A morning’s adventures

At 8.30 a.m. the other morning – it was  Thursday morning – it was looking a bit frosty outside, and at 8.36 it was snowing heavens hard!  It was rather weird – from no snow, suddenly there was snow falling, not just starting gradually with a few flakes, but a fully fledged snow fall all at once!  The sky got darker and greyer and the snow got heavier, till it was almost like a white mist looking across the river from my window!

Wasn’t this the day I had to go back to the dentist to have the root canal treatment completed!  Well,  I wasn’t walking over there in the snow  – it’s about a mile  - so decided to take the car.  That was fine but of course I had to clear the snow off it first, but at least I got there in good time.

I had the rest of my treatment done – pain free and no need for anaesthetic thank goodness.  I’m not sure what she did but there was a lot of water skooshed into my mouth and the sooker–out thing sooked/sucked the water back out again.  She fiddled with the stump of the tooth that holds the crown tooth and finally stuck the crown back on!  THEN she decided to take a look at the newish dental plate I got fairly recently and which I hadn’t been using as it  made me want to boak/gag after only a few minutes.  I also hadn’t been happy at the alignment of three teeth on the plate and she’d also added two back teeth that I must have had removed years ago, as I don’t even remember ever having had them.  Suffice to say I wasn’t happy with them.  Take off the two back ones, get rid of some plastic on the plate pallet and realign the three  at the front – left of centre!  I got her to pare more plastic off so that I could at least tolerate the thing in my mouth.  Persevere!  I was ordered!  Well,  I persevered yesterday and again today, and everything was ok till I started to speak!  Because of the alignment of the front teeth they tend to catch the inside of my upper and lower lips… ouch!.  As for eating… the two teeth at the back make it impossible for me to bite without pressing them into the top of my gum – boak - and as my teeth don’t meet on the other side I can’t chew!  You could post a slice of cucumber between my teeth and I couldn’t grip it!  So tonight I am back to wearing my old plate which Mary reckons only stays in my mouth by some stroke of good luck!!  Apart from the sore bits where the other plate nipped, I’m fine – now!

Well, when I came out of the surgery it had stopped snowing and the sky was blue.   Practically everything else  was white though!  Another photo opportunity perhaps?  I was on the back road to Traquair already, so reckoning the roads couldn’t be too bad yet I decided to drive a few miles down to Traquair House and take a few more snowy pictures – like these, en route…..!

(upper left) On the back road    Scots Mill (upper right) and the view to Innerleithen (left).

 

While I was driving with the radio on, there was a road traffic bulletin.  National radio –i.e. BBC radio 2, based in London - mentioned that the A72 between Peebles and Innerleithen was partially blocked because a bus “had left the road.”   Well I was on the parallel road between the same two places, so I was OK.. What had happened to the bus though?  Had it overturned?  Were there  injured passengers?  I hoped it wasn’t too serious.  The words “left the road” sounded less dreadful than “careered off the road overturning into the  river injuring all those on board”!  It was on my return journey along the same back road that I caught sight of a bright red fire engine over on the main road across the fields.  It took a moment more to make out the single-decker bus because it blended into the countryside so well. 

See what I mean?  (You’ll have to click to enlarge it).  It isn’t a local service bus, so must be a touring bus or a works bus.  Doesn’t look too bad, but this was a good while after I heard the bulletin.  I had been to

 

Traquair House and had a short walk in the grounds, taking my pictures of the oldest continually inhabited house in Scotland, and its old gates…..

 

 

 

…..the ones that haven’t been opened since 1746 when Bonnie Prince Charlie rode  through them away on his journey north to Culloden and the battle that was to put an end to his dream of reinstating the Stuart monarchs on the throne of Britain.

I think this young lady once carried an urn in her arm - right

Reflections of the frosted trees and grasses in a pond – above, and view of Lee Pen, the hill behind Innerleithen – below right.

So my return journey to Peebles was by the same road, from where I saw the bus.  I rather think it will have skidded on the icy road and probably come to rest  at that precarious-looking angle.

So that was yesterday morning!   Sin agad e!  as they’d say in Gaelic – There you have it!

Talk again soon.