Rhubarb!

The first picking of the season: now made into Rhubarb Crumble Ice Cream (courtesy of Delia). Entailed a bit of advance preparation (making up crumble, baking the rhubarb) and not my usual method, also included a rather shocking amount of sugar. I thought it unusual, even slightly weird when I tasted the mixture (well, licked the paddle, if truth be told); I didn't like the crunchy bits of crumble, and was pleased that I'd improvised with some crystallised ginger, finely chopped, with some of its syrup, which intensified and balanced the taste. But today, now that it's properly frozen, it's not bad at all. Just as well, as it used only a tiny fraction of the rhubarb yet to come.

Day trippers: Part 8

And why not? Because it was time to plod wearily down into the bowels of Waverley Station, our feet throbbing, say goodbye, and clamber into our respective trains to go home again. A grand day out.

Day trippers: Part 7

We didn't go on board the Royal Yacht Brittania, moored at Ocean Terminal. We didn't climb the Scott Monument. (Note: scary squeeze at the top of the ever-narrowing staircase!) We didn't go shopping. We didn't wander in Princes Street Gardens or go up to the Castle.

Day trippers: Part 6

And after a slow bus ride, with many delays due to the everlasting work on the forthcoming tramway, to the old docks at Leith, now redeveloped and transformed.

Day trippers: Part 5

Off to the Botanic Gardens for lunch and a brisk walk in a rather wild wind.

Day trippers: Part 4

Past the Stockbridge Colonies, 11 parallel rows of housing. In some, the upstairs and downstairs flats have their front entrances on opposite sides of the rows to each other, so that the upstairs neighbour's address is actually the street behind.

Day trippers: Part 3

And up through these elegant archways, into bustling Stockbridge.

Day trippers: Part 2

Lots of classical stonemasonry, including St Bernard's Well, with the goddess Hygieia, who looks healthy, even rather sturdy.

Day trippers: Part 1

Off on the train yesterday morning, to Edinburgh, where I used to live. Over the railway viaduct (the Royal Border Bridge) across the river Tweed at Berwick. I lived here too. Met up with sister Anne and brother in law John and set off to walk part of the Water of Leith, from Dean Village, along a tranquil path through the heart of the city.

Time flies

This is my grandmother Rachel (pron. the French way, Rah-shell) with my Tante Mimi, in 1913. And here she is again in 1955, looking very modern, in one of the simple patterned frocks that I remember so well. Every time she came to stay with us, and unpacked her holiday dresses, I noticed how wonderful they smelled, so particular to her. It was years later, in fabric shops, that I realised what the smell was - new fabric, especially satinised cotton - and from then on, I associate that lovely odour and small prints of new cloth with my beloved Bonma.

I am often struck by how much change my grandmother's generation experienced. She was born in the early 1890s and died in the 1980s, aged 96; she used the early models of telephones, and witnessed the moon landings. Her clothes alone tell so much: from full length dresses and buttoned boots, worn with long pinned-up hair, to the pastel matching coat and dress sets she favoured in her later years, hair neatly permed. She lived through two World Wars, enduring both enemy occupation and intense Allied bombing, coming through it all as strong and as energetic as ever, and always fiercely pro-British (two of her sisters came over to Selkirk in Scotland during the 1st World War, having heard that there was a need for land girls to help on the farms). She was a superb cook, and a ferociously clean housekeeper. She laughed and cried easily, was sentimental and sporadically religious, relishing a regular trip to Lourdes for some unspecified malady or other. She had fat little handbags that were always overstuffed - and we watched out for the inevitable bursting and spilling of astonishing contents. She loved a game of cribbage with my father, although neither learned to speak the other's language, and she spoiled and favoured me quite outrageously. Which I loved. My mother had very mixed feelings about her, and no doubt bore the month-long visits with occasional lapses of patience - I remember argumentative conversations - but I wanted her to stay for ever.

Grand Old Man!

After following Laurie's stories of her grandparents, I have been thinking a great deal about mine. I've already written about my father's scary stepmother (post of Jan. 28th) but I know a great deal more about my mother's parents, who lived in Ghent, Belgium. This is my grandfather, Arthur. A quiet, decent, easygoing man, with a great love for his family, he died when I was two, but was spoken of so often and adoringly by my mother that I felt I knew him better than I did. My grandmother Rachel married him in defiance of the wishes of her own mother, who refused to come to the wedding or to even speak to her for some time afterwards, although it was a good match to a man who was well-respected and frequently sought out for advice and help.

