Slept in!
I woke up, looked at the clock and groaned. Timshel and I had slept in on the day we were due to leave Scotland!
The residents of Edinburgh were thus treated to early morning sight of two frowning power-walking parents, one with buttons in the wrong button holes, the other with bed-hair, pushing:

1. a baby in a buggy (‘stroller’ for the non-British among you) looking like a battered sav in his roll of blankets.
2. a whimpering bike trailer, barely visible under the weight of two 20kg backpacks, two panniers, a small backpack and some gloves and scarves that we didn’t have time to put on.

One minute to spare
The start of our 30 minute journey to the train station saw us travelling Indian file, heads down, walking fast, muttering quietly
Left the shampoo in the bathroom, dang. Forgot to check under the bed for Reuben’s red sock go, poo.
Timshel, pushing the bike trailer, had to constantly stop to let oncoming people through as the trailer took up the entire (very narrow) footpath. Then the footpath widened as we entered the avenue into town, the clouds cleared, and we were able to walk alongside each other and exchange excited Aren’t we crazy grins.

There is a pattern to the way we travel as a couple; Aren’t we crazy grins grins usually come just after Things are crazy bickerings, and just before I can’t believe we pulled that one off faces.

With four minutes to spare, we arrived at the station. With three minutes to spare, we discovered that the ticket machine wouldn’t recognise our reserved tickets. With one minute to spare we made it onto the right platform with tickets in hand. Interested commuters looked on whilst one parent, with vegemite on her cheek, put the brakes on the stroller and started pulling backpacks out of the bike trailer whilst the other parent, with one shoelace undone, started creating a small mountain of luggage in the middle of the platform. Stepping around the mountain a smiling station attendant approached us and chirped
Awful lot of luggage you have there.

Awful lot of luggage
We did have a lot of gear. We were moving to England. If we were bike-touring or back-packing, I would never contemplate trying to travel with this much stuff but we were trying to LIVE overseas for a year, and given that we were living off our Australian dollars the temptation to keep what we had rather than buy stuff with pounds was rather strong.
You know it’s general policy to only take on the train what you can carry announced the attendant. We grimaced, and while struggling to fold up the bike trailer, explained that we had, in fact, talked to railway staff days ago as we were concerned about exceeding baggage limit. We had been told there would be no problems.
Oh you must have talked to GNER staff, this is a Virgin train, he replied.
But we booked our tickets through GNER we protested.
Well, the trains can only take so much weight. It’s like aircraft travel. If we exceed certain weights, it affects our safety.
As I wrestled to unclip a pannier clip that had got caught on Reuben’s shoe, I felt a flicker of fear and found myself thinking
If he doesn’t let us get on this train, I’ll chuck a nancy…

The attendent watched with interest as Timshel removed the wheels of the trailer, and folded them into the body of trailer. I glanced worriedly down the tracks. He lowered his voice
I don’t mean to be a pain or anything, it’s just that we have to put a limit on things somehow.
He then turned and walked off. He talk four steps, and then double-backed.
Listen, if you get on carriage G, there is a baggage space at the back. Put your stuff in there, and then find your seats later.
He smiled and then was gone as the train pulled up.

Get on board NOW!
We located the right carriage, with luggage space as promised. Timshel wrestled the trailer on board whilst carrying the heaviest pack, I lifted the stroller into the train and returned for the rest of our luggage. I was still on the platform when the whistle blew and an attendent started waving a paddle-shaped instrument that seemed to suggest Get on board NOW!. I grabbed the last of our luggage and jumped onto the nearest carriage. I hoped Timshel knew that I was on board. I found Timshel and Reuben underneath a pile of luggage several carriages later. We organised our luggage, found seats and as the suburbs of Edinburgh whizzed past, exchanged I can’t believe we pulled that one off faces.

Woke up this morning and decided that TODAY was the day to go op-shopping for warm clothes. Yesterday’s exploration of Edinburgh with Reuben saw us freezing in the rain, hail and icy winds. Trudging over puddled cobblestones with the hail bouncing off my soggy beanie, I silently vowed to NEVER AGAIN go out in inclement weather unless better prepared. So ACTION STATIONS, a’ op-shopping we will go. I’m thinking balaclavas, ski-overalls, and those coats that look like sleeping bags with arms.

Of course, going anywhere with a baby/toddler takes a while.
So first I must wade through the preparatory tasks;

• breakfast (includes lesson for baby in how to eat with a spoon)
• clean up (includes hosing down of all surfaces that suffered the results of spoon-mismanagement)
• wash up (punctuated with swift movements to and fro various rooms to plot baby’s trail of destruction)
• change nappy (despite protestations)
• dress baby (despite rigorous wriggling)
• pack nappy bag
• pack food bag
• pack shelley bag (purse, cash, glasses, keys blah blah)
• dress baby in additional cardigan, coat, scarf and hat (despite back-arching reluctance from Reuben)
• take stroller and bags down 2 flights of stairs
• return to take baby down 2 flights of stairs
• unfold stroller and insert baby in stroller (threading various limbs through relevant straps)
• put on my own coat, scarf, beanie and gloves

Now ready, I open the front door.

