The Deep North

We have a fairly special dinner tomorrow night; the first feet of a procession of guests over the coming week. We were thinking about wine, that it was the sort of occasion where we get a nice bottle or two out of the cellar rather than the usual rough & ready rioja. ‘Have we still got that Chateau Lynch-Bages?’ I said. The bottle in question came my way in 1992, when there was a conference on Ireland and Aquitaine in Bordeaux, which was bankrolled by les grands vignerons de Bordeaux, in particular, Lynch-Bages, which of course, enshrines in its name a fortunate Irish Wild Goose of the 18th century. There was an end of conference party which was supposed to be a tasting session, at which the wild Irish got absolutely plastered on some of the finest wines in the world, a depressing spectacle. Anyway, we were given, with some ceremony, a leaving present of a bottle of Chateau Lynch-Bages 1990, with stern instructions to keep it for twenty years. ‘It is very rough’, we were told earnestly, ‘but it will be one of our great wines’. Said bottle has gone about with us through our various moves for all this time, and is approaching its use by date. We looked it up on Google, and discovered that it is currently worth £300. What does one do with a bottle of wine worth £300? What, strictly speaking, is worth in this context? You can’t swop it for a fuel bill or anything. I must say, the idea of drinking it worries me a bit, not quite dissolving orient pearls &c, but it still seems like too much. But if you don’t drink it, what do you do with it?

We continue on the annual round of making things beautiful. I have painted the bridge to Twisby Island (long overdue), supervised from a cautious distance by Miss Cat, who wanted to know what I was doing, but, fortunately, distrusted the smell of paint. It’s not an unpleasant job, but complicated, since to do the middle you have to stand in the burn. We have also tried another solution to the beds in front of the house. I still think an idea of a year or two back was the best yet, in an ideal world — Bishop of Llandaff dahlias with Pink Perfection lilies — but there are two problems, first, that dahlias are expensive, second, that ideally they would be full grown and starting to flower now, in time for the visitor season, and for those who do not possess a heated greenhouse and someone to fuss over it, dahlias in June — at least here in the Deep North — are barely above ground. So we have bought 180 mixed nicotiana and 24 scarlet petunias, and the pink-to-purple nicotianas and the petunias have been bedded out to make their peace as best they may with the window boxes (dark leaved orange begonias and deep red trailing geranium). The white and green nicotiana will find a home in the parterre, which has a central bed suitable for filling. The Refugee Gardener is beginning to look a great deal better in himself, and is engaged upon cutting the parterre with immense skill and a variety of useful gadgetry, not only electric trimmers, but also a leaf blower, which enables him to bully the fallen beech and box into corners from which it can be picked up with ease. Since picking up is a good deal of the work, this is simplifying the job considerably, and he is making grand progress. We have also had our annual visit from the man who steam cleans the carpets, and the dog is still sulking about it. Humph. I go to a great deal of trouble to fill this house with a palimpsest of treasured memories, and what happens? Swept away in a day, without so much as a by your leave. I shall write to The Labrador. Etc.

We had to scrub up after yesterday’s intensive gardening, hence a rather hasty post, because we had been asked to a midsummer party by the castellans of the Castle Of Giant Despair. Black tie. We made ourselves look reasonably creditable, the Prof in his kilt, me in black and white floaty silk georgette, accessorised with many scratches acquired by arguing with a rosebush, a number of weals left by couch-grass, and incipient sunburn on my elbows. One of those moments when you feel there might be something to be said for a burqua after all. The castellans have created a new car parking area, so that you walk towards the house over an extensive lawn and there are no vehicles parked on the gravel. This ensures that you get the most fabulous view of the place, bathed in the evening summer light — it is exposed and on an eminence, which means that comfort has been sacrificed to splendour, Aberdeenshire being what it is. A seething mass of elegant people ebbed and flowed round what is usually the dining room, & I contrived to get into a corner with a charming elderly bibliophile and scholar. Much champagne then ensued, and after an hour or so we were encouraged into the great kitchen, which is where the chaps generally feed you. Dinner had decided elements of the bizarre — more good wine, but a table spread with cold quiches, sausages, sliced ham and suchlike picnic food, which, while perfectly wholesome, is not generally the sort of scoff which goes with black tie and all your diamonds. A couple of somewhat rough and ready local ladies wandered in and out from time to time, and were prevailed upon to bring some spoons after we had sat admiring our strawberries for a while. The Professor copped a charming Irish presidential adviser on culture or some such; I was somewhat less lucky, and found myself with the proprietrix of the Giardino Berlusconi mentioned a blog or two back, who had forgotten she had ever set eyes on me. One does one’s best. We left at twenty to twelve, with light still in the sky. That’s the nice thing about midsummer.

