In the month before I left the UK for San Francisco, I went up to Scotland for work followed by some pleasure travel through the Highlands. I spent a few days visiting my uncle Jeff and aunt Judith and my cousin Jenny came down from Glasgow.
Jeff and Judith are now living in a mobile home next to their cottage up the glen (valley) from Inveraray, while they get building works done on the cottage. The work was three-quarters complete when I was there and it’s going to be very nice, with a lovely big kitchen and more bedrooms, but still keeping the charm of the old cottage.
Jenny (left) and I went for a hill walk directly behind the cottage on the first full day I was there. We didn’t go to the mountain peak a bit to our left, but went to the highest point in a straight line behind the cottage. We saw a family of red deer (sadly, I didn’t have my zoom lens with me so the photograph fails to do it justice), which was very exciting. It was pretty steep going and a lot of it was really scrambling or climbing rather than hiking but it was lots of fun. We called Judith when we reached the top so she could see our silhouettes waving from the ridge line. At the top the ground was flat and boggy – the treacherous peat bog sucked Jenny down to her knees at one point! It was pretty though, scattered with fluffy white bog cotton flowers and patches of red moss and 100 metres or so in from the ridge line, there’s a beautiful little freshwater tarn (lake).
Red deer
The tarn
While I was at the cottage, I also found time to go chanterelle-hunting with Judith (slim pickings though as we were a few weeks early and it had been quite dry) and hang out with my uncle Jeff and talk about the meaning of life. We had my other uncle Steven and Jenny’s cousin (and my friend) Andrew come to dinner on the Saturday night and Jenny and I drove back to Glasgow with Andrew. I stayed at Andrew’s place that night, then it was back to London by train on Sunday, and into the US Embassy for my visa appointment the following day.
I’m in a weird limbo right now. The wedding and honeymoon is behind me and the move to San Francisco is ahead of me. My husband has already moved Stateside but I am stuck in London waiting for an appointment at the US Embassy to get my visa. We had already given notice on our flat in Whitechapel and I moved out at the end of May. I am now staying with friends in north London and I also plan to travel.
The last couple of weeks I have been hanging out with my friend Emme, her partner Jon and their lovely French sheepdog (Briard) Ivy. I celebrated my birthday by going walking in a nearby park with Emme and Ivy and taking photographs of all the lovely buttercups and puddle ducks. England is beautiful in summer! In the afternoon I made a orange and poppyseed birthday cake (which turned out a little soft in the middle but was still scrumptious). Then in the evening I did a fish cookery workshop at Food at 52 with my friend Dominique.
Otherwise, I have been doing a bit of freelance work and trying to reduce my belongings down to a sensible amount for the trans-Atlantic flight. (We shipped most of the household stuff and gave a bunch to charity but I still seem to have quite a lot left over). It’s been quite a chilled time for me, not entirely without its stresses, but I haven’t ventured into London or socialised overly much. I did go to an event on China 20 years after the Tiananmen massacre at the Frontline Club on 1 June with a couple of journalist friends. I also caught up with my friends Ben and Lyndsay who have been visiting from Australia last weekend – we had dinner at The Narrow Boat, a lovely pub on the canal in Angel-Islington. Last night Emme’s friend Jen came over for a games night, which was also lots of fun!
I’ve always lived in central London – Clapham, West Hampstead and Whitechapel. Three very different areas but all in zone 2. My friends live on the outskirts in a pretty little cottage, with rolling countryside out the back door. This definitely has its advantages – you can go for lovely walks or runs and the other day I saw a hedgehog on the footpath on the way home from the station. It’s not as easy to get out and about though and this week my own laziness has been compounded by a Tube strike.
I’m about to get moving again though. Next Monday, I am getting the sleeper train to Aberdeen and then the ferry to Orkney. It’s for a story – I can’t tell you much more than that right now but obviously I’ll share once I can. When I’m done in Orkney, I’m going to travel down the west coast of Scotland to see my relatives in Inveraray and Glasgow. I come back to London just in time for my visa appointment.
Before I leave the country, I also want to go to see my aunt Michele and her family in Cardiff, my friend Misty in Dublin and my friend Jann in Amsterdam. I’m also REALLY, REALLY looking forward to the San Francisco adventure and seeing my lovely husband again.