It’s raining.
Hard.

The Celts have a strong and powerful spirituality. As I trudge upstairs I ponder that perhaps this is because the weather is so bad, there is nothing to do but go inside and pray for better weather.

 

 

Our Edinburgh adventures started with a trip to the good people of Mac. I would like to say that the good people of Mac are an ancient clan of piping, black-puddin eatin kilt-makers with red beards and a tendency to shout a lot. But no. It was an excursion to see a pimply faced teen who pressed a few keys and revived our dead Macintosh laptop. Bless ’im.

Next visit turned out to be a taxidermist’s wonderland: the exotic (but very quiet) menagerie of stuffed beasts at Edinburgh Museum. Oh and here’s something I learnt (which the rest of the world may already know) by peering into a box of dirt that had been artfully arranged to suggest a series of little tunnels; moles are TINY. About the size of a mouse, unless the taxidermist ran out of stuffing. I imagined them to be as big as a baby’s arm!

The Igoe-Cochranes middle child, Robert, came with us for our next adventure; a long hike through the back streets of Edinburgh to a swan-bobbing pond at the base of Arthur’ seat. Arthur’s seat is the site of an extinct volcano and rises 250 metres above sea-level. Our original plan was to climb to the top, but after dragging the stroller up 50 metres of a rocky and slodgy hillside, we folded up the stroller, chucked it into a thicket of gorse bush, and staggered to the wind-swept ruins of St.Anthony’ chapel for a rest. With our backs to the bluestone and big relieved grins, we pulled out our packed lunches and made fumbly attempts to unwrap the contents with pink numbed hands. Before us was a wide and generous view of Edinburgh and it’s surrounding seaside suburbs, including Leith where we are staying.

Incidently, Leith is in the history books as the place where the game of golf was invented. We are on the penultimate floor of a four storey building which faces out onto a big park known as Leith Links. According to the folk at the local pub ‘The Golf’, the game of golf has been played at Leith Links since at least 1600. In 1640, King Charles 1 heard news of the Irish rebellion whilst playing golf on the Links. The game gained more formal recognition in the 1700s when a club formed, calling themselves “The Gentlemen Golfers”. They would meet on a Saturday and lay wages on their game before retiring to a local hostelry to dine and settle their bets. In 1744, thirteen rules were drawn up, the first acknowledged rules of golf. They were titled ‘The articles and laws in playing at golf”. In 1754, The gentlemen of Fife invited The Gentlemen Golfers of Leith to join them in forming a club at St.Andrews which adopted the rules of Leith… and so ‘playing at golf’ spread throughout the world.
When David first told me this history of the park I looked around me and said “Ahh that explains the little hills doted about.”
“Well no.” He replied, “The mounds of earth were used to mount guns during Oliver Cromwell’s siege of Edinburgh”.
That siege was in 1650.
So let’s think this through, given that the game of modern golf is devastatingly boring, how boring would it have been without the little hills and sandtraps? If golf was first played in 1600, that is 50 sad years of wandering in the rain with a stick, a ball and a saggy cap with pom-poms. As I write this looking out over the Links, I imagine the golfers of the day would be very happy with the outcome of the siege of Edinburgh
“Today, men, is a day of Scottish pride, for although we have lost the battle, our independence, and the fine city of Edinburgh, TODAY my friends, we have made wee hills with wee flags to hit our wee balls into! No longer will we face the tryranny of flat parkland!”

HOORAY!
Hooray!
HOORAY!”

I spent my first day in Edinburgh making loud oohhs and ahhs punctuated by the zink-flash! of the digital camera.

The capital city of Scotland is a world heritage site, and to quote my Lonely Planet guide “An architectural wonderland dispersed among the rocky crags of brooding volcanic hills”.

It is a beautiful, old, stone city set in such a dramatically grand location that it reminds me of the model cities that you would make out of paper mache in grade five (though you know, the BEST model in the class). There is a huge extinct volcano (Arthur’s seat), a crowded old town (called The Old Town) with secret lanes, nooks and crannies, and a swanky grand new town (called *New Town) with posh squares, circuses and greens. The best bit: a huge rock (Castle Rock) smack bang in the middle of it all with a castle (Edinburgh Castle) on top and a train running around it’s base. Coooool.

As an Australian, I was amazed at the age and grandeur of the buildings. In Australia, you may have a nice old church here, or some impressively grand mansion there … but to make a city comparable to Edinburgh’s “architectural wonderland” you would have to employ the talent of a (rather clever) grade fiver to carefully prise off all of Adelaide’s gorgeous old churches, Tasmania’s convict-era stone buildings and Melbourne’s memorials and cathedrals, and then deposit them (lots of blue tac) in a model with the prior mentioned “rocky crags of brooding volcanic hills”. Oh, Oh, and the train! Don’t forget the train.

The buildings are brilliant; stone monuments to an age of craft and classic design.
Timshel got terribly excited about the stairs of the flat we are staying in, and his letter home describes them (and the craft of the buildings here) very well.