We have spent the day gardening. More to the point, Miss T’s mum and dad came down to lend a hand, and so we have got a tremendous amount done, weeding, strimming, tidying. Miss T’s mum sweet talked a farmer friend of hers into coming and topping off the back fields, which had got desperate, and I have started the marathon job of cutting box hedges. There is a great deal still to do, but things are definitely looking better.

We are back in the Deep North, contemplating the immense amount of GROWTH the garden has put on, and the number of hours with strimmers, mowers and so on which are going to be needed to push back the jungle. We have been keeping ourselves busy. I have been mostly in the British Library, and the Professor has been here there and everywhere. On Monday, he was at a very grand dinner in our National Gallery (as distinct from the one in London) — the table ran the entire length of the main gallery, a quarter of a mile long, and the flower arrangements were 22 feet high. It was all very glamorous, and it sounds a great deal more fun than these things usually are. We met up in Newcastle on Wednesday night, which was on the whole depressing, despite beautiful weather, since the indigenes seem to regard the terms ‘having fun’ and ‘getting pissed’ as necessarily synonymous. We had a very early dinner, but even at six in the evening, a phalanx of revellers putting a lining on their tums before hitting the pubs and clubs ensured that we couldn’t hear ourselves speak. Cunningly, we had put ourselves into a hotel right outside the Canny Toon, which turned out to be a handsome 18th century mansion of golden stone, surrounded by golf course and as quiet as the grave. The next day Peter discoursed on matters northern, while I hijacked someone’s office and peacefully got on with reducing several days’ worth of pencil transcript to typewritten form. It is nice to be back — though I think we had better do quite a lot of gardening.

Yesterday was fairly odd. I was in London Friday-Saturday-Sunday, and returned on the night train. This tips you off at Aberdeen station at about 7.30, that is, somewhat tiresomely, just missing the hourly bus. I sometimes sleep placidly in my little hutch, but on this particular night I couldn’t get it cool enough. Unfortunately, I had promised to back up Mrs Pink Castle, who had kindly undertaken care in the community by agreeing to spend the day with the fruit-and-nut case I have referred to from time to time under the name of the Empress of Tea. She had sent out an SOS which I hadn’t the heart to resist, so, having eventually caught the 8.35, rather than going home, I jumped off the bus at the Pink Castle at about quarter to ten and prepared to do my duty by a pal. The main point of the excursion was to visit the architectural salvage place a couple of hour’s drive away, but also, the Empress said we must visit a friend of hers en route, she was this wonderful, sophisticated Italian lady and she had the most wonderful, wonderful garden, and we would love it. When we finally drew up at the giardino in question, Mrs Pink Castle’s face was a study — she being a very distinguished garden designer. It was kitsch beyond belief, with random bits of statuary everywhere. The lawn functioned a ‘green roof’ to a cavernous swimming pool; the whole thing must have cost hundreds of thousands. There was a plethora of wonderful plants, but it was all about as unrestful as you can imagine, with a different special effect roughly every two yards. Acres of topiary, without a leaf out of place, let alone a twig, box spirals topped with box pheasants which actually were pheasant sized and looked exactly like green pheasants, cloud-pruned trees here there and everywhere … what it all must have cost her in maintenance alone was mind-boggling. But with an incoherent fussiness, here’s a thing and there’s a thing, and no sense of overall design which made it like a sort of giant toybox with everything pell-mell. Mrs Pink Castle, whose countenance is an expressive one, loathed it, and so we glanced at each other, and as one woman, pulled ourselves together and began saying ‘what a wonderful ceanothus, you have a wizard touch with tender exotics, it must help being so close to the sea, and of course you’re very sheltered here, etc.etc.etc.’ Fortunately, neither the Empress nor her Italian pal have much grasp of nuance, and when we departed after what felt like forever, honour was satisfied. Somewhat later, when it was just the two of us, Mrs Pink Castle said solemnly, ‘***’ (who is ridiculously rich, even in this straitened year of grace) ‘must have hundreds of friends with gardens like that. It’s quite a thought’. As indeed it is. There was a classic Empress-ism as we were driving through Elgin an hour later — there are some weird houses, very modest in scale, on the main road, built out of the rather nice local golden limestone with an astonishing variety of exotic detailing (my absolute favourite is only describable as Mycenaean-Byzantine). ‘Hey, look at those rising dormers’, said Mrs Pink Castle, as we passed one of these strange buildings, which had an amazing over-window detailing (like my favourite, this has a distinctly Byzantine feel, suggesting that someone local had been to Ravenna). The Empress suddenly piped up. ‘Dormers. Is that spelt d-o-r-m-e-r-s?’ ‘Yes’. ‘Has it got something to do with dormer windows?’ Fortunately, you never have to reply to these things, since, as the laird of the Pink Castle insists, she has the attention span of a goldfish, whose life is an endless round of mild surprise: [circles bowl: ‘hey! there’s a castle!’ round again: ‘hey! there’s a castle!’ & so on ad infinitum]. I have never met anyone so dedicated to shopping. We stopped at the cashmere centre for lunch (quick, efficient and inexpensive), and the Empress went off to the loo — when she came back five minutes later she had presumably contrived to answer the call of nature in double quick time because she’d also managed to acquire two carrier bag’s worth of stuff. Cashmere scarves for her friends in Malaysia (which is where she mostly lives), perhaps. Anyway, I enjoyed it in a weird sort of way, all the better for being half asleep.

