The new shop

After a few weeks of preparation and organising, today Karen and Caley finally let their “baby” loose on the town of Peebles!  The British Heart Foundation charity shop was open!  People complain about the number of charity shops there are in the High Street these days, but at least they are a way to recycle unwanted clothes, ornaments, CDs, videos, books, etc. and raise money for a charity at the same time.  Charity shops are big business, and there are so many different charities run branches of their shops all over the country.  A lot of money goes into the organisation of one of these shops, but a lot of money is then made for research into illness and disease, as well as for people less privileged in the community.  I can’t remember how many million pounds was donated  by the BHF to the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh last year, but it was a good few, for research, vital equipment and teaching.

When charity shops first started appearing in our towns’ streets, they weren’t very sophisticated.  Everything sold was second-hand.  Goods, as they still do now, came from donations from the public, and were sold in the town the goods came from, and shops were run mainly by unpaid volunteers.  Nowadays, there are a few paid staff as well as volunteers and goods are moved around the different branches. New goods are also bought in, usually ornaments and nick-nacks with the profits going to the charity and that aspect is one that many people don’t approve of in a charity shop.   My feeling now is that charity shops are no longer just second-hand shops, but fundraising shops for charities.   They are run like  proper High Street stores, made to look as attractive as the HS store, and to be honest, are fussier about the quality of the goods they sell.  That doesn’t mean that they don’t appreciate donations of any quality. For example, clothes that really don’t match expectations, and cannot be used,  are sold to rag merchants, and recycled into the likes of paper!

Manager Karen was one of the customers I got to know through the Co-op before I retired.  She has worked for other charities before, but a few months ago was paid off when the branch she was managing closed.  So when I saw the BHF shop appear in Peebles High Street, and saw  on a notice board that the managers Karen and Caley were looking for volunteers, I wondered if this was Co-op Karen having finally found a new job.  It was indeed.  Although the shop was not open at that time, I put my head round the door to congratulate her on her new job… and ten minutes later, I was a volunteer!

Before the shop opened all the volunteers had some training sessions, so we saw the shop develop into a bright attractive store with lots of space that has been filled with items for sale.

So today was the big day, and it didn’t go without its hitches!  The brand new state-of-the-art computerised till chose to freeze and wouldn’t work at all, so there was  a pre-opening briefing in Plan B  before  one of our local councillors  and the photographer from the local paper arrived for the Grand Opening!  After his speech during which he noted that heart disease was still the biggest killer in Scotland, he wished us all success with the shop.  Then it was time for the ribbon cutting ceremony to pronounce the shop open and immediately a good number of people who were waiting outside poured in! 

 For the next two hours there was a constant queue to pay for things. Because the till wasn’t working every item had to be written down with its code and price, and totals calculated, so it all took time, but everyone seemed to be quite good-natured and prepared  to wait their turn. 

This is Hearty, the BHF mascot, with Anna, inside that heart-shaped head!  She spent the morning outside the shop, talking to the public, waving to the children encouraging passers-by to come into the shop.

It was a busy and successful morning and I expect it went on throughout the day too.  I really enjoyed the buzz!   My next shift is on Tuesday by which time I expect it will be a bit less hectic! 

Before I go, here’s Karen the manager, having a laugh with one of the customers!

Talk again soon.

The weekend

Well, the river has been back where it should be for a few days, but the weather has been appalling again, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it flooding again. 

Morag, her husband Mike and I went through to the Glasgow Exhibition Centre on Saturday to a Christmas Shopping Fair!  I bought a few bits and pieces - a coffee-frother gadget for one thing, which I will probably keep for myself  - not that I drink coffee but a frothy milky hot chocolate doesn’t sound half bad!.  I also bought a superior type of secateurs that can tackle quite thick woody stems with very little effort indeed – it will be very useful  on my buddleia/butterfly bush - and a kit for making a couple of felted flowers!  They were also for  me!!!   Morag and I have both fancied taking up felting as a hobby!  At least she has done a little already but I have done none at all, so I am going to have a first go with the flowers..  The  kit has photographic instructions, and the girl - the designer - who was selling them said they were foolproof, but I have yet to pluck up the courage to get started! 

