There was some stuff on the webnews today about the way that dogs lower stress. This, it has to be conceded, is not always the case. Miss Dog has I think felt a bit short changed because the Professor has not been very well. He was due to see the Chinese doctor today, and when […]
Very odd. The front (south facing) wall of our bedroom. A patient scritch, scritch, scritch suggestive of a persistent attack on stone. Miss Kit staring hypnotised at the plaster, wondering what she can do about it. At one point more than 20 years ago, we had an old house in Crail with stone exterior walls […]
Miss Kit and I came down this morning to find Barry the Great hard at work. He laid some shuttering down outside my door before he knocked off on Friday, so I was not at all surprised to find that my study door opened onto a grey pool of mirror-smooth concrete (which will have paving […]
We were in London for a few days last week, while the Godparents Formerly Known as Tropical minded the house and animals. I love London in spring: Ealing was awash in magnolias and flowering prunus, my Ma’s indulged fox was snoozing in the middle of the primroses on the lawn, and there was the misty, […]
The Godfathers formerly known as Tropical are here. We went for a little expedition yesterday after they turned up to look at the various spring flowers around the place, of which there are now many. We were down by the lake when I saw something moving about and realised that it was a goldcrest. It […]
We hatched some theories about sorting out my garden in the late winter; Barry the Great is now on the case, somewhat to our surprise. He is taking up the hideous hexagonal flagstones, laying some more land drains, removing the path and replacing it with stepping stones, cutting down the geans which never really worked, […]
The ex-ambassador turned up after we had sped the departing musicians on their way. Fortunately, he wasn’t minded to harangue us about Organic Bees or otherwise try and start anything, because we were frantically trying to catch up with ourselves. He and the Professor went off with the dog on Saturday to walk the Speyside […]
The Opera Singer’s concert went off very well yesterday, so he came back here with the Maestro, both of them in a very good mood. There was quite a lot of music after dinner, and towards the end of the evening, the Opera Singer decided to do Schubert’s ‘Du bist die Ruh’, which is […]
I have been spending a couple of days looking at the annals of the Scottish book trade. My purposes were stern and academic, but some pretty fruity characters turned up in the course of my investigations. Of Peter Forrest, the Edinburgh publishers, Oliver & Boyd’s logbook records, ‘’Poor?; a Printer. Sometime an Actor of considerable […]
Our friend the singer is rehearsing in the sitting room. This being a stoutly built house, though he is decidedly audible, the effect is not overwhelming. In fact, since he is extremely good, it’s much as if the Professor has a CD on. We were visited by two different composers yesterday. One of them writes […]
We have our friend the opera singer staying — hence neglecting the blog, since there has been a great deal of machinating going on. A variety of beautiful ideas have been generated, though whether, in the teeth of the millennium’s first major recession, any of them will HATCH is of course a question which will […]