IrnBru seems to be inextricably linked to Christmas here for some reason, and ice rinks, so my holiday photos run in an endless loop of ice and light and bubble-gum flavored soda. Or whatever the heck that flavor is.

The supermarkets are ready!!



And the ice rink at Dundee. Every. Single Item. on this menu just cracks me up.



If the ice rink cafe is closed (which it often is at 7.30 a.m. when we turn up for Sara's lesson), you can still get IrnBru in the vending machines:



We spent a lot of time at the Dundee ice rink in December, because the Ice Skating Club was gearing up for their winter extravaganza, Shrek on Ice (Sara was a soldier). Here's the background. I stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out which mythical country it was supposed to be, till suddenly I recognized the castle. It's EDINBURGH.



OK, moving on then? Here we are back at home. I have ordered old-fashioned glass bulb Xmas lights from Noma, the oldest worldwide distributor of Xmas lights, est. 1926. These lights are so freaking beautiful they make me cry. Not a single picture I can take does them justice. But anyway here's our tree with just the lights on:



... And here it is fully decorated:



... And here it is in daylight, with Playmobil Christmas Tree Village added by Mark (at my request):



It is a SCOTTISH Christmas Tree Village, with a CURLING POND. Surely someone is drinking an IrnBru in that chalet.



... Interior of chalet:



AND THE CURLING POND. (though the figure in the back is an ice skater):



Sara's contribution, created in Home Ec. Even our gingerbread house is Scottish - yes, that is a Saltire!



Have a happy holiday season - don't worry, we're enjoying it without IrnBru despite the pressure.

on their way home from Cubs, Mark and his mates were discussing where they are going for their october holidays. Mark said he was going to France, and that it's been quite a while since he has been to France.

He came into the house singing "The Last Time I Saw Paris."

the Free Hotel is ROAMING. You can move it to any property you own at the beginning of your turn and collect Hotel Rent if someone lands there. (But you can't move it if you're in jail.)

This game does seem to end in all the players having thousands of pounds/dollars and no property to speak of.

Perth is celebrating its 800th birthday this year. Uh huh. I live in a city that has had a royal charter for 800 years--as a Yank this pretty well boggles my brain. For Perth's birthday party there is going to be a big parade and both my kids are marching in it--one as a Girl Guide and one as a Cub Scout. I've known this for a while, but what I hadn't taken on board was that the parade is in honor of the Queen's visit.

My kids are going to be in uniform, parading for the Queen!

How did I get here?

Sara is EVEN BETTER at timewasting than me. She has made Sims out of all my characters.

http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/uploads.php?user_id=7686535

(She would do a Verity if I let her. But really it would be somewhat indecent to be able to download the Sim before I finish the book.)

I pass along this meessage from Sara to mhari: "Tell her to upload hers. Hers are better than mine because she made them herself, I think."

Mark's comment, walking home from Cub Scouts tonight:

"I've really accomplished a lot today!"

His new accomplishments include:

1) Singing "Donald, Where's Your Trousers" to an audience of 50 nine-year-old boys, and

2) Drinking Irn-Bru for the first time.

Mark: "It's not my fault I fell in the snow. But it is my fault Sara fell in the snow."

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steepholm asked if there was any chance of a Frost Fair. Not quite yet.

These pictures were all taken between about 3.15 and 4.15 this afternoon.





The pictures above were taken from the Queen's Bridge, looking upstream toward Perth Bridge (built 1766). I like the first picture better but the second gives a better idea of the extent of the ice. The river really is solid ice between the bridges (it's backing up against the Queen's Bridge). Here's the pile up at the Queen's Bridge, looking downstream:



Several times, in flood, I've seen the river reach the top of the arches.

The next picture is downstream of the Queen's Bridge:



The light really was gorgeous!

So then we crossed the river via the railway bridge and circled back up river via Perth Bridge. This one is taken from Perth Bridge, looking towards Perth, about an hour after the first pictures were taken:



And this one is of Perth Bridge itself, a little upstream of the ice. The reason it got so dark is not just because the sun went down--also the haar came in. (That's what they call sea mist all up and down the north coast of Britain. It's a Dutch word, I think.)



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Me and Sara wanted to pay tribute to my awesome snowflake gingerbread cookies so we arranged them as a map of Great Britain!




(The little comet at the top is Orkney.)

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the rant continues!

my daughter is making me watch the whole second series of Merlin with her. OMG you guys it is so incredibly BOOOORRRRINGNNNNNNGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I DO NOT UNDERSTAND!!!!!!!

the dialogue, the acting, the plot, the characters (or lack thereof)... it makes me want to slit my wrists. also, I find most of the actors very unattractive to look at (the girls are pretty enough, but they're ALL SUCH DRIPS!!!!!)

i really, truly DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

:ppppppppppppp

!!!!!1111!!!