One significant marker of the year is rapidly approaching — the Finals exam board, the day after tomorrow. The whole hideous business of examining is declared over, results are posted, and much dodgy sparkling wine is drunk by the students, whether in commiseration or congratulation. As it happens, I will be missing the actual day of ‘Eyes down for the Bingo’, since I am in demand at the Tate Gallery to rabbit on about Ed again. I gather from the Net that there is a Tube strike rendering London hideous, but given how early I expect to get into Euston, there is nothing to stop me walking to Millbank. One never really thinks of walking in London but the distance is perfectly feasible, and I shouldn’t be carrying very much. Thereafter I ought to be able get to Paddington and pick up an Oxford or Reading train stopping at Ealing. Or perhaps they will have stopped striking. It’s freezing cold here, and I’m rather hoping that London will be a little more clement. The Professor has just come in looking rather pleased with himself. We went to Elgin yesterday to have lunch with our Chinese doctor, which was very pleasant, and on the way back, stopped at Fochabers because I wanted to go to the loo — on the way down to the conveniences of Fochabers, we saw that a sort of hobby antique-shop which is occasionally open, was open. Having visited the Ladies, we then took a turn back along the street to the little shop, where the Professor spotted a rather nicely shaped and attractive little silver-plate christening mug — since two of our friends have just achieved a high quality baby, now a week old, and have asked us to be that curious thing, secular godparents, and it was only a fiver, we acquired it forthwith. He has just been giving it a good polish, and in the process, has become increasingly convinced that though not hallmarked, it is actually real silver. Reason enough to feel rather pleased with himself, I think.

It’s been another mucky fingernails afternoon. I have extracted ever so many weeds from the lawn border, which is looking the better for it — I have some new plants coming and need to be prepared. As a result, I was contemplating upon Welsh poppies. I love almost all poppies. The Welsh variety are a clear Cadmium yellow, and seed themselves about the place rather obligingly. At the moment, the dominant notes in the borders are Welsh poppies, and the equally inclined to self-seed aquilegias, mostly blue-purples, with some pure whites and a few soft pinks. I haven’t the slightest objection to any of them, and if I do decide some individual plants are surplus I can just pull them out. However, the poppies have one noted vice. For some obscure reason known only to Welsh poppies, the place they really, really want to grow is the box-edged beds on either side of the front door; and if there is one colour which looks really desperate with clear yellow, it is the cold, grey-toned red of Turriff redstone. The Welsh poppies have never been planted or encouraged there, and yet they proliferate — I’ve just taken out an entire wheelbarrow full, and it makes a terrific difference to front-of-house not to have them. I’m always a bit reluctant to destroy healthy plants, but they really had to go, because our window boxes are just coming into bloom — a vibrant combination of darkest-red ivy-leaved trailing geraniums, and dark-bronze-leaved orange-red begonias. The effect is quite zingy and rather more appealing than it perhaps sounds, but adding in a note of bright yellow was a step too far.