There were some lovely things at the Fair - lots of foodstuffs and bottles of boozy stuff too, kitchenware, books, Christmas decorations, pottery, knitwear etc.  Oh the knitwear!  Some of it was just fabulous -  but expensive, so I just took note of a few ideas instead.  I might try and make something out of the cheapie scarves and pashminas they sell in a new shop we have here in Peebles!  Morag has my old sewing machine but says I can have it back any time I want!   Now if only I can remember how to fold the scarves into shape!

We came back to Morag's for tea and and then watched TV till quite late!  There was a documentary on, about the Race to the Moon, which was really interesting. It took me back to the days when my dad ushered me out onto the garden path to look up at the dark heavens where Sputnik, the first spacecraft, was orbiting the earth, and then  I remember watching the moon landing in 1969 in a small village on the west coast!  I was working up that way at the time and was visiting a friend who was working at the hotel in Port Appin.

On Sunday I drove down to near North Berwick on the coast of the Firth of Forth to see Jean, sister of my friend Edwina who now lives in the south of England.  Well, Jean has become a friend in her own right and is not just “Edwina's big sister” as she was all those years ago when the pair of us used to go and visit at weekends. Quite recently Jean got a tiny kitten that she has named Willow.  Willow is…gorgeous, sadly not a lap cat, but once she gets to know you she will allow you to stroke her and tickle her ears, so it was fun playing with her while drinking cups of tea and having a real good blether* with Jean.

 

 

 

Her elder daughter Mandy  - who I have known since she was only about 7 -  and her partner Richard are getting married this weekend, and I have been invited to the party in the evening!  Mandy's in her thirties now. Actually no!  She’s older than I thought – and she has an 18-year-old daughter.  I got a sneak preview of the dresses that Mandy and Ashleigh are going to be wearing on Saturday.  My lips are sealed!   They both look great though!  Jean has made Mandy’s dress.  She’s so clever at sewing.

* blether - (Scots) verb and noun. to chatter about all sorts of things, a type of conversation.

Edwina is coming up from England for her niece’s big day, so that's great, as we don’t see each other all that often these days.  Her husband will not fly and Edwina said she was NOT driving up - Barney is unable to drive these days (health problems) so it means that Edwina does all the driving, and on our roads it’s quite a journey from the south.  She does it in summer but is sensible not to do it at this time of year because of the weather, so Barney is staying at home and Edwina is flying up for a long weekend!  I'm going to stay overnight on Saturday at Jean's place too, which will be nice, rather like the old days!

Later on we decided to go out for tea and walked up the village to the local Inn, which has been refurbished since I was last there - which I have to say was a long while ago.  It actually looks very nice indeed and we had a good meal -a Goanese (Goan?) chicken curry, followed by sticky toffee pudding for me and chocolate tart for Jean, and before I finally left for home we walked back down the village and had another cup of tea, looked at some of my Canada pics and blethered some more.  What a lovely afternoon and evening! 

Well, hardly a picture this time!  Makes a change for me!   Hope the lack of them hasn’t stopped you from enjoying this though.

Talk again soon.

It’s all about the river.

OK!  That was about as high as the water actually came last night.  So here are a few pics of how it looked at around 9.30 this morning.

 

All the bits of green grass you can see now were under water last night!

 

 

A line of sandbags was eventually put out to veer the flood water away from the street, but all that area of green was a-wash, except for a tiny triangle from just to the left of where you can see someone on the pathway, to the tree to the left of him, to the end of the path where the sandbags leave the road!

  The kiddies’ play-park is on the right of the fence.  This afternoon the water has gone down a lot and the trees are again above the river level! 

 

 

 

 

And on the other side of Tweed Bridge, the swimming pool, on the site of the old Tweed Mill, narrowly escaped the flood waters, just by a couple of feet.  The remains of the mill wall and the path are clear again, but there is a  line of leaf debris to show just how high the water came.