Arthur said little and thought much, and when he made up his mind about something that he felt should be done, he remained quietly determined, and generally got his way. During the early days of the war, after the Nazis overran Holland and Belgium, he met a man in the street who, in great distress, told him that his house had just been commandeered by the German Army and that he, his wife and their son had been summarily kicked out. And as a Jew, this man knew enough to recognise that things would rapidly get worse. My grandfather simply said "Come with me", and took him to my grandmother, and that was how a Jewish family lived secretly in a back room of my grandparents' home for months, until they were able to be smuggled out to Switzerland. (And the smuggling out part of the saga belongs to my mother, who could tell a story like no one else, full of drama and excitement, yet devoid of true horror or fear until we were old enough to understand. And even then, she edited out so much that was unpleasant that we could only guess at the privations and dangers they all faced during those dreadful years.)

This picture, found in Tante Mimi's things, was taken well after the war, and I would guess dates from around 1948/9. The note on the back, in my mother's hand, reads (very roughly translated) as "Papa wants me to say that the old lady next to him isn't with him!" Tante Mimi would have had a good chuckle at that, and especially at the old lady's hat.

The desire to help others ran very strongly in my mother too, and combined with the strong will and refusal to bow down to unreasonable rules, that she inherited from her mother, makes me feel that had she found herself in a situation like Arthur's, the decision to risk extreme personal danger in order to help another human being would have come as simply and naturally to her as it did to him. I look back on their respective lives with wonder and admiration, and also with a suspicion that under similar pressure, I would not be able to match their standards and their moral certainty.

Confidence growth! December to April

Lottie on her first, wary day here on Dec. 12th, and as she looks now, full of life and interest. She was rescued from a cold, unheated flat, where she, several other cats and two large dogs were left to fend for themselves, while their owner stayed at his girlfriend's house. Feeding seems to have been occasional, and possibly highly stressful due to competition, and there certainly wasn't enough of it. The rescue people described her as having hip bones that stuck out like coathangers. Not any more! She loves living here, and settled quickly. She's still nervous and jumpy at feeding time, and needs some coaxing to eat more than a mouthful, but she's less fearful of external noises or jostling from her bumptious adopted little sister Millie, and she is steadily gaining weight. I think she's just adorable.

Spring growth! January to April

Look at how big this little girl is getting! Maybe one day she'll have grown into those enormous feet. And always washing - herself or somebody else; she likes us all to be glossy and smooth.

Till next time!

He's going away today. The dog has been moping since yesterday, when the gathering-up of scattered belongings started, and the kitten (just visible with her beloved Lottie) will lose another object of fascination. I shall be brave; after all, there's only a 3-hour train journey between us. But saying goodbye to one's child never becomes easy.

Small pleasures

An orderly shed, with a newly-built, handy, sturdy shelf across the back. The mice will like that to frolic on.

A decent amount of horse manure stored in a tidy heap.

The demolition of the bizarre giant cold frame (already there when I took the plot on) always referred to as Snow White's Coffin, slowly rotting and always full of grass and snails.

A number of transplanted things that look like they were thrilled to be moved out of the grass-infested border, and that grew an inch overnight to celebrate.

Enough sunshine today to make it easy to sit down for ten minutes and just listen to the birds (including a woodpecker). If only we could bear to drink thermos tea....

But, sadly, the pond has a slow leak. No frogspawn for us this year, but having made the first pond on site, it caught on, and there are now about 9 others, so hopefully there will be frogs for all. I love to be surprised by a tiny frog hopping out of the undergrowth.

The Lovely Son goes back to London tomorrow (sob, sob, sniffle....) but he has left his mark. Thanks to all his hard graft, I feel that this year the allotment won't get away from me as it did last year, and that I can actually enjoy being down there without being crushed by feelings of guilt and failure. Thank you, Mr Human Rotavator! If I could send you tuck parcels of the home made ice cream you have enjoyed so much, I would.