Incompetence

It is a drizzly, gray evening. (Or should I say 'grey'? We are in the UK, after all.) We have been cooped inside all day by the weather. No one wanted to go anywhere, so yours truly got sent to get dinner.

The plan was simple enough. Walk down the hill to the bus stop. Take the bus to the bus station. Walk to the pizza place. Order:

1)a 16" margherita pizza (oddly enough, they measure pizza in inches here too.)

2)a large haddock fish dinner

3)a medium side of chips.

And then take the bus back home. Easy? Of course. I had the bus pass, a map, a takeout menu and money in my purse. What could go wrong?

Walk down the hill: check. Not pleasant in the drizzle, but at least I managed to take the right turn at the roundabout.

Take the bus: not so easy. I didn't have a watch, and I hadn't checked the time when I left. After, buses arrive at the stop every fifteen minutes or so. Except, that is, from 3:00 to 5:00, when it's more like once an hour. And I had just missed one.

After about an hour of pacing, the bus finally arrived. I flashed my bus pass and got on, feeling like a professional. Bus to station: check.

At the station, I walked about a block to the right, decided that was wrong, walked back, walked a block to the left, realized that was absurd, and then remembered that it was straight ahead. I took the right turn at the intersection and made it to the pizza place. Check.

For once, the man at the pizza place didn't seem to have inordinate trouble with my accent, and I got the order right the first time. Ten minutes later, I was heading back for the bus stop, pizza, fish and chips in hand. Check.

I arrived at the bus stop just in time to catch my bus. I hopped aboard and--no bus pass. I searched my purse. Nothing. Apologized to the bus driver, set down the pizza, fished through the purse again. Nothing. Finally, I decided I couldn't hold him up any longer, and handed him a pound coin.

The bus driver stared at my coin like I'd just given him the Hope Diamond, and then asked "So...where to?"

Of course, I couldn't recall the name of my stop, and found myself stammering "The roundabout. You know...you know..Lawmill Gardens!"

Again, the driver paused, then asked, "So...one single half fare?"

I blurted something out in the affirmative, grabbed the food, and collapsed into a seat. I spent the rest of the drive unloading everything from my purse and searching it over and over. No bus pass.

When I got back, I collapsed on the couch and recited my incompetence. The girls climbed all over me and brought me stuffed animals. 

"I'm never doing that again!"

"What went so wrong?" Mommy was heating up the pizza.

"To start with, I lost the pass."

"You lost my bus pass?"

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry! I searched my purse and it's just not there..."

"Did you check your pockets?"

I stuck my hands into my pants pockets, and sure enough, there was the bus pass. 

But--the pizza was great!

And that is the tale of my incompetence. You may now laugh.

edit

Pics have been added to the Falkirk Wheel post.

Half owre, half owre...

... to Aberdour,

'Tis fifty fathoms deep;

and there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens

Wi' the Scots lords at his feet!

Daddy being away in Norway, we went to Aberdour for a weekend trip. They were having some very neat historical reenactments, done by the Historic Saltire Society. We arrived very early, so we had plenty of time for a leisurely tea (snack. I'm getting fancy), and some wandering about the castle grounds.

About noon, they had a little introduction to the day's events. It was terribly wordy, involving lots of dialogue between the two main reenactors. (I hesitate to say 'actors'. The reenactments were very cool, and very accurate, but the actual acting part clearly wasn't their specialty.)

There was some more time to wander around before the first real event, so we checked out some of the exhibits. There seemed to be several family units, each with their own tent. The kids ran around in tunics and bare feet while the parents demonstrated medieval crafts. The weaving tent was distributing little mini-braiders, and Maeve had lots of fun making friendship bracelets.

The first event was at the "food tent", with a demonstration of the types of food a serf and a lord would have had in the fourteenth century. (Actually, the serf's food looked a lot like what we had just eaten: bread, cheese, fruit.) Brigid got bored halfway through, so we went for a walk through the castle gardens to the doocot (dove cote).

Next on the agenda was a demonstration of what a medieval lady would have worn. The others headed over,  but I stopped at the forge and watched them mold pewter belt buckles with period methods. It was extremely cool, and very amusing; it was the 'apprentice' doing it and he was incapable of getting the molds level.