A few days ago after the last high water I went for a walk along that path past the pool and up to where the  Cuddy meets Tweed!  The water is still  higher than usual, as normally kiddies feeding the ducks are able to go right down to stand where the ducks are swimming in this photo.

 

Nicer weather, huh?

 

This is where the path leaves the riverside briefly to go up steps and cut along in front of the Hay Lodge, once the home of the prominent Hay family and now part of the Health Board…and that’s my favourite tree,

 

 

 

a beech that trails its branches in the river when the water is high. It’s just so graceful!

 

 

 

This is the Hay Lodge, its side windows in the round wall, looking out at the river.

As the path by the water beyond here was pretty muddy, I turned to go back by the same route and saw that it was a good day for sitting on a bench just watching, as Tweed  flowed gently down to the weir – the cauld as it is known in Scots.  It takes the cauld at speed then settles down for a fairly determined run down under the bridge and on past Peebles. 

  Just at the bridge the river was still trickling over the edge of its bank .  All that greenery was covered in water last night.  It’s the bit just outside the swimming pool, but it was fairly gentle  the other day.

Here’s some of the leaf debris showing how high the river came last time.  It’s amazing to think that all that green area was flooded last night, and the debris today was way behind that bench.  The bench couldn’t even be seen last night, and lots of  leaves and twigs were caught in it when the water retreated.  I should think the river water also poured into the wishing well too last night, but the other day the water had been nowhere near it….

 

 

 

and here’s the bridge with the swimming pool just visible through the arch, and the path where I stood last night to take pictures because I couldn’t go any further for the flood water.  We never dreamt that it would reach that point and get even higher a few days later!

Talk again soon.

Season of mists and…… rain and high waters…

The river has been up and down like a yoyo this last week or so!  It has flooded  its banks once then gone down, and is again up to the top, about to do the same again today.  It really must have rained hard during the night as yesterday it wasn’t that full!  

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At 2.00 this afternoon the water was again lapping the edges of the bank, maybe just a little further out than when this photo was taken from my window the other day.  It was a lot higher at 5.00 when I went for a walk down to the bridge.  However around 10.30 tonight I went down again to have a look at how the water level was going.  Being dark you can’t get the right impression from up here, but the water was right up to the fork in that path, between the bridge and the car!  Here’s what it looked like from  just a bit behind the car.    

I know it’s not a good quality photo, but not so bad for my wee point-and-click camera and a bit of playing with my computer!  Let me show you a couple more.

 

This photo looks over Priorsford footbridge to the Green.  The school kids use this bridge as a short cut to school.  Well, not tomorrow they won’t! 

On the other side of the bridge is a sign….

The road goes round to the left to reach a couple of houses and the start of the footbridge.

We really don’t often get floods like this, so of course when I was out looking, so were lots of others, mainly dads bringing their children to see.  I suppose it is quite exciting to see a fast flowing lake where there is usually a reasonably well behaved river!

The sandbags are out all along the street.  I do hope they are not needed.  This is a time when I am glad I am on the upper floor in a flat/apartment.

So we’ll see what tomorrow brings!

 

As for the mists – these were taken last week, again from my window. - Oh this is a good one to show you where the river has come out to.  It’s right alongside that path,  not over it yet, but I’ve jut taken another look and we now do have our toes in the water.  It has come from the bridge side, as in the first pic above, and is now pouring along the road below my windows, to meet another wash from the left.  Strangely the path being on a slight ridge, it is still walkable for most of its length.  Who’d want to walk it anyway?

Back to the mists for a moment then – they often burn off during the morning giving us a beautiful day, but that day it stayed like this all day!

 

Driving up to Eddleston to meet Norma for a cuppie,  the farmhouse on the hill was slightly eerie-looking , and when I reached the tearoom it was just as bad with the hills hidden from view.

  However the sun did just manage to get through for all of 15 minutes before the mist rolled in again.  I don’t want to leave you thinking that we just get bad weather here.  Next time I’ll show you the river walk I did a day or two later. 