***
I know that I have been neglecting this blog. I am not sure that my friends and family are still reading it, except for those of you with RSS readers. But you can always follow me at my travel and food blog Roaming Tales, on Twitter or Facebook or Friend Feed (which you can customise if you don’t want to see all my tweets, for example).
It’s really cold here in London right now – we’re apparently getting winds from the Arctic rather than the Gulf Stream. There’s often a dusting of snow on the trees and grass in the mornings, plus we’re getting heavy frosts. Apparently it got down to -12C this week. Today we’re expecting a maximum day temperature of zero celcius (32F) so it’s literally freezing. It’s meant to warm up a little next week though.
Freelance work has slowed right down in the past few months so I’m pitching furiously trying to drum up more work. I’m certainly open to any ideas or offers so please keep me in mind if you know anyone who needs writing or editing work done. I’m still doing regular posts for EcoSalon, which I’m really enjoying. I also had a piece on music copyright published recently in The Observer – it was lead media feature in the Media & Business section – and a piece on podcast fiction in The Bookseller.
The countdown to the wedding is on in earnest – the date is 4 April so it’s less than three months to the day. Yikes! We’ve booked the venues and the caterer and I’ve bought the dress. The dress fits now but I’m focusing really hard on healthy eating and exercise in the hope of shedding a few kilos and toning up so hopefully a few adjustments will be in order closer to the day. We’re hoping to get invitations out really soon.
On that note, we are still madly researching honeymoon destinations. We want to stay close to Australia to cut down on flights because my cousin Rhia’s wedding is 15 days after ours in Queensland. We were looking at New Zealand at one point until we decided we wanted a tropical island. The problem is that April is the tail end of the rainy season in places like the Great Barrier Reef, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji. We’re not really sure what that actually means – days of torrential rain and cyclones or just semi-regular showers to cool down an otherwise hot and sunny day?
We went to see Changeling last weekend and I was really impressed. We had resisted seeing it to a large extent because it looked suspiciously like an Angelina Jolie Oscar vehicle. I guess it is to an extent but it’s also a really good movie. I’m a fan of Clint Eastwood as a director and he does a really good job with this movie. It’s tightly plotted, emotional but not contrived, and it’s a real testament to his directing talent that there are so many strong performances particularly from the child actors. It’s based on a true story and was quite a pivotal point in the development and reform of the Los Angeles police force so that was interesting too. Plus, there are some fab hats – not only the Jolie character’s 1920s cloches and 1930s wide-brimmed hats but also for the men and the journalists (can I have a hat with a ticket that says ‘press’ for the next press event I attend, please?).
My blogs are in the running for a couple of awards and I would really love your help. Please consider nominating my travel site Roaming Tales for Best Travel Weblog in the 2009 Bloggies and the travelogue category of the Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards. Please also consider nominating The Gooseberry Fool for Best Food Weblog in the Bloggies. I would also be delighted if you would nominate either or both blogs for Best European Weblog or Best-Kept Secret Weblog or any other category that you think is appropriate. I think my chances are best with Roaming Tales so if you want to focus your fire on just one blog, that’s the one I would ask you to go for. It would mean a lot to me to have your support and if I have any degree of success, it could really boost my readership and help pay off my blogging efforts.
I haven’t actually nominated myself so I’m relying on friends, family and readers to do it for me – and apparently the more times I am nominated, the higher my chance of making the finals (it’s not based exclusively on votes – there is a panel of voters as well). The Bloggies have been running nine years and they’re quite well respected and prestigious but this is the first time they’ve had a travel category, so that’s quite exciting.
Please note, you can nominate as many times as you like in the Lonely Planet awards and you have until early February. However, you can only nominate once for the Bloggies and you only have until the end of Monday 12 January. Also with the Bloggies, you need to put at least three blogs in total forward so you can’t just nominate me.
Only two more days of NaBloPoMo after today. I hope you’ve enjoyed the extra blog posts!
I’m not writing a full-length post on The Niltiac Files today but instead want to direct you to my Photo Friday contribution on Roaming Tales – pictures of Goree Island, off the coast of Dakar, Senegal.
