And so it goes on

I continue to labour beneath an extraordinarily sticky and prolonged virus. There really hasn't been a lot of spare energy for anything, though I hope it's breaking up at last. Meanwhile, life proceeds. Monday began with a phone call at ten to seven; a rough Aberdonian voice demanding. 'Faur are ye?' ('faur', being in local dialect, 'where'). I pulled myself together and established that The Aberdeen Shore Porters Association (est. 1497) had acquired thae modron Satnav which had duly taken them to the grain store on the Fraserburgh road and left them there. Satnavs aren’t much use for a postal area, comprising six places, of a square mile or more. Some minutes later, they turned up, overshot the drive (having I suppose lost the habit of navigating by applied intelligence) and ended up coming up to the back of the house, somewhat to their annoyance. I pointed out, reasonably patiently, that in order to get their mighty truck to the front door they would have to back the best part of 100 yards, as well as turning it through forty-five degrees, an enterprise perhaps best avoided in a vehicle that size. They conceded it was perhaps best to download from where they were, and did. The reason they were there was that they were bringing stuff from the Professor's good aunt in Edinburgh, an extremely nice woman who has sadly become a bit clouded in her intellectuals, like Miss Cat. She is now in a home for confused gentlewomen where she really seems as happy as she can be, because she is no longer anxious in the way  she was when living alone, and the staff are pleasant and helpful. Her daughters are moving into her flat, and were keen we should take some of the furnishings. I completely understand their point of view: on the one hand, not wanting stuff to go to waste and if possible staying in the family, on the other, wanting to get the decks clear enough that they could live in it in their own style.  We were keen too; the house (and even the garden) is full of stuff which we remember people by in one way or another, and there was one item surplus to the cousins’ rearrangement of the flat which was pretty much perfect as a remembrance: as most of readers will know, our dining table,an item to which the Professor is unreasonably attached because it belonged to his great-grandfather, is also a menace. Fine thing that it is, it’s a parlour table with legs in the middle and two wings, so if we have two guests they end up sitting down to find a table leg in their way, spill wine across the table, then there is mopping up and apologies. The Good Aunt’s table is a proper dining table with two legs, each on four feet. Great Grand-Papa’s table will become my worktable with the computer, printer, Miss Cat’s hot-spot and so forth, my current worktable, which is made of cedar and which I bought in the Dens Road in Dundee about 25 years ago, will get stashed in the attic till someone wants it, and so things move on. I like the idea of having the Good Aunt’s table and chairs.  We don’t use the dining room every day, so when we do, we can think, ‘this is the Good Aunt’s table’, and think kindly of her. And of course, the sacred great-grand-parental parlour table will remain with us, doing new duty.

And Then

The trouble was, the cold didn’t go away: after three weeks of fast and furious adventures round different bits of my skull and upper respiratory tract, the bloody thing is clinging on. Hence, among other things, neglecting the blog. Since last heard from, I have done quite a lot of teaching, But otherwise, the really terrific thing that happened is that our friends from Carolina turned up, along with the Man from Maryport who has not graced these portals in far too long (indeed, not since this blog's previous incarnation). We had a very splendid day out last Saturday:  up to the Spey, that beguiling river, a bit of a walk along its swift course, then lunch at the 19^th century woollen mill, which, apart from an unpretentious café offering soup, quiche, and tray bakes, has a fine complement of Steel Age machinery. One of the most attractive features of 19th century industrial complexes, apart from the heady scent of machine oil, is that you can pretty much see how they work after looking at them for a bit: the logic is apparent. Then it was over the hills and far away, via Dallas (the original Dallas) to Pluscardine Abbey. High moorland, heather, blue skies, birches, driving ten miles without seeing another car (equally, driving ten miles without much of a clue as to whether one was driving in the right direction due to total absence of signage…) . All in all, a temporary flashback to the Golden Age of Motoring as represented by Shell Guides. We did contrive to find Pluscardine in the end. The monks were in retreat, so  we had a look around, and visited the shop: if the brothers are otherwise occupied, as they were, you write down in a book what you’ve bought, and leave the money.  I can think of various farms here and there around Aberdeenshire which, similarly, leave out a pile of eggs in boxes, or whatever, a tariff, and a tupperware box. A small and elementary lesson in trust, and the point of being good. By the way, the Professor has mended the Twisby: re-stuffed its horrid stomach, and patched it. It is not a bit grateful.

It’s a Wonderful Day for an Auto da Fé

Last Friday, Dr Brennan the Artist and the junior half of the Huntly Two swooped by for the night (the older of the Huntly Two was otherwise engaged). We had a jolly evening, as usual, talking about art (Huntly 2² is interested in Sargent), and this and that, fuelled, in the case of Dr Brennan and myself, by not a little tasty Montepulciano. This may explain why, when he eventually went to bed, he failed to observe that a Twisby had crawled up the bedside lamp and was squinnying menacingly out of the top of the shade. Twisbies are of course entirely synthetic, so he was alerted to this fact by a horrid smell some time later. The result of all this is that the resident Twisby has a hemispherical hole in its saggy and regrettable stomach, also a neat round hole in its grey outer integument. We have tried to tell it that it is still better off than the Twisby which went to Kuala Lumpur with the Godparents, took to consulting black magicians, and was handed over to the secular arm. Or possibly the Muslim arm, it being Kuala Lumpur, but whichever it was it was pretty dashed vengeful. We are left in a slight quandary, with respect to our own hollowed-out Twisby. Do we re stuff, and repair it with fabric which doesn’t quite match, which will not improve its temper, or carry on the good work …? Or teach it to intone ‘we are the hollow men  …’, etcetera, to upset our guests? Meanwhile, I have possibly fallen victim to malign influences of a Twisbotic nature, because I have caught a cold. This may on the other hand have a perfectly natural explanation, the sheer shock to the immune system of meeting about 50 people after a shy and retiring summer in which I scarcely met anyone at all. Whichever, it seems to be passing over quite fast as colds go, all of which suggests that it was a really good idea to go on holiday last month.

Chugga chugga chugga

I was talking to someone this afternoon, about getting the new term launched. Since my last blog, there has been oceans of administration, menacing floods of emails headed 'colleagues are reminded' , and so forth, buckets of no fun and mostly depressing. Now term has properly started and one is actually teaching, it becomes possible to recall that this is often interesting and sometimes rewarding - students, as people, are fine. It's students presenting as x number of eight-digit numbers which can be a bit tricky But still, we have got there, and the metaphor which occurred to me was those antique self powered rail trolleys one saw in Buster Keaton films and the like.  Two chaps pushed a bar alternately, and eventually, the platform they were standing on set off along the track.Term is a bit like that. A devil of a job to get started, but once it is moving you just have to put your back into it.