However a last look at the river tonight…  Well, it’s still rising!  There is only one small triangle of the Green left, and that’s outside my window on the other side of the road.  It will be gone tomorrow!  I’ll let you know!  It seems that the west has really been getting it far worse.  The Lake District and Dumfriesshire  are really suffering.

Talk again soon.

A weekend in Inbhir Nis

That’s the way it’s written in Gaelic, Inbhir being Inver, meaning the mouth of a river, and Nis being the name of the river, in this case, the Ness.  So where are we?  All together now -  Inver-ness!!!  Well done!  Aren’t we clever!  (Sorry ‘bout that!) So what was I doing in Inverness on Halloween weekend?  Visiting my friends Janet and Ray, who I have probably mentioned before!  Janet and I were at school together though not in the same year, and Ray is the great guy she met and married while she was living in County Durham, in the north of England some years later.  She managed to get him to move to the north of Scotland and I don’t think he’d move back now.

I took a sudden whim to go up on the bus not long after I got back from Canada – itchy feet still itching, I suppose.  Janet had said they had nothing much planned, so that was fine.   Anyway, it was a bus pass journey, so cost me nothing.  Not a bad journey, we stopped several times to pick up and drop off passengers, and once to change drivers.  They can legally only drive for so many hours without a break.  I was bemused by the senior citizen who boarded the bus at Inverkeithing, showing his bus pass and asking for a ticket to the terminus.  “Where are you going?” asked the driver, “ because I’m going to Inverness!”   She obviously realised he was just having a day out anywhere, using his free pass, and he, realising Inverness was a bit of a distance away, then asked, “Well, where else do you go?”  Technically the bus stops at just about every village on the way, if there are people waiting to get on or off, but she gave him the names of some of the bigger places, and the old fellow decided on Pitlochry  (nice place. lots to see! ).  The bus continued and we arrived in Perth.  Our “senior cit” got up and moved to the door.  He’d decided he’d just get off there.  I thought how nice it was that he could use the pass to just head off somewhere different each day if he got lonely or had nothing to do.  Keeps the mind working!  I hope he had a pleasant day in Perth.  Hope I can still do that when I reach his age!

A few hours later we arrived in the highland capital – the city of Inverness.  Janet wouldn’t finish work for another hour or two so I just pottered around the centre for a while, looking in shop windows mostly.   I’d never seen this type of whisky before, and liked the display of the bottles in a creel of lumps of peat (dried turf for the fire).

Down Church Street I had a look at Abertarff House,the oldest house in the city, built in 1593 and originally the home of the Frasers of Lovat,  Having seen the picture on the website I have linked to here, I will next time want to go through the gate and look at the building from the side!  I love  16th century domestic architecture.  There’s another picture of the house and other views of the town here. 

On the Saturday morning Janet and I came down the town and took a bit of a walk around.  Here’s the castle, built in the late 1890s as the jail.  There has always been a castle in Inverness since the 11th century but all have been destroyed by one warring faction or another.  Today this one is used as the court house.

On the castle hill behind the  buildings you see above, is the memorial to Flora Macdonald, who courageously helped the fugitive Prince Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, to escape to France, after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 put paid to his hopes of restoring the throne to the Stuart dynasty.    I wonder if she’s trying to shoo that seagull away.  Her hair is looking very grey these days.

Not far from the castle is the old Town House, a beautiful gothic building also of the 19th century.  Looking up the website to find out something about the building, I read that to the left of the door is the…. MEERCAT Cross!!!!! I kid you not!  That’s what it says… in black and white!   Copied and pasted from the same website I used last time, (scroll down till you come to the bit about the Town House and you’ll find this:)  "Outside on the left hand side of the main doorway is the old Meercat Cross”. Of course all you Scotophiles will know that the word should be MERCAT, meaning MARKET.  I’ve told the story before on my Peebles blog about the American tourist in Peebles looking for the Meercats she insisted she had seen marked on the map.   Maybe she should have been in Inverness instead!  (Yes, I know anyone can make a typo, but that’s a good one!)  Anyway, you can see the MERCAT Cross in my photo.   It’s between the two downstairs double windows on the left of the building – just about in front of the second pair.  Next time I’ll take a closer look, because I’ve never noticed it before!