I had a meeting in town today and I walked back to the Tube via St James’s Park – one of my favourite parks in London. It’s officially still autumn but there’s a distinctly wintry feel to it right now – no snow but it’s been seriously cold. The trees have almost lost their leaves and the water birds are huddling on the islands in the pond.
Parks do have their appeal in winter but it’s not usually related to the vibrant colours. Yet, I found some surprising patches of colour in the park. Firstly, a tree with beautiful amethyst-coloured berries – I don’t know what the tree is called though so if anyone can help me out that would be great. Then purple crocuses growing in the still emerald green grass – I thought crocuses were a spring flower but apparently not. The final one was a tree covered in pink blossoms – I’m fairly sure that one IS early, which is a bit of a worry.
Apologies for the quality of the photos – I took them with my mobile phone but I want to share them anyway.
Meanwhile, I also want to refer you to my post on Passports for Purpose on Roaming Tales – it’s a great cause and I hope you’ll support it and buy raffle tickets when they go on sale next week.
Yesterday I went West Norwood in south London to pick up what I hope will be my wedding dress. I bought the dress at auction and decided to go in person to pick it up rather than pay for a courier. I bid for it online but had some trouble with the system – fortunately when I called, it turned out the lot hadn’t sold, so I got to have it.
Getting there was a bit of a mission – I had to catch the train from Victoria to West Norwood. Then I made my way to Martell Road following my printed map of the area. I thought I’d be clever and cut through the cemetery instead of going around by road. This was a grave mistake because it turned out the cemetery only had one entrance. I didn’t find this out until I was on the opposite side of the cemetery.
I got a bit lost and found myself in the baby section. Like a scene from a B-grade horror flick, the place was utterly deserted, probably because of the cold. To top it all off, it started sleeting sideways so it was stinging my eyes and I could barely see through my glasses. In order to get back to where I started I had to walk past grave after grave for babies, many of whom had died a few days after birth, and some of whom didn’t even seem to have names. Some of the graves were shaped like teddy bears.
On a more positive note, I’m delighted with the dress purchase. I was the only bidder so I got it very cheaply and it came with a white lacy dress that might be suitable for my bridesmaid, a blue jacket, a skirt suit and a doll’s corset. I imagine I can sell anything I don’t want on eBay.
I really like vintage styles and fabrics. I was originally looking at 1930s and 1940s dresses but this one is actually from 1912. It’s made of a very delicate silk with lace and embroidery and the detailing is gorgeous. It’s also tiny and I’m not so I need to take it to a tailor to see if I can have it altered or remade. I’d like to lose a little weight before the wedding but I’m still not going to have a 20-inch waist. It does seem to have generous seams so hopefully it can be let out, as trying to colour match panels could be difficult.
Apart from style and price, the other advantage with vintage is that a second-hand dress sits well with my environmental principles.
And no, I’m not going to post a picture online – sorry! You’ll just have to wait.
I’m feeling very excited because I’m off to see Monkey at the O2 tonight. I saw it at the Royal Opera House earlier this year and it was so good I’m going to see it again, this time with a group of friends in tow. I can’t wait!
I’ll write more about Monkey after the event. In the mean time, I have two blog posts to share with you today. Firstly, over on Roaming Tales, I’ve done some follow-up to the Travel Blog Camp in London last week. Secondly, I have a post up about how to combine being green with a love of books at EcoSalon. Enjoy!
Jenny (left) and I went for a hill walk directly behind the cottage on the first full day I was there. We didn’t go to the mountain peak a bit to our left, but went to the highest point in a straight line behind the cottage. We saw a family of red deer (sadly, I didn’t have my zoom lens with me so the photograph fails to do it justice), which was very exciting. It was pretty steep going and a lot of it was really scrambling or climbing rather than hiking but it was lots of fun. We called Judith when we reached the top so she could see our silhouettes waving from the ridge line. At the top the ground was flat and boggy – the treacherous peat bog sucked Jenny down to her knees at one point! It was pretty though, scattered with fluffy white bog cotton flowers and patches of red moss and 100 metres or so in from the ridge line, there’s a beautiful little freshwater tarn (lake).
