j 'blog

I had to go to the Post Office again today - more packages to NZ.

The lady at the counter was the one from outside, yesterday morning, and, recognising me, asked if I had recieved her message? To which I had to reply: I gave her the incorrect number... So she turns away, and from behind the counter gets a plastic bag...

O - M - G

It was there!
It was there!
It was there!

So now I just feel generally daft - but relieved.

And my flatmate is vindicated: he told me that my iPod would have been handed in because (and I quote) "people who use post offices are more honest than the general public."

So, this morning I went to the post office before work. I figured that it probably wouldn't be open until 9am, by which time I needed to be at work, but figured that it was worth trying. It was closed. But there was a friendly postal worker (no-longer on strike) waiting outside to be let in. I told her my story and she was very sympathetic, so I wrote down my number for her - with my 99p pen that had caused the problem to start with - and she said that she would check, for me, whether or not my iPod had been handed in, and call me to let me know.

I didn't hear from her. But then I hadn't really expected to. It wasn't until I was on my way home (late again) that I suddenly realised that I had writen down 'xx23' instead of a 'xx32'! In fact, I think I've been doing that a lot lately...

So anyway, now I am convinced that my iPod wasn't pinched, that, infact, I forgot it and some kind person handed it in, only for me to give the wrong number, the nice postal lady to ring said wrong number and leave a message, and some other person has walked in and claimed my iPod!

Of course, I have absolutley no basis for this analysis, other than Murphy's Law, but, well, it would be typical of 2007!

Don't leave your iPod on the counter and turn your back to put rubbish in the bin! Or for that matter to weigh your postal package!
whatever, it's gone...

sigh....

But unfortunately, it didn't. Infact, it got worse. So half way up Ben Lomond, I joined the dissenters, and headed back down. I was cold, wet (not damp: WET - and this is wearing full wet weather gear), tired and miserable. I had had to remove my glasses as they were fogging up. But I still couldn't see - not just due to bad eyesight - the mist was, well the mist was Highland mist.

So, so much for my First Munro!

We had a good day though for all that. There is something so comfortable about being inside in the warm with a hot meal and a wee dram, while some other fools are off climbing a hill in the mist and rain.

I have done walking or touristing, or similar, in the cold and wet, or the hot and uncomfortably humid, before and had a great time. But once you decide that you're not having fun, there is really no way to undo that... So, I realised that there was no point perservering - other than machismo, which is not really me... For some people the point, the whole point and nothing but the point of hill-walking is (and I use this term with deliberation!) obtaining the summit. For me it's about enjoying the outdoors and seeing new places and things - and I couldn't see, and I wasn't enjoying myself. Point: Nada.

So, one day - when the weather is fine - I will go back to Ben Lomond and do it again - all the way to the top!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10643&l=620cd&id=536389399

well, and so (having done the dishes, swept the floor, cleaned the stove...) I have sat down to the MacBook to do a few emails etc, and have bethought me that I have still not described the Water of Leith Walk! And we are going up Ben Lomond tomorrow so I will be very behind .

I may just have enough battery to do it this time!

I had intended to get early to bed on the Friday night (I will tonight!), after going to the shops to get bread, ham lettuce etc for sandwiches for the walk. However: one of the admin staff at work has retired and that Friday was her last day. So, of course we had to go out for a few bevys.

I meant to go home. At many stages of the evening. Yet somehow I did not make home until 2am or something silly. Oops. I did actually stop drinking at 11pm - no, really! The wine was awful and I suddenly decided that I really wasn't enjoying it, so why was I drinking it? But we were dancing... By this stage actually it was only myself an 18 year-old ex-receptionist, and one of the lads from work.

So in the morning I crawled out of bed after 3hrs sleep no I don't know why I got up so early. I didn't have to, but for some reason I was awake, and I couldn't get back to sleep; and since the weather looked good, I took some panadol, had breakfast, picked up some lunch, and stumbled off to the train station.

Dozed on the train to Edinburgh - missing the scenary...