Facing the Town House is a very classical looking building, now in use as a pub but built originally in 1847 for the Caledonian Bank (which later became the Bank of Scotland).  You can tell by the banner that it’s Hallowe’en!.

Looking down from Castle Hill across the river Ness is the Scottish Episcopal Cathedral Church of St Andrews, almost completed in 1869, but for two spires that would have been added if funds hadn’t run out at the time. 

 

 

 

And this is the main bridge over the Ness, continuing into High Street.  Just past the church is the Caledonian old bank.  Across the road you can just see the little spires on the Town House.  The Castle is on the hill off to the right of my picture, and way ahead at the other end of the street is the modern Eastgate shopping centre, which I haven’t mentioned yet.  First I wanted to show you the strange things that you sometimes see on the bridge!   What do you call a quantity of Santa Claus’s?  We decided on a Merry of Santa’s!

 

 

Now here’s the Eastgate Centre, with the War Memorial in the plaza looking like a modern Mercat Cross.    Inside the centre, as well as all the best-known High Street shops, you’ll find the clock, which does things on the quarter hour.

 

Things revolve, or go up and down or side to side.  Doors open and close.  Mrs Noah catches a fish…. great fun for the kiddies!

 

 

Saturday night was Halloween,

 

so we went  out to eat, and were served by a waiter dressed up as the devil and a waitress who was also meant to be from the dark side!  There were pumpkin lanterns all over – no turnip lanterns to be found anywhere these days!

The rest of the weekend was wet and dull, so we stayed in, Ray continuing to convert the downstairs cloakroom into a shower room and utility room; Janet and I, relaxing,  playing on the computer, watching DVDs, drinking copious cups of tea, and nursing the cat!  Pickles is gorgeous, cute and fluffy, with fabulous whiskers, and quite vocal with her mews and mrrrrows.  She loves to be brushed and purrs like the proverbial engine, and she just adores to be sitting on someone – and a lot of the weekend that someone was me ,        not that I was complaining.  I love to gave a cat on my knee.  By the way, do you know why a cat’s tail goes up in the air when you stroke its back?  It’s to stop your hand falling off the end!  Oh alright then.  So it wasn’t that funny!   Pickle-y Pussycat has a kink in her tail, though with all the fluff you don’t notice it, but I think she got her tail caught in a door when she was a kitten cat.  It doesn’t seem to bother her at all.

And so the weekend passed and Monday morning came around again.  Janet wasn’t feeling too good so stayed off work – no it wasn’t the alcohol. We actually didn’t have any!  Ray went off to work though, taking me down to the town first, so I could catch my bus back to Edinburgh and then home to Peebles.  What a nice weekend!  I should do things like that more often!

Talk again soon.

My last day in Canada

Suddenly it was my last day!  At least I had the whole day, as my flight didn’t leave till almost midnight.  The plan was to go to Ottawa and spend some time there then Gail and Peggy would take me out to the airport.  So, bags packed – that case was pretty heavy – we loaded them into the boot of the car and prepared to  leave. so just a last couple of photos of the house in Buckingham,  with the halloween decoration Peggy had put out,

 

 

 

and the piles of leaves in the garden that Gail and I had raked some days before, with Maggie the dog acting as overseer.

 

 

Maggie hadn’t been speaking to me that last morning and wouldn’t let me take her photo, so here’s one I took earlier with Gail!  She’s a lovely dog.

So at last  I said farewell to Buckingham  and we were off to Ottawa.  I’d only seen little bits as I came from the train station the week before, and on the night we met Pascale.

When we arrived in Ottawa it was another glorious day and with lots to see ahead of us we parked the car and got going.