“Like the majority of buildings here, Marie and David’s flat is a sandstone construction, which must have taken countless man-hours of painstaking labour to build. The spiral staircase which ascends to the flat is an amazing piece of work – each step is a single piece of bluestone supported at one end by the wall, but the remainder of the step is only held up by 2-inches of overlap on the step below. I can normally walk under an arched doorway with the confidence of knowing that the weight of the stone wall above only aids the work of the keystones, but when I climb this staircase I tend to hug the wall-end of the steps a little. But its masterful engineering is a striking reminder of the skill, care and effort required to build in a truly lasting way, especially in our present economy of cost minimisation where concrete and pre-fabricated steel abound.”

P.S. I mistakenly thought the Queen would stay at Edinburgh castle when in the mood for a touch of haggis and tatties but was put right a few days ago when we passed a glittering palace with serious stone walls.
“That’s Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen stays when in Edinburgh.” Timshel said.
“What about the lovely Edinburgh Castle?” I explained.
“Not enough mod cons.” He said.

* New meaning 18th century!

We have arrived safe and well in Scotland!

Our hosts are a scottish family who stayed with Timshel’s family when visiting Australia a few years ago. The Igoe-Cochrane family (impressively Scottish-sounding name methinks) are Marie Louise, David, and their three boys, Daniel, Robert and Francis. It is lovely lovely lovely to be here.

We arrived yesterday morning, slept a little and then made ourselves get up for a few hours before crashing again. Reuben needed some convincing that 2am wasn’t 2pm. He wanted to play and kept shouting Ma! Dad! Ma! Ma! DAD! in a bid to rouse us from our our stupour. What a time to nail the whole “Ma/Dad” thing. He was very cute, but it WAS 4am. We stifled our giggles and feigned sleep. Until he woke up again a little later wanting lunch. Poor little fella. So a quick feed and re-settle.

I have just woken up to our second day in Scotland and Marie has assured me that it is friday. I had no idea what day or time it is. was. will be. or something. Bit jetlagged.

Their is eleven hours difference between Scotland and Australia. It was a trip to the other side of the world. As Timshel reflected, you can’t get much farther apart unless you flew from New Zealand to Oslo, and even then the weather would be more similar. The day we left Australia, it was 33C. The week before we left we had had a string of 40C days. When we arrived at Heathrow, it was -1C, and Scotland had had several -5C days in a row. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So how was the flight?

Arduous, fun, arduous and fun again. This being our first
international flight we were like two excited ten year olds
“Look, a toothbrush and tiny toothpaste!”
“The alcohol is FREE?”
“Oh so the bassinet folds down into our lap, how cute”.
By the end of our flight, however, I had a working hypothesis that the person
who designed the whole parents bit of the plane had major issues with their own
parents and so subliminally wished all parents all over the globe to SUFFER. The bassinett did fold down into your lap, the armrests were immovable and the nappy change tray was just that; a tray. Everytime I changed Reuben I would return to
Timshel muttering “Change tray my ass! A tray is for a cup of tea and a piece
of toast, not a squirmy 10 kg pup of a lad!” to which he would respond
“Look,they gave us a pair of socks with no heels!”

Reuben did very well and was super-keen on meeting and greeting EVERYONE. He has only just learnt to walk and delights in squirming his way into little gaps. Planes are full of little gaps, mostly between people. I spent a lot of time trying to guage whether his visitations were welcome or not, “This is our baby Reuben, do you mind if he looks out your window/climbs into your lap and sucks your tie/tries to drink your chardonnay?” Most people were happy to have a quick visit before Reuben moved on to the next seat.

The flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh was exciting and beautiful. We had a
WINDOW SEAT (!!!) at the back of the plane, a sausage, chutney and scrambled egg ciabbatta roll and sleeping baby across our laps. Only an hour to go before we reached our destination. Bliss!

I really cherished that window seat; after 24 hours in the air it was wonderful to finally FEEL like we were flying. I watched the landscape slide under us in that seemingly miraculous way and half-expected an angel to fly past and give a little wave.
It’s a great opportunity and always bizarre for me.

So hear we are. Edinburgh. Haven’t been out to explore yet. On the way home from the airport I noticed lots of stone buildings, deciduous brush and double-decker buses illuminated by a very beautiful blue-white light. I said groogily “I feel like I’m in an episode of ‘The Bill’”. (Which is, of course, a pretty stupid thing to say. especially to a Scot.) Later that day, someone arrived on the front door for Robert’s guitar lesson and he had an accent just like the Igoe-Cochranes. I realised with a shock that EVERYONE here talks strangely. No wait, WE talk funny everyone else talks normally.
So I’m enjoying the differences. The water does goes down the plug hole in the opposite direction (no really, it does, I checked). The Mac keyboard has a £ key. The weetbix here are called Weetabix and they have round edges! The toilet flushes with a little handle.
We haven’t ventured out of the house yet so I’m busting to get out this morning. I haven’t ridden on a double-decker bus since kindie. The stroller is packed, very excited must go will write soon bye.

just went outside arrggh VERY cold must wrap baby in more clothing bye.