anniversary (2005-10-04 - 5:15 p.m.)

It�s my one-year anniversary! Weird, eh � a year in Edinburgh, who�d have thought. I�m glad I stayed though. I was reading over last year�s posts (always interesting to see how much of an idiot I sound) and a couple of things struck me. For one thing, Grandma, who at this point last year was expected to live forever (or someone that�s what I thought, however unrealistically). I mean, she�d just been travelling around England with me, and apart from not being too good on her legs (which she never was anyway) she was fine and happy and looked likely to continue that way as long as I could foresee. Proving, I suppose, that I�m not very good at foreseeing. I started thinking about her today when the lady at the Save the Children charity shop gave me a brochure advertising their Advent Calendars, and I thought � for the first time since I was born, probably, Grandma won�t be giving me one of those horrible garish advent calendars with the waxy-tasting chocolate inside. I used to love those as a kid (until I started eating Green & Black�s 70% cocoa organic chocolate and sort of lost my taste for the rubbish stuff). One of those many, many things I will miss about her.

The other thing is how different Edinburgh looks to me now. Hard to explain this one. I suppose I know a lot more of it now, and it doesn�t seem so mysterious, but it�s something else as well. I used to see it from a particular angle, I suppose, and now I�ve moved and changed and learned a lot of stuff and see it a different way altogether. Except I can still remember how it used to look (and the blog helps a lot with this one) so it�s sort of like looking at it in a mirror or something, seeing it two ways at once.

So happy anniversary to me. I stuck it out through the worst two months ever (December and January last year) and have reaped the rewards.

In other news, my little brat brother finally called me YESTERDAY at 4 PM. I know he would expect no less than a public shaming, so there you go, Tim. Exactly as I expected, he lost track of time and was having a great time out on the road and never quite got around to letting me know where he was and if I could meet up. However, since I�d taken the day off for his visit anyway, I went through to Glasgow to visit Jason and do some shopping. We went to the Burrell Collection, which is definitely well worth seeing. Lots of very famous and precious works of art, as well as lots of random old (and new) stuff. I liked the tapestries and the armour and the paintings. That last surprised me a bit � normally I get bored with row after row of paintings, but these ones were hand-picked by Sir Will and therefore held my interest. Lots of Manet and Degas. Good stuff.

Jason had to rush off to work at 4pm, so I was wandering the streets of Glasgow looking for Primark (if any Islanders read this and remember where it is, please do tell � I forget!) when Tim rang. He was way the heck off in a pub somewhere, so with the help of the very friendly Glaswegian information guys in the orange coats I managed to get on the right bus and go meet them. He made amends for not calling by buying me a dram of Highland Park (there is a good story behind this one, though possibly not for public consumption) and we had a good chat. The boys are back to Canada tomorrow and it sounds like they�ve had a heck of a time in Scotland.

However, had better go do something useful, so�

backwards ~ onwards

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Missed anything?
moved! - 2008-05-12
Sunday = time to ramble on - 2008-05-11
apparently I'm doing monthly updates these days. Sorry. - 2008-05-04
watershed - 2008-04-06
end of trip - 2008-03-31

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