This is a view of the skyline of Ottawa from Nepean Point.  On the extreme left are the twin silver spires of Notre Dame Cathedral.  The three glass triangles, as I think of them, are part of the National Gallery of Canada.  The high tower in the centre of the picture is the Peace tower, part of Ottawa’s Parliament buildings, and to the right of  it  is the library. The Rideau Canal emerges down a series of locks, the bottom of which you can see in the centre. On the skyline at the top of the locks is another of the Fairmont hotels, the Chateau Laurier.  I have been trying to find out what the castellated building is to the left of the Chateau, but without success.  I’ll have to ask Gail!

Getting a bit closer, here’s the Chateau on the left with the canal in the centre.  It was a major feat of engineering, completed in 1832, that allowed boats to navigate their way from Montreal to the Great Lakes, by-passing the St Lawrence River, after  conflict with the Americans on the British colony made the latter route too hazardous.  Only 10% of the route from Kingston on Lake Ontario to Ottawa  is actually manmade.  The rest is made up of lakes and rivers, including the Rideau river from which it gets its name.

In winter the canal passing through the city is closed to boat traffic, and  becomes the longest skating rink in the world when it freezes over, and the Winterlude festival ensures everybody has a good time, with stalls selling hot drinks and food – including Beavertails – all along nearly 5 miles of frozen canal with skaters and people generally out on the ice to have a fun time.

  Here is the parliament building on Parliament Hill, taken from the beautiful Major’s Hill Park.  The peace tower is to the left with the library the squat building on the right.  The autumn colours here were just stunning.

Also in the park is the statue of a native Indian scout .  He used to be found over on Nepean Point beside Sam de Champlain, but was moved here recently.

 

I pinched this picture of Parliament Hill!  I’m not that good an artist.  However I didn’t get a picture of the front and this  is probably much better! The House of Commons meets in the main block with the Senate in the west block to the left of the picture.  

Gail told me that the tower on the east block is known locally as the Clown Tower. See the face?

There were loads of young people milling about here, mostly in fancy dress costumes, and obviously bound for Parliament Hill.  It must have been some kind of student protest but we never did find out what it was about.

I didn’t know it at the time but they must have been crossing the top of the Rideau locks here. I never saw the locks properly, so something else for next time!

The skyline photo above was taken from Nepean Point where Samuel de Champlain stands on his pedestal, holding up an astrolabe, which apparently is a historical astronomical instrument which Frenchman Samuel would have used in his extensive explorations and mapping of North America.

Just below where he stands is the open air Astrolabe Theatre constructed for the Canadian Centennial of 1967, a great place from which to see the fireworks over Parliament Hill!  It has a stage and is used for concerts in the summer.   In the background here you can see the “three triangles” of the National Gallery roof.  We took a peek inside to see the “sails”  in the tower/dome… what would you call the three triangles roof?

Further along outside the gallery is a very unusual sculpture.  It is called “Maman”  -   French for Mother - and it towers over pedestrians who can walk directly beneath it.  The sculptor says it reminds him of his own mother who was a powerful creative person, who wove tapestries. Well, Maman certainly does weave, so let me introduce her.  Here she is!!     Maman

 

 

  She’s a 30 foot tall spider, one of 6 such castings by Louis Bourgeois.  I think she’s rather lovely!

 

 

Maman faces the Ottawa cathedral of Notre Dame, founded by Monsignor Joseph-Eugene Guigues, first Bishop of Ottawa, in the early 1850s.

 

 

His monument stands outside the cathedral.

 

 

 It has recently had a facelift inside and is beautiful.

I must show you just a few more pics.

 

 

Just look at those beautiful pillars….

(We were waiting for Peggy, who was attending Mass)

 

…and take a look at this view up to the ceiling.

 

 

 

 

…and looking back towards the door, and the organ gallery above  It’s stunning!

 

 

 

 

This picture taken late in the afternoon looks across the Ottawa River to Hull. Soon it was dark.  We had a last meal together in the city before it was all too soon time to make for the airport.

Last pics then  - Gail and Peggy,

  and me and Gail, at the airport before we said goodbye.

So that was it!  Holiday over and now I can’t wait to go back!  I had such a great time.

Thanks Don and Nancy, Jean and Jimmy, Peggy and Gail for making it so special!

Talk again soon.