbour but adopted us when they got a baby and then, horror, a dog. She was quite evil, bullied our own cat and dog, and should have gone into the cauldron. Very photogenic though.

Darklass House. We rented this house. It is big, but not so big that we didn't fill it. The Three were teenagers by this time and needed lots of space for flouncing out in huffs and slamming doors and brooding. (And that was just me!) There was an extension that was always freezing in winter until a log fire was lit, then it became a great place for real parties with dancing and proper games.

The Christmas seen here was spent with Crawford and Tom Buchan (who looks ghostly in the light and has now sadly passed on.) I just wonder who took the photo???

The fuel bills were astronomical. On top of the oil we got through two shed-loads of wood with extra bags of peat over the winter that the snow was so bad. We were snowed in for a while and the electricity supply failed for a couple of days.

The critturs were always to be found keeping cosy and warm on the best chairs.

Jenny the dog disgraced herself regularly by chasing the farmer's chickens up and down their coop (she couldn't get at them but she could make them run!) They stopped laying in protest. One day she got stuck in a harrow chasng a rabbit. When the kind, long-suffering, farmer pulled her out by the tail she bit him.

We had the best ever Hallowe'en in this house. Decorated the kitchen and properly scared the visiting children.

On second thoughts it wasn't as much fun as the one in Findhorn when I lit a fire in the back yard and dressed as a witch with blacked out teeth, then sat crouched over the fire waiting for guysers. Scared the pants off 'em.

This was a nice caravan to spend half a year in. The flowers were for my 50th birthday.

I've been nostalging. Retrospecting. Revisiting.It was a sunny day and I went for a prowl around the place that drew me to Scotland for better or for worse (sometimes I'm not sure how that worked out!)

This is a select few of the first places we lived in, the children and I. From the bottom up: A tiny block of a house, one room wide, next to the pub and just overlooking the bay, with thick thick stone walls that in a Force 8 from the north-west shook. When that sort of gale blew we could hardly get the door open so hard would it charge down the little lane between the buildings. Once upon a time it had been a grocery store. It was also the house in which Chloe saw a ghost. That was in 1983

Then when we finally moved up here we put down anchor in a grotty caravan (what WAS I thinking of?) that has recently been pulled away and burned - should have happened long ago. I think the children have some happy memories of the van because it was a novelty and for the first time in their lives they were free to roam. We also lived for a while in the now pink chalet next to that caravan, but that came later.

Then there was the house in Fyrish Road around which is a hedge so high and thick I couldn't get a photo of it. No hedge in our day. It was bleak and exposed to the weather, didn't have double glazing or, as now, a sunroom. We looked out onto the sand dunes - as seen through the old gateway (a remnant of much older building).

I couldn't find the fisherman's cot that brought on Costa's one and only real bout of asthma in Scotland. The smoke from a neighbour's chimney beat down into the bedroom windows. When we were living there it was almost the last cottage before the sand dunes (again) but land got sold off and other brash new intruders, pretending to be fisherman's cots, got built and it got prettified so - it has vanished. Might be any one of these I snapped, but isn't.

Then we disappeared up into the hills briefly, came back down to sea-level quickly but not to this village. We spent a couple of years (long time!) in a large rambling crumbling house in the middle of fields perfect for grazing the pony. Finally, to Costa's joy, we returned to the village by the sea and lived in what had been in the early C19 a smokehouse, then it became a post office at which time it was was badly converted into two houses with virtually no sound-proofing. Chloe and G lived in one half, the rest of us in the other. The views from the back bedrooms were brilliant. They looked right out over the bay and into the sunsets.

Finally, at the top of them all, a picture of the skies that brought me here.

In all we have lived in 11 places as a family and I've lived in two on my own. No wonder I have gathered little moss - that is to say, no money or substance!