Scotland the Wonderful

So....
It has been a while since posting - apologies! We've been away for a while (5 days in Scotland, and then the following weekend down to the in-laws), so I've not had much of a chance for posting.

Scotland was amazing. Every time I visit, I am struck by the beauty of the country - I have been in love with it since my first visit about 15 years ago. If it wasn't for the fact that it gets so cold (I don't *do* cold at all...), I would be up there permanently.

We were there for the wedding of two of our friends, at a gorgeous location right on the edge of Loch Lomond. John and I were very lucky - our room at the hotel looked out over the loch...

This was the view from our bedroom window.


This was the sunset on the Friday evening two minutes' walk from the hotel.

The wedding itself was brilliant - Sarah looked amazing in her dress, complete with grey cloak and elven circlet, and she turned into a warrior princess whilst weilding the knife for cutting the cake! (I'm sure she scared the photographer...) She went up the aisle to the Dance Macabre, and I really hope that she has the same reflex grin that I get when listening to the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.

There was a ceilidh afterwards, and John and I danced our socks off! Obviously, as the wedding was in Scotland, there were a few experts, and I don't think that the caller was quite prepared for the number of people who really didn't know what they were doing (as evinced by the fact that he had to stop calling at one point because he was laughing so much!) But it was great fun - the first time I've ever seen people dancing the Gay Gordons to "Postman Pat" - the music mutated in the middle of the dance, and watching the "It can't be... It is!" look spread across people's faces was fantastic.

After the wedding, the group of six of us from the South West stayed in the Loch Lomond area for a couple of days, having hired a car, to make the most of our time in Scotland. We stayed at the Oak Tree Inn, a pub/hotel that I can't recommend highly enough. The staff were so friendly and helpful, the food was amazing (I am determined to ferret out their recipe for Mars Bar Cheesecake...), and the location was stunning. And, as we were there out of season, there were very few people around - once we strolled down to the loch, the only sounds we could hear were the birds singing. Even better, from my wildlife loving mindset, was that the birds had not had enough negative contact with people to be scared of them. We were used as chasing posts for a male chaffinch determined to catch up with his lady love (sadly no picture of this - they were too fast), a robin guarding his territory:

a very inquisitive raven:

two swans who wanted to dabble like ducks:

A chicken who wanted to cross the road:

an island full of cormorants:

as well as wrens, blackbirds, ducks and gulls.

The loch was just gorgeous, and we were so lucky with the weather - blue skies and sunshine for pretty much the whole holiday. I think we all turned into slight artists with our cameras, all looking out for good shots :-) The scenery was so peaceful - the landscape really humbles you, the mountains telling you, "We were here a thousand years ago, we will be here in a thousand years' time. Your day to day stresses and strains really don't make a difference to us." It really helped to be able to wrap that peace around me, and to think that whatever happens, the mountains will always be here. (and yes, for the pedants amongst us, I know that geologically speaking, they won't, but for a recordable period of time, they will...)

Here are some of my favourite photos, capturing the peace and the colour of Loch Lomond.
















PS - I worked out how to get photos working in posts! ;-)

Scotland

Wow! What a weekend! Fantastic friends, superb scenery, cracking comedy and marvelous music (is that superlative enough for you?)

Really - I had a brilliant time up in Glasgow/Edinburgh. Huge amounts of alcohol on the Friday, Edinburgh Fringe on the Saturday and touring the Lochs near Glasgow on the Sunday. Picked up loads of cooking ideas as well (definitely going to try making Sarah's spanish omlette and Ben's american pancakes in the very near future!)

The Fringe was great fun - the damp weather certainly didn't stop the crowds (fortunately, we only really encountered them at the top end of the Royal Mile and on first bit of the walk from the bus.) However, two out of the three shows we saw seemed to have our group of five as the major part of the paying audience!

Ionesco - Jack or the Submission
This was billed as an absurdist play, and absurd was a very good word for it. I had no real idea of what was going on throughout. There were some nice touches - all of the parental parts were amalgamated into one person per pair (Mother/Father; Grandmother/Grandfather; Inlaws) This worked really well with the Mother/Father pair (in fact, I thought that it had been scripted that way), but the other two parings didn't come off so well, partially because the costumes weren't so good (the M/F had very obvious half and half costumes, but GM/GF had something tucked inside a jacket that I didn't even see for the first half of the show, and MIL/FIL apparantly had a blouse half of a shirt and a male half of a shirt, which I didn't spot at all!). There was nice use of non-scenery - the only bit of scenery was the door, which meant that there could be lots of pratting about, particularly with M/F.
However, I don't think I will go to see another absurdist play unless I have read the script and the information around it first!