We’re just back from Glasgow. The occasion was a do to celebrate the national musical instrument, a major fuss-up due to the presence of the Duke of Rothesay, as he prefers to be known hereabouts; and innumerable grandees concerned with Art and Culture. My personal feelings about the Great Pipes could be politely described as lukewarm, though the uillean pipes I find attractive. Anyway. We were all efficiently shuffled into seats at a number of round tables, in what had once been the nave of a church, a pleasant enough space some seventy feet long, fifty feet wide and high, to await the distinguished visitor. There was a little stage in what had once been the apse, and three young women put in an appearance with various Celtic musical instruments. It slowly became apparent that we were in not just for a couple of songs to set the mood, but for an actual concert; and the faces of the Great and the Good settled into a variety of expressions from intelligent interest to politely repressed horror. Some of the music which ensued was extremely attractive, but the Great Pipes themselves are not an instrument designed for use in a confined space, even a large one. One on its own was fine, three were all right, eight were frankly horrible. At some point in the proceedings, HRH was piped in, and then they all started again. The grand finale involved eleven pipes, a clarsach, a fiddle, an accordion, a bodhran, two uillean pipes, an electronic keyboard and Phil Cunningham (who’d been at one of the tables with the Archbishop of Glasgow and other wellwishers) who suddenly eventuated with a mandolin he seemed to have found somewhere, at which point the whole thing had gone on for an hour and a half. Royalty then withdrew, and we were finally in a position to discover who we were sitting next to, and even why. It is a very good thing that people care about Our National Culture. I am all for it. But all the same, I think that the next time an opportunity to love the pipes per se comes along, I’ll be doing it from a safe distance.

PS. The professor enjoyed it.

Another day of glorious weather, so again, dominated by playing in the garden. We have hauled everything out of the greenhouse, which is now empty and tidy. My Mediterranean courtyard garden is now more Mediterranean than ever with the wall limewashed pink — it now has serried ranks of palms, tree ferns, strelitzia and what have you standing against it and looks quayte a picture, as Ed would have said. The pale colour sends the heat reflecting back to a startling extent — by mid afternoon, you’d hardly have known you were in Scotland. When my begonias start flowering (they are only showing a few shy leaves as yet) it will be very merry and bright indeed. The risky move of the blog title refers to a miniature lilac. That is, miniature for a lilac, about four feet high. I have been contemplating it for a while, because planted behind it is a decorative rhubarb (rheum palmatum), with huge dramatic toothed leaves, crimson underneath, which has been absolutely lost to view. The lilac is all very well, but got a lot bigger than I was expecting. Anyway, to my surprise and gratification, the Professor and I managed to lever it out of the ground without much trauma (to it, or us, or surrounding vegetation), and whacked it straight in to a bald spot in the lawn border where it looks perfectly fine and as if it has been there for years. And at last, my rheum is looking as impressive as it should.
The other entertainment of the weekend has been clothes. We are required in full day-dress at lunchtime on Tuesday, and in Glasgow, what’s worse. I of course am laughing, with a new black linen Scandinavian frock at my disposal. The professor has suffered from that syndrome which a sweet and tactful lass in the kilt hire shop referred to as ‘the way they just shrink in the wardrobe’, and the fine Lovat tweed jacket now has a slight look of Tom Kitten, when done up. He has hired a jacket. My ex-gamekeeper, back for a few days from all the exciting jumping out of aeroplanes, driving a tank the wrong way causing it to career off a temporary bridge into a riverbed, etc. etc. etc. which they have been exercising his ingenuity with, has presided over Extreme Polishing of brogues. One of these moments when you feel glad to be female. It may be a bit of a sartorial minefield, but at least you haven’t got to have the right tie with the right shirt, and the right socks, and don’t forget the flashings.

The title of this post is the pithy summary of the Professor’s Ice Opera which was offered by a valued colleague. I’m delighted to report that Scottish Opera have given a green light to the Professorial project, which in its present form is a short piece with two voices (there was a longer and more complicated version, which may yet happen, for which I suggested the title Five Go Mad in the Arctic). Anyway, the piece now under construction involved the Professor, a composer who does tunes, and another composer who does soundscapes. We spent a gripping evening not so long ago listening to ‘Arctic Wind 1-10′, ‘Creaking Ice Floe 1-6′ and so on, deciding which of various recordings of the natural noises of the arctic sounded spookiest. The Soundscapist will use these to create an auditory context which should with any luck have the audience scrabbling for their coats within the first five minutes. We are delighted about this — it’s the first of our various projects, in this year of recession, to have actually achieved lift off.

