hahahahahaha Scotland DOES grind to a halt when it snows more than 4 inches!

It was -11 C / 12 F here this morning--really unheard-of cold for these parts. Fortunately all five of our guests and visitors have arrived and depart by train.



We spent all day Sunday (the morning after this stuff got dumped on us) building with it. It was PERFECT for packing. This barricade was made to protect the baby apple and pear trees from our toboggan run, but it was Mark's idea (of course) to turn it into a GIANT CATERPILLAR:



Meanwhile me and Sara were building an igloo:



We did not finish it because the next day every single drop of moisture had been freeze-dried out of the left-over snow and it had turned to powder--we could no longer pack it. I have never seen fallen snow change its nature over night like this.

So I could not make Too-Ticky's snowball lanterns as I'd intended, but managed to excavate a row of runway lights in the haha at the bottom of the back garden:



------------------

My recorder group went busking on Christmas Eve and we all had ICICLES hanging off the ends of our instruments. Fortunately after about an hour and a half of this torture, a trio of bagpipes set up down the street from us and turfed us out.

Saw the National Theatre of Scotland's co-production with Improbable of The Wolves in the Walls. Yes, it is based, text and set, on the picture book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. It was very good, and the children were riveted; they have been going around all week singing the songs from it, which I find very impressive as I instantly forgot them all.

(My only complaint would be that they maybe chose the wrong Neil Gaiman work to dramatize… there's really only so much s-t-r-e-t-c-c-c-c-h-h-h-h-i-n-g you can do to turn a 32 page picture book into a musical. Actually I think it is a little longer than 32 pages, but it's still got a 32-page picture book's text and plot.)

My recorder group gave a CONCERT! A real public performance (we have done a couple of private performances), in a church with an audience of about 150 people. I suspect it was the first public performance for more than half of us. Thanks to advice from my bass recorder's former owner, I now know how to make it behave itself and produce consistent and lovely sound. When he read my recorder group post here he pointed out that he gave me my bass recorder not because there was anything wrong with it, but because he was downsizing his belongings to fit in a backpack. I have even greater respect for it now (and am waiting for him to ask for it back…)

katranides asked me the other day how come I hadn't posted here for a while. "Hasn't a bird done something unexpected in the garden that made you stop to think and give you the urge to share the experience?"

Am I really that… ummm… flighty? Or are we all?

Actually I write LJ entries in my head all the time. I wrote one in my head on Monday while I was bicycling (with the recorder group/babysitting circle/badminton/book group people). We have had a couple of weeks of utterly GLORIOUS weather--yesterday it even hit "the sizzling seventies" (I have got an ancient Manchester Guardian clipping in my possession that actually uses this phrase). We cycled past lambs and narcissi and blossoming thorn and sand martins along the Tay, and saw a lapwing and a heron, and at one point my friend Sarah exclaimed, "God, we are SO lucky to live here." And she is right. I saw a GOLDEN EAGLE the other day, on my way to Sunday morning ringing at Dunkeld--and a herd of deer. Seals come up the river sometimes, right into the city of Perth, chasing salmon.

I have been in Scotland 6 years now and I am starting to take it for granted, I think. It really is a lovely place to be.