Then a bus ride through Edinburgh to Balerno. A short walk through the streets (I could have sworn that we went in circles once or twice - turn left and lef and left again - but we didn't pass anything twice, so I guess not) and then along the canal. Well, they told me it was a canal, but I've never seen a canal with wee waterfalls in it before!

The walk along the water was all flat and very pretty. It was a very different crowd, as the majority of that day's crowd don't like the hill-walks (at least the ones I spoke too). I don't really understand this clear diferentiation that people seem to have. I like walking - I like going to new places and seeing new things, regardless of whether it's flat or hilly or rocky or by the sea, or whether there's a pub or not...

The group was much larger than for Leum Uilliem - nearly 30 people - which I felt was too many. It makes it harder to slow up for people who might need it, or simply to stop and take pictures, because those at the front setting the pace are too far away to know that someone is struggling or simply wants to stop for a good shot.

Leith is very pretty and I'd like to go back to have a proper look around.
We just walked in, found a pub, got a beer and waited for the kitchen to open.

Well, the fresh air and excerise was undoubtedly good for me, but we didn't get back into Glesca until 10.15pm, and then home and straight to bed and didn't get up until the next morning when we all had to go and email our mothers...

I was just dropping off to sleep midnight Tuesday night when my phone went brrrrr at me. "Sorry so late texting - want to go to a proper scottish ceilidh in a proper scottish castle?"
Why of course! - but, of course, that was when my phone chose to play silly b*ggers.

Then at 2am the phone went brrrrr again?! a message that Flatmate R. sent at 5.55pm only just then decided to come through. Poor me was very tired by morning. And I still couldn't reply to V. re the ceilidh! Everytime I tried to text her, the message failed to send and I got a screen message saying "unrecognised number". Acting on a hunch, I put some more money on it - no, I don't know how to check my credit limit - this worked! So, I learnt something yesterday: "unrecognised number" means "not enough dosh".

On the train to Linlithgow, I decided that it was well past time and due to do some weeding of the messages saved on my phone (or in other words: there was no memory left to receive new messages!). While doing this noted an old reminder that I had sent to Mama, regarding some of my photos from Bolivia. Seeing as the required action had yet to be enacted, I reminded her again. Then looked at the time "Doh!" - it was 6am in NZ! Sorry Mama... But I had my comeupance this morning when R. texted me at 6am... After I didn't get to bed until 1am!

From which you may correctly surmise that the Ceilidh was very good. It finished at 10.30, but the train back to Glesca wasn't until 10.50, then it's 1/2hr trip - and then I always take forever to get ready for bed...

The Ceilidh was at Linlithgow Castle - where Mary Queen of Scots was born - mostly a ruin now but I had great fun investigating all the remaining gallerys and passages, and the winding stairs - right the way to the top! It was an absolutely beautiful evening: clear blue sky and everything glowed. The outlook from Linlithgow Castle is superb. There were also wee ghosties running around in the castle. Including a particulary scary - and particularly wee - blonde one in a pink dress with a bow at the back.
Oh! and vampiric pigeons!

They have tea and shortbread at the interval, and explain the steps for each dance before doing it. Not that I knew what I was doing even so, but I had fun - and I didn't stand on anyones toes! V. knew a couple of guys there from her Cerroc classes - and they are part of a larger group that does the Edinburgh Ceilidh Circuit.

But definately, a Ceilidh ain't No Place For High Heels!
(I figure that's a good enough excuse to go shoe-shopping. )

After an uneventful week (getting up early to be at work by 7.30am to be picked up by the boss to get to a site vist (somewhere?) North of Glasgow by 8.30am, does not, I think, count as an event ) I joined the G.R.U.F.F. crowd again for a 'social': goin' doon the watter on the Waverley, yesterday.

The Waverley is one of the last ocean going paddle steamers in the world (and you can go down to the engine room and see all the shiny pistons going and the steam!), and goin' doon the watter (down the River Clyde) on it to Rothesey, on the Isle of Bute, is something of a Glesca tradition.