The Refugee Gardener, who really hasn’t been looking well for quite a while, turned up yesterday with a diagnosis: something foul on the lines of Lyme’s Disease (though not that, we would have recognised the name since an old and valued friend fell victim to it a decade ago). He will have to spend 48 hours in hospital being pumped full of antibiotics whilst being monitored, which is rotten luck. At the same time, it is a great relief to our mind, since he has been visibly declining, and a diagnosis — of something treatable — is terrific. One of the perennial problems with employing a working man whose sole capital is his body, who isn’t quite well, is negotiating through not just what he can and can’t do, but what he will admit to being not able to do. Anyway, for the time being I am on my own with the borders, and for once, with good weather and a bit of time at my disposal. I spent a lot of yesterday and today riddling out ground elder and planting new stuff, while much remains to be done. Above all, I need more, bigger, and grander architectural foliage. More people look at my borders out of first floor windows than by walking about in the garden: I think I should be trying to give a lot of the available space and resources to dramatic leaves. Silver-grey, lime-green and brownish-crimson leaves break up the overall effect in the most wonderful way, especially if they are also varied in shape and density. I love flowers as much as ever, but all my purchases this season are based on the subjects’ leaves. All those roses I bought last year can do duty as floral interest, should this be necessary. It has been a wonderfully hopeful day. The first day, here in these northern latitudes, where the sky showed a white, dusty opacity of real heat. Not spring, summer. After a miserably prolonged winter, it is a glorious moment.

It’s lilac time in Oslo. They seemed to be everywhere, lush, billowy pillows of purple and white blossom oozing over every wall like an old fashioned barmaid overhanging the bar. The trip has been hard work, but fun for all that. It’s been a while, and I’d slightly forgotten the texture of an inexpensive but respectable Norwegian hotel: everything you actually need is there, and everything works, but there are no frills and the way it works may be a) in its own good time, and 2) require a modicum of applied intelligence. On the other hand, the breakfast buffet is a Labrador’s vision of heaven, from serried ranks of ham, cheese, salami, mayonnaise and liver sausage at one end to bacon, frikadeller and cocktail frankfurters at the others (the discerning Labrador would pass over the fruit salads, mueslis, yoghurts and so forth separating the one from the other, pausing only to engulf a tray of Danish pastries). My papers went down surprisingly well, given that two were to groups heavily engaged with critical theory and the third to a bunch of Classicists, and by temperament and training I have little to say to either of those orthodoxies, but they seemed to enjoy it. And I enjoyed talking to them. And I did end up having dinner in one of the several fantastically elegant fin-de-siecle cafes in the environs of the theatre — what the bill can have amounted to for six I do not wish to think, but it was wonderful, polished brass, chandeliers, acres of white linen, high, high, ceilings, mirrors, ormulu, and the food was quite good enough for such a setting. Norway, like Italy, can pull off the trick of being elegant and genial at the same time, where in Britain you tend to get one or the other. (The somewhat paratactic construction of this paragraph is probably due to having learned ever so much more about Hebrew ‘waw’ (meaning ‘and’ and much else besides) than I knew four days ago). I even managed to find my big girls’ blouse emporium and bought some lovely clothes. Then I hopped on an airport express train with my loot, and came home. I had all of 10 minutes to get off an Oslo plane at Stavanger and onto an Aberdeen one. Thought one: I won’t make it. Thought two: they won’t load my bag and I will lose all my nice new clothes. Wrong. The layout of the airport is scrutable, it was perfectly possible for me to join the end of a boarding queue. And my baggage came with me. Good for Norway.