The kids are both down. Actually, that's not entirely true, Sara's already up again. As usual their "flu-like" symptoms seem to last no more than two days, and Sara had an identical illness about 6 weeks ago. I made the dorky mistake of checking Sara's symptoms on the national pandemic database--just cause we were both so bored on monday--and got swept up in an online diagnosis which ended in Sara being authorized for antiviral treatment and given an official authorization number. (We both went... WHAAAT???) Unfortunately (or fortunately) all the collection points are in England, so we were instructed (by the Deus Ex Machina that is the National Pandemic Online Hotline or whatever) to contact our GP, which we did, feeling rather foolish. And so it was confirmed that Sara has had flu-like symptoms for two days and should stay at home drinking cough syrup and paracetemol. Which is, of course, what we were doing anyway.

So then the next day (yesterday) Mark started complaining of aches and pains and they BOTH stayed home from school. Mark gave me a bit of a fright mid-afternoon when his temp spiked to 103 F. But he was perfectly coherent the whole time, and we stripped him down and dosed him with Calpol and ice water, and he was fine. He is home today as well, poor guy, complaining mostly of headache, but not otherwise very poorly.

But--BUT. As I was tapping away at the computer this afternoon, I got a message from Sara's school (this being her first day back) which begins thusly:

"As you may be aware a significant proportion of the school have a viral illness which may or may not be Influenza A (H1N1), also known as 'swine flu'. Those pupils who have developed symptoms during the day have been sent home, many more have not come into school."

And so they are instituting their Pandemic Actions Stage 1, meaning they are going to Practice Social Distancing "as far as is possible in a school"--and are shutting down all clubs in and out of school, after school activities, etc. from tomorrow.

And there was me being so off-hand about the whole thing!

Incidentally, the huge advantgage of having kids who never, ever watch TV, is that they really enjoy a day of slobbing in front of the TV when they're sick. It's like a special treat. They watch the dumbest stuff--In the Night Garden and Bits & Bobs. Bet that doesn't mean anything to any of you unless you're in the UK and have a toddler in the house.

oh BTW for those of you who KNOW WHO YOU ARE, I have found a brief Morgause/Medraut/Lleu fanfic. eeeeeeeeeeeeh

As in Sara is having to play field hockey, since there's no quidditch team at Imperial Academy. I have actually had to buy a hockey stick (hopefully now that the first half term is over I will not have to BUY so much stuff). I keep telling her that she may even grow to like it once she works out how to hit the ball. She, like her parents, is not what my brother used to call "sportious."

Mark is on his midterm break and Sara is not, so he and I went to meet her for lunch and wandered around town afterwards. It really has got to be the most Hogwartian location for a school EVAH. The place where you buy the uniforms locally is even more Land-That-Time-Forgot than the one here in Perth; it is a local department store called Valentine's (yes, that's it's real name), where you basically go in to the separate departments and ASK for what items you want, as they are all stored in drawers and cupboards. Next door along the main street is the local sweet shop where you can watch them making fudge through the plate glass windows in the back. This place is called Gordon & Durward, again, no lie but that's it's real name, and they actually do sell a selection of handmade chocolate frogs and hedgehogs and spiders. The schoolkids do not shop here. They call it "the expensive sweet shop" and buy their goo in "the Tuckie," which is Their Shop. It is the size of a broom cupboard and is situated across from the school gates; basically it makes its living selling hot soup and penny candy to the young Jedis. (oy, I am getting my imaginary schools confused now.)

It is two weeks since my birthday, and also two weeks since Mark's midterm holidays began (they end on Monday). I had an excellent birthday weekend, with a long, elegant lunch at the Dunkeld Hilton, originally an Edwardian country house which stands amid gorgeous parkland right on the edge of the Tay--of course it was pouring with rain that day, but that made it all the cosier. In the evening we had a mini-bonfire on the patio at home. We have bought a fire basket. So now we can sit in the summer house with the fire basket burning just outside the door, and toast marshmallows, and it's like being at camp.

The day after my birthday the festivities continued with a long afternoon of lunch and antiquing with Jane Yolen, Debby Harris and Sara--Sara was terribly shy and sat with her nose in The Devil's Arithmetic the whole way through lunch. It would have been rude except that Jane had written the book, so actually it was kind of sweet.

The past two weeks' inactivity is threefold, due to: 1) the arrival, as a birthday present, of a Sony Vaio Netbook. Whee-ooo! It has taken a while to get it up and running to my satisfaction but I am getting used to the smaller keyboard now. 2) Obsessive work on a book proposal that needs to be done asap; and 3) Mark's midterm holiday (and Sara's started yesterday, but I have today clear because Mark is on a canoeing course). This is some of the stuff that Mark and I have done together: picnicked at Scone Palace; climbed the 11th century Abernethy Round Tower; lay in the sun in Drummond Castle Gardens; bicycled along the beach at Tentsmuir and saw a seal and climbed on the WWII defenses; and none of it is further than a half hour drive away from our house (actually, you can see Scone Palace from my bedroom window, how about that).

I want to sing the praises of and recommend Jane Kurtz's new book, Trouble, illustrated by Durga Bernhard. It is another exuberant dual language English / Amharic picture book produced in conjunction with Ethiopia Reads. You can order it directly through them for $15 plus $5 shipping and handling; they do a nice service where if you send a gift list along with $20 per name they ship them on the date you specify along with a special gift note. The contact address is books [AT] ethiopiareads.org.

More soon.