The boat ride is the main point to the trip (with bar and ceilidh band) but I'd have liked a little more time in Rothesay. The 3hrs left was only enough for lunch and a wee wander. Which was a pity as there were a few places I'd like to have gone. So I am thinking that an over night could be the goer: catching a train from Glasgow to Wemyss Bay and then the ferry to Bute, and spend the night at a B'n'B. That would then give time to do some sightseeing there - of which there looks to be plenty to do. One or two of the others seemed also to think that this could be a good plan...

I was told by some of the others that it wasnae a proper ceilidh - but it was all good fun and everyone had a grand time.
V. and a couple of the guys are quite good dancers (they do cerroc in their spare time) but the rest of us - well... - but it was fun . I was asked to dance at one point, by a nice (tall!) polisman. He was unfortunately married, however. I kinda got the feeling that he just desperately wanted to escape his drunken friends - and the trials (responsibilities) of being a. a polisman, and b. the most sober one. It was, naturally, a stag-do, you see. I am thinking that maybe stag is short for stagger...

You may be familiar with the expression 'steaming' for drunk?
One of our women told me that she had heard that this had come from the practice of goin' doon the watter on the Waverley on a Sunday. The Waverley being the only place that sold alchohol on a Sunday. Some of those around us certainly did nothing to put the lie to that one!

Drinking on the way to Rothesay, drinking in the pubs at Rothesay, drinking on the way back certainly a most concerted effort - but they were, by and large, cheerful drunks. One group had brought a couple of guitars with them - and while I'm not saying I'd buy their album or anything - they were entertaining. There were unfortunately, a few belligerant drunks, but they were generally ignored and everyone else just carried on having fun. Dancing and singing and flirting and dancing some more...

I cannae see a boatload of day-trippers in NZ (on their way to and from Tiritiri Matangi perhaps?) drinking and dancing on board! Thumping on the ceiling and stamping their feet...

I had been talking to a couple of the GRUFF people about Rotu-vegas (that's Roturua to the uninitiated) and the sanitised tourist experience of the 'Traditional Maori Pa'. Complete with face-painted warriors dancing around. The thing is that a proper haka ( as any rugby officianado knows) is a challange and is supposed to scare you. Recently there were a couple of performers at a park in Roturua who were reprimanded (and had their contracts 'not-renewed' if I remember aright) for doing just that: scaring the tourists! The Waverley is of course advertised as a Tourist Experience! So V. commented later that any tourists who had come along may very well have been scared by this Traditional Display of Glesca Culture.

Well, it was all very entertaining, and the scenery passing by was fabulous. Even the decreipit abandoned wharfs and the scrap heaps and wreckers yards on the Clyde-side in Glasgow. And the big cranes!

Oh! and the Waverley departed from outside the Glasgow Science Centre - so I even got in a bit of architecture! so a very good day indeed.

After some days of acting bewildered, I have finally sorted this photo business satisfactorily:

so instead of posting photos here, where I have limited storage space, I've put them on Facebook, and I can post a link here.
so:

Doon the Watter on the Waverley to Rothesay:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9848&l=cafb0&id=536389399

Glasgow Science Centre
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9837&l=0d1ea&id=536389399

Water of Leith
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9835&l=14bb7&id=536389399

Leum Uilliem
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9833&l=69b77&id=536389399

you've see the Leum Uilleim ones already, on this site, but...

also:
summer in glasgow:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7355&l=af26d&id=536389399
which is on going and I will continue to add to.

As promised, and after much effort - no really - I have uploaded photos from my walk up Leum Uilleim the previous weekend.
They are only accessible to my friends sorry, as I don't want everyone to be able to download and use my photos as and how they please. It'd be nice if there was an option for public view but not download, but there isn't. So those of you back home who haven't yet signed up as my friend: yah boo sucks to you

Oh and they go backwards... I don't know - I guess next time I shall have to upload in reverse chronological order to get them in the right order in the album...

you see?! it's very hard work!