Plans for the day were somewhat derailed by the discovery that the Refugee Gardener had made various preparations for planting dahlias, but had not in fact planted them. Since this meant that grown-on plants were busily drying out in the shed, we ended up doing it ourselves. It’s been dodgy weather, very heavy, with the sky looking as if it is about to open but not in fact doing so. I do not, unless things go badly wrong, anticipate a dahlia famine. Thirty have been planted, and if the pictures on the packets are anything to go by, the bed is going to be a pulsating spectacle of colour; maroon, bright red, bright orange, and purple. I didn’t manage to get all the ones I wanted and some of them were acquired somewhat at random, but they’re something to look forward to all the same. Otherwise, I’m trying to sort myself out for Oslo. I haven’t done my ironing, or decided what to take, or read up on the three different seminars I’m involved with, though I have at least found my passport which is a start. With any luck, I should get Spring all over again, but this makes it if anything even more difficult to decide on appropriate garments — it’s not a question of fashion statements, but merely of, am I going to be freezing cold, or too hot? I don’t want to take very much if I can avoid it, not least because Scandinavia is a great place for big girls’ blouses in more senses than one, & with any luck, I will return with one or two more nicely cut plain linen items in good colours than I set out with. Maroon, bright red, orange and purple are all right if you are a dahlia bed but not otherwise, and they seem to flourish in shops for large ladies’ clothing in this sceptred isle (which also exhibit a depressing mania for synthetic fabrics). Past experience suggests that I might do better in Norway.

We have had a surprising amount of weather in the last few days. That maddening combination of thunder, vast downpour of rain, clear skies and sudden hot sun which ensures that the grass grows like crazy and cannot be cut. The Refugee Gardener has started to clear out the borders, so my collection of stuff in pots is finally being planted, which is most satisfactory. I can’t quite think what is going to happen to all those roses we bought on a whim; they’ll have to be shoved in somewhere. My eight-foot high paeonia ludlowii is covered in lovely bright yellow blossoms. This winter’s horrible conditions must have tickled its fancy, because it has produced two seedlings, which I’ll grow on and probably plant somewhere in the woods. A nice thing to come across when you aren’t expecting it.
The other news of the week is that Miss Kit has bounced back from not being quite well last week. She’s always had a rather delicate digestion, but this general state of affairs seemed to be turning into throwing up everything she ate a minute after she’d eaten it, so I took her to Rosie the Lovely Vet, who thinks there’s nothing much wrong with her, but perhaps over-active stomach acid. She’s given me something a bit like Milk of Magnesia which I have to fire down the little animal’s throat twice a day to calm her stomach. It seems to be working. She hadn’t really begun to lose condition, but there is a percepible change: she is looking bouncier and solider, and there has been no more hilarious vomiting. Meanwhile I have sorted out three powerpoints and three papers for the learned Norwegians (they are somewhat getting their money’s worth with 3 papers on consecutive days), and they are in a pile beside me as I write. How wonderful to be a day ahead. It doesn’t always happen.

We have had a strenuous if entertaining few days: the Professor’s charming cousins arrived a few days ago, in the middle of a tour of distilleries (the Spanish cousin, she who pruned our grapes to such good effect, is a Mistress of Wine, and is also a specialist in whisky). While the cousins went off to look at yet another onion shaped copper vat, which happened to be in the environs of Oldmeldrum, the Professor and I retreated for a drink to the posh hotel, which was until the early 70s or so, in the hands of one of Scotland’s stateliest homos, a gentleman of ancient and impeccable lineage who was ending the dynasty with a bang, so to say. Stories are legion — one of his party pieces was dancing the tango with his attached friend, similarly the end of a long line, declaring, ‘When Momma and I are in our minks, my dear, it takes a vet to tell us apart’. It’s all very decorous and respectable now, and it’s quite hard to imagine the days of mink and orchids when the garden echoed to the squeals as the Turriff GP chased Rudolf Nuryev round the lily pond, or vice versa. Not so much as a nostalgic whiff of ‘Mitsouko’ in the air. The only hangover, if I can put it like that, is the front half of a Bengal tiger snarling in a corner of the lobby, which I bet is from the old days, and used, once upon a time, to carry a red silk rose between its teeth on special occasions. The Cousins left on Friday morning, and a few hours later, the house became a temporary Temple of the Muses, with a charm — or murmuration — of Poets Laureate installed. Since both the incoming Poet Laureate of England and her Welsh counterpart are of the female sex, we were, as we pointed out to the Daughter Laureate who is learning Latin, in the unusual and gratifying position of being able to use a Latin feminine plural which had probably never been crossed anyone’s lips before, and say, ‘Ecce! Duae Poetissae Laureatae!’ It was all very lovely, and the illusion that food appeared and washing-up vanished as if by magic was successfully maintained. The weather was rather on our side. Mostly cold and rainy, so the fact that the miracle makeover of the grounds does not bear inspection at close quarters was less than obvious since the Muse community was content to admire everything from the other side of a pane of glass. In the interstices, we contrived to write our own contribution to the Litfest that had brought them here, not having had time what with one thing and another, and have just come back from delivering it. It went all right, as these things generally do if you have a bit of experience. We now look forward to a prosaic week of university stuff. Then I’m going to Oslo.

