My weekend

Well, I don’t seem to achieved very much on my own since Colin went home!  My get-up-and-go very definitely got up and went – where I don’t know.

I have sanded down the old yellowing woodwork and painted it, so the skirting boards and door look nice and fresh again in Pure Brilliant White.  Then I started to take the border round the top of the walls off, and found it stuck fast!  It was Vina who helped me put that up after I first moved here, and she did insist on strong glue!  Anyway, going up and down ladders is not easy for me these days so I decided just to peel off the top, the patterned part, and  leave the backing where it is.  I am sure it won’t be noticed after I’ve painted the walls, and anyway I might find another really nice border to put up.  It may be considered old-fashioned, but who cares!  I like a bit of colour up along the top of my walls, breaking up the plain colours  of wall and ceiling.  I was rather fond of the border I have now peeled off, and plan on doing something with the strips!  Heeheehee!  Not telling you what I have in mind yet, but I am going to use the same colours in my new bedroom so it will be something for there!

So having exhausted my right arm stretching from the ladder I had barely managed to climb to sponge the border off, then scrape the little I did, I am taking a break!   I will have to get a coat of Vanilla White on the walls tonight, as I have a full day tomorrow – charity shop and meeting friends – and I have to be prepared for the carpet to arrive soon!  I can’t wait to get furniture moved in there and see how it looks!

I went to a fancy dress party on Saturday night, having been up in Edinburgh during the day, having lunch with my sister in town, and then going out to the suburbs to have a cuppie with Linda.  I’d been intending just travelling up from Peebles by bus (free, using my bus pass), but managed to miss one, so not being prepared to wait for another half hour, I took the car after all.  BUT, I left it in the new-ish “Park and Ride” on the edge of the city, and caught a bus from there.

OK getting INTO  town, but later, when I got to the bus stop where I used to be able to catch the bus to Linda’s, I found that it didn’t go that way any more, and nor did the one that used to take me home when I lived in Edinburgh!  Why do they have to keep moving things?  Having my bus pass I figured I would just take the next bus that came, and get off a few stops further on where I was SURE the bus I wanted would stop!    The bus I wanted probably DID stop there but the bus I caught DIDN’T and the next stop was way round the corner outside the old Royal Infirmary.  It was a bit of a walk back, and then I wasn’t really sure if my bus did stop there any more so I thought I’d just walk through the Meadows and SURELY I would meet the bus I needed at the other end.  Luckily it WAS the right route and the bus wasn’t long in arriving, so soon I was at Linda’s.  Of course I had a moan at how Edinburgh drove me round the twist  (after years of not living there) and she confirmed that since Princes Street had been closed (for a YEAR) for the laying of tramlines for the new system, the buses had started going in all directions.  I don’t mean that literally by the way, but some routes were changed to avoid the tram-workings, and it seems they are staying that way now that Princes Street has been opened up again!  (The tram works continue elsewhere now!)

Talking of the tram lines, I had a very definite moment of  déja vu when crossing Princes street and seeing the lines there! I was born into an Edinburgh that had trams trundling all over the city, and frequently travelled in them as a youngster.  However it was decided to do away with them in the 1950s, and they disappeared towards the end of 1956, though it took some time for all the old lines to be lifted, so I remember the tram lines very clearly. So now Edinburgh is reinstating them, though only along a route I think from Leith, through the city to the airport.  This reinstatement has caused quite a lot of controversy since the idea was first mooted, so it is to be hoped the citizens of Edinburgh decide to like the new trams after all.  I’m sure a spur off the west-bound railway line would have been as useful to get people to the airport without all this palaver but we’ll see how it goes in due course!  Enormous and white elephant are words that spring to mind at the moment, though just now I read some blurb from the council about the development of Leith and how the new Leithers will be needing the tram system, which is to be more of a light railway.

So – the fancy dress party, for the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day at Julia’s, had the theme “An animal you love”!  I was sure there would be plenty of  cat costumes, so my other favourite animals being mice or rats – yes, I’m weird, I know! – I went as a white mouse (mistaken for a rat when I got there)!  I fastened paper mouse ears to a hair band, an Alice band as someone reminded me we used to call them, and made a long card cone mouse nose with a pink tip, two long front teeth and black whiskers made from drinking straws split into thin lengths and glued to my mask!  White tee-shirt and white pyjama bottoms completed the costume, with a tail of nylon washing rope attached to the trousers!  I was quite pleased with my outfit! As I suspected there were a couple of cats, a bunny rabbit, a leopard, an ox, Julia was a mixture of animals, and most of the others weren’t dressed up at all!   Anyway, there were no prizes, just a lot of fun, with plentiful supplies of food and wine.  Goodness knows what the Chinese girl thought of the party but she seemed to laugh a lot, and taught us how to say happy new year – something like Pak Choi! I can’t remember it all!   This is how “happy new year” looks according to the online Chinese translator  - 新年快乐. 

Some guests recited poems they had prepared for Chinese new year.  (an example, or at least a bit of one - Tiger, tiger, burning bright,  Chinese New Year is tonight……)

 

 

 

We sang and danced and played some very silly games>>>>>

then at midnight all sang that very famous, if not Chinese, song – Ying tong tiddle–I-poo!  How stupid, but we all had had enough wine to not really care!  People started drifting off home around 2.00 a.m. so I drifted off too, and was home and in bed, sound asleep I should think, by 2.30!  Thank goodness I didn’t have to be anywhere on Sunday!

Talk again soon.