Aeneas Faversham Returns
This was a completely random performance - we were having lunch/tea in a French restaurant, and John was looking through the festival guide - he spotted that this was going on at a venue that was between us and Mikelangelo, and was at about the right time. Trying to make amends for the Ionesco, he suggested that we have a look and see if there were any tickets left. We managed to get the last five (and that appeared only to be because there was a return...), which was a good sign. An even better one was that we managed to get pretty much to the head of the queue, meaning that we had second row seats. And it was well worth it - a first class show. We were laughing from beginning to end, and I think I can honestly say that these guys are the funniest group I have ever seen. Even with the bounds that they had set themselves (Victorian themed - the whole group in starched collars and cravats), the range of sketches that they were able to perform was brilliant. There was even an heart-string tugging one (the man telling his imaginary friend that he is leaving...), and a totally unexpected nudity one.... (very brave of the actor!)

The Honeymoon Suite
This was the show that we had come up to Edinburgh to see. Mikelangelo (of the Black Sea Gentlemen fame) performing a cabaret style duet with his wife, Undine Francesca. This was a very 'intimate' gathering - two on stage and eleven in the audience... (and we were five of them!) However, I was complely blown away by Mikelangelo's voice and musicianship. The CD recording does not do his timbre justice (and I have been listening to the BSG CDs on MP3 on a fairly constant basis since getting back!) - you can feel his voice as well as hearing it. Plus, he whistles... For most musicians (and I count myself in this band), the practice of whistling is incredibly difficult - most people can hold a tune for approximately five notes before descending into something that might vary in pitch by a semitone. But this was crystal clear and note perfect, and I can understand Mikelangelo's title of "The Nightingale of the Adriatic." Undine's playing of the organ can be termed as 'interesting' - a little painful on the ears at times, but at others, a good accompaniment to the song being performed. The hour went by far too quickly - I'm sure there was room for one more song!
Plus we got to meet them both afterwards, and chat (getting reassurances that the BSG hasn't disbanded... Looking forward to their next album, which should be out next year.). We did manage to skew their sales statistics as well - usually their ratio for selling items is 1:10 (1 item for 10 members of the audience). Well, we bought three sets of their single and three sets of the "Floating Islands" (a really interesting project, where Undine's father drew the pictures, Undine then picked out 100 of them and wrote a story round them, and Mikelangelo created the music. It was completed just before Undine's father died), meaning that their ration for that performance was 6:11!

The shows over, we went to find chips (the French meal had been at 4.30, so by 10, we were all getting a trifle peckish...), and John impressed the seller by asking for Haggis with his...

Sunday it was still raining, but less persistently than on Saturday, so, after a very leisurely start, Ben drove us out to Loch Lomond and round Loch Fyne (photos when I get round to unloading them off the camera...) The scenery of Scotland is breathtaking, particularly for someone who isn't used to mountains, or even really hilly areas!

On Monday, Sarah suggested that we had lunch in a vegetarian cafe called Grassroots. Absolutely delicious food (butternut squash and carrot burger - fantastic combination!) Then, home, with only a 20 minute delay on Easyjet...

All in all - a brilliant weekend, and a much needed rest - I hadn't realised before leaving work on Thursday just how stressed I was getting - a long weekend away from work pressures and the need to think constantly about the wedding was just what my brain needed. And I only came back to 70 emails...

Off to Bonny Scotland!

Long weekend ahoy! Heading up to Scotland to stay with lovely friends and go to the Edinburgh Fringe. Can't wait! This is only the second time I've been to Edinburgh, and the first time didn't really count as it was for a trade show, and I saw very little of the city outside of the hotel we were staying in and the conference centre that the show was taking place in. Oh, and the airport. Seven hours thanks to delayed Easyjet... (with colleague complaining for the *whole* seven hours...!) So this is going to be so much more fun, and if the weather up there is as nice as it is down here, it is going to be fantastic (hey - it would be fantastic even if it rained...)
Watched Heros on Wednesday night - another brilliant episode! Still being introduced to the characters, but we are now getting more indepth ideas about them. I love the way that even the timescales don't really tie up - you can't ever really be sure that you are watching the "Now" all of the time. I didn't really miss a huge amount by not being able to watch it last week - John was able to give me a recap of the important bits, and there was also a good fill-in at the start of the episode. I just hope that they can keep on upping the gain - I really don't want this to turn into another 'Lost', where it just loses its way half way through.
Had an extra session of TKD (beware - links on the TKD page don't work if you are using Firefox...) last night - though it wasn't really a proper work out session. Miss Burridge (our instructor), plus one of her students, took part in the World ITF Championships (competing for Wales, due to the politics of TKD, about which I know very little, and do not ever want to get involved in!) Miss Burridge is now World Champion in patterns! We're all really proud of her (and of Bradley, who got Bronze in both Team Power and patterns) So we had a little party, and then went down the pub for a bit more of a party :-)
And the aim of learning Norwegian on the train is starting to come together - I'm getting bits and pieces, mostly by using a visualisation technique (turning the words into something recognisable, and then creating a picture - e.g. the phrase "Your Welcome" is (phonetically) "Ingern awshaak" - for that I imagine a German walking over a Welcome mat into a shack. Hey, it works for me ;-) ) Still a long way to go, particularly for the phrases that I can't turn into pictures, but I hope to be able to have enough to get by in 3 1/2 weeks' time...