In the course of a mere 36 hours we have become so smart we hardly know ourselves. The Refugee Gardener hasn’t been very well for a while, and the weather has alternated sun and showers, perfect growing weather, duly taken advantage of by ground elder, rosebay, goose-grass and other undesirables, while the lawn has got shaggier and shaggier. Our sudden loveliness is the result of an intervention from Miss T’s mum and dad, who turned up looking purposeful, said ‘that garden’s got on top of you’, and sorted it out. The Refugee Gardener mowed, I weeded and planted, Miss T’s dad strimmed, and the Professor and Miss T’s mum sorted out the parterre. Today a friend of theirs was introduced into the equation. He is a forester and ghillie to trade, a huge man with a bald head who looks, at first blink, like the sort of person who’d be cast as Chief Torturer in an old-fashioned B movie, but is in fact rather sweet and quiet. In the course of today, he found and replaced the coping stones all along the garden wall, and started getting the wood organised, including the willows on the other side of the burn which were split by the snow. Our wall is now not merely limewashed, but topped off — the copings are only concrete but weathered and mossy so they look perfectly fine. All grass is cut. Weeds temporarily fought to a standstill. Terrace cleared of moss and dandelions. Edges trimmed. The acres of general wilderness have been strimmed, and the Tibetan poppies are starting to come out. We are suddenly so elegant we look like something out of a magazine.

Thanks to the Professor of French, with whom we had spent the previous night, we contrived to catch the monstrously early train alluded to in a previous blog. Therafter quite a lot of things happened. The Northern Professor and his musical colleagues went off to talk to the National Opera while I infested the National Library looking at humanist Latin. We met for lunch, by which time the musicians, still buzzing with the adrenaline of making a pitch, were in sparkling form (subsequent feedback suggests likely but not certain so I’ll come back to this if it firms up). In the evening, the Prof and I discoursed on Scotland’s First Printed Book to the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, which, like the Dumbledore day seminar, is the sort of thing you like if that’s the sort of thing you like. It all went perfectly well, and we subsequently went out to dinner with many bibliographers and spent the night locked in a safe with a leading bibliographer’s incredibly valuable collection (what do you rescue if fire breaks out, the Beethoven MS, the Giacometti, the medieval embroidery … ). Fortunately by the time we were released, there had been no fires, no burglars, and no excitement of any kind. HOLIDAY, we said. No more library. We did a little bit of sensible shopping, notebooks and knickers and stuff, and after lunch, shambled off to Berwick on Tweed. We were staying at a B&B a bit up the Tweed, near the Chain Bridge, which is a charming primitive suspension bridge from about 1820. A nice house, with plenty to read, the hostess a good cook, and so totally unfazed by managing her children, guests, catering lunch for 85 in Berwick, etc., that it was possible simply to relax and let her get on with it. It was all very peaceful and lovely, even though the weather was not particularly with us. On Saturday afternoon, after a morning of perambulating the fortifications, which are very fine and grand, I wanted to walk from Berwick to Spital and along the beach to Hud’s Head, but when we were on the Point, that is, we had come up the south side of the Tweed estuary to where the coastline sort of starts, viz., the furthest conceivable distance from shelter, the heavens opened, and what with the wind blowing the rain horizontally, we got drenched. Mission had to be aborted, we squelched onto a bus back to Berwick to pick up a taxi and return us to the B&B for dry clothes, so I never did get to walk up the beach. Sunday’s project was walking to Norham Castle, and was also less than a total success. We weren’t rained on, but an absence of signage at two crucial junctures left us, in increasing bafflement, buggering about, clearly within a mile of Horncliffe, which we kept seeing again from a variety of angles, unable to make further progress. I know it sounds mad, but we spent about three hours being turned back on ourselves, which in an undulating sort of countryside is much easier than you’d think. We did, however, get plenty of exercise which was about 90% of the point in the first place. The Professor found himself, later that night, called upon to impersonate the Tooth Fairy: one of the two very nice children of the house had lost his first fang and paid a visit of ceremony to show us it — his mother asked us after he had gone to bed if we could write a letter to him from the tooth fairy (viz. in a handwriting not identifiable as parental). This we did, between us, in the Professor’s beautiful italic, and the edentate one was mightily impressed. We took a last early-morning walk before the taxi came, down to the Chain Bridge, and as we stood looking up the silvery snake of the Tweed, with the willows hanging out the the green mist, a swan came flying over, barely clearing the suspension cables. Once (I blogged this, look up ’swan’ if you are interested) I was up on Delgaty Hill above the house and a swan came out of the mist and flew alongside the track in eerie silence like a barn owl. This must have been a different species, because at close quarters, the wings went ‘WHISH, WHISH, WHISH’, and the sound of its flight was audible almost until the bird was out of sight. Despite our misadventures, we had a lovely time.

I have spent today at an all day seminar in honour of a distinguished colleague’s 60th birthday. Highly entertaining it was too; every single speaker produced something new and interesting within the somewhat specialist area which cares about early Irish saint’s lives and what was happening on Islay in the 8th century and things of the kind. It was a very genial occasion: Professor Dumbledore has crossed swords with almost every other Celticist in creation, but in the most genial, what’s wrong with a good argument, fashion. Good arguments were had by all, not to say teasing; about half the papers set out to refute something which the honorand had at one time or another, said, and it was all taken in very good part. For me, another aspect of this was seeing people who I haven’t seen for 25 years, however much of their work I have read in the mean time — one of my fellow grad students is now so grey haired, slender and distinguished looking that it’s hard to think she isn’t a Dame of the British Empire. We looked at each other ruefully and tacitly agreed not to discuss it. The day was fine, but I was bracing myself for the evening — dinner in a ‘cheap and cheerful’ local restaurant. This had been selected on grounds of child friendliness since by the end of the day the party included one individual of three and another of about six months, and also because they started serving early. To my well concealed astonishment, it was actually very nice. Not that the food, ambiance and so forth were anything I had not surmised from the outset, but there was a genuine geniality among the serving staff, a sweet gaggle of gay boys from Torry, which made it really pleasant. There was a TV at the table, it was switched off. Someone had to get to the airport, leaving at seven. Nae problems, a taxi was booked, his main course arrived with the starters. A lactose intolerant vegetarian found milk had crept into something unexpected, chef whistled her up something else, again, with an unobtrusive but efficient helpfulness. Widespread distribution of ketchup and chips by the smaller members of the party was accomodated with an equal lack of alarm. At all such events, there’s a side of me which feels that even though not an organiser I’m still Home Team. I spend a lot of my working life on our public profile one way and another, and to me, it matters that Aberdeen taxi drivers are efficient, that the university accomodation sort of works, that the townsfolk show their best side, and that our Distinguished Guests go off feeling not that this is a miserable hole, however bright the scholarship, but that Aberdeen more generally has much to recommend it. I didn’t think our dinner arrangements would help in the slightest, but I was wrong.

The weekend has been spent in the service of the Buildings of Scotland (Aberdeenshire): introducing the director thereof to people likely to offer aid and comfort, and above all, relevant knowledge. It has all been quite fun, & there has been a great deal of architectural conversation. The Refugee Gardener’s ears must have been burning, since he promised that he’d come on Saturday and tidy up the lawns, and didn’t — though it has been a lovely sunny day, we were looking rather more shaggy and Anglo-Irish for today’s quite smart party than I would have liked. Not that anyone really gave a damn, I’m sure, but we like to look at our best. Another complicated week looms: I have a day seminar here in Aberdeen on Tuesday, and at the end of the week, since the Professor’s Ice-Horror-Death opera is looking increasingly as if it might actually happen, we are required to go down to Edinburgh on a hideously early train with the composers for a long day which, having started with opera related matters, will end with discoursing before the assembled bibliographers of Edinburgh. We might just bunk off for three days after that. We keep having mouth-ulcers and things of the sort, and none of it’s going to get any better unless we get away. It’s all looking fantastic and there’s masses to do in the garden, but sometimes you just have to take a break from it all. On the bright side, a sweet old gent who is our Animal Aunt whenever we need such a thing has been longing to come up again, so he’s delighted.