The last exhibition was over at the armory. The lady who ran the armory had been very friendly earlier, had let Maeve and me handle all the equipment (Maeve got her braids tangled in the helmets), and sought us out afterwards to give us Robert the Bruce pins. The exhibition was so-so, mostly involving a lot of physical humor with an incompetent squire.

The jackpot of the day was the final battle. First they invited all the children to come 'enlist' in the Scottish army. They handed them foam swords and marched them around the field once, which I believe is a fairly accurate representation of the quality of both the weaponry and the training of the day. Then they brought out the actors--big, burly men with real swords and armor. Those were supposed to be the English army. They gave the kids the signal to charge, and of course they were all over the soldiers! Maeve had a great time whacking her prone enemies with the foam sword. After they sent the kids back, they had the real mock combat, but that wasn't nearly as fun.

It was deeply amusing to listen to them complaining about the heat on the beautiful 70-degree day. (We still get to shock people by saying "You know, it's getting near to 40 degrees [Celsius] back home.") We're enjoying this cool damp weather. Can't wait to get back in August...

--Sophia

We just got back from a day trip to Dundee. It was less than spectacular, being rather a combination of tourist-y shops and very little of any actual interest to see. We visited the art museum. They had a very nice Rossetti, "The Death of Beatrice."

Maeve liked Hornel's "The Blackbird Song."

Mommy's choice was Pettie's "Disbanded," which features on the cover of her edition of Waverley.

I would have to pick Holl's "Funeral of the First-born."

When Brigid tired of art, we tried their used bookstores (unspectacular) before heading home. Now the two little ones are running around the yard, Brigid quite naked. No--wait--not naked--she's wearing boots. Never mind, then.

Edit: Here are some photos. 

The Falkirk Wheel and some of the boats

The Falkirk Wheel from inside the boat

The view from the air

The Devers in midair

[Maeve writing]

When we got to the Falkirk Wheel, we waited in line to get onto a boat. The boat sailed over to the Falkirk Wheel and went into it. When the wheel began to turn, the boat was lifted up in a tub of water. The tub was on wheels so that the boat didn't tip. It was a covered boat, with lots of seats in it. It was a little bit slow, so watching the boats was almost as fun. 

Afterwards, we had a picnic on the grass and played on a playground there. Then we had some ice cream before we left. We went back on buses and trains. 

The End

---

Sophia writing:

I promised Maeve I would type her post just like she said it, so you have it verbatim.  However, for some further clarification:

The Falkirk Wheel is, according to the tour guide, the "first and only" rotating boat lift. It replaces a total of 11 locks, takes 10 minutes to complete a full rotation, using the same amount of energy as boiling 5 electric teakettles. It seems to be used solely for tourism purposes, and if you reserve tickets, you can actually ride up in it. I have to agree with Maeve that watching the other boats go up from outside during the picnic was more fun: the boat was very small, very hot, and it was hard to see anything that was going on.

The other day, we took a walk down Lade Braes to the downtown toy store. There we purchased a bouncy ball, now greatly beloved of the girls, and an assemble-it-yourself toy model of the siege machine Warwolf. 

Warwolf, for the ignorant, is probably the largest trebuchet ever. Since it was used by King Edward "Longshanks" against the Scottish in the siege of Stirling Castle (which, yes, we have visited), we're justifying this as part of our Scottish history unit.

Maeve and I assembled it together. Now, this kit was a LOT nicer than most American do-it-yourself kits. (That is, apart from the innate superiority in that it was a SIEGE ENGINE.) It came with a set of plans on which to lay out the pieces to achieve proper angles, and the directions were very clear and explicit. The only annoying thing was that it included about a dozen dowels, all identical except for a few millimeters' difference in length, and I kept getting them mixed up. Which of course entailed prying them out, trying to dissolve the glue, removing washers from them, and then starting over.

The final result was, indeed, a very convincing trebuchet, and after some trial and error, Maeve has been able to get it to fire for several yards. (The engine itself is less than a foot long.) 

And now, of course, Guess Who is disassembling it. (Hint: It's not Maeve.)

--Sophia

Lade Braes

[Josh posting]

A quick tour of my path into work, which is mostly a jog along the Lade Braes, a footpath which leads into the center of town.

A view of Little Balone as I leave in the morning:

And our yard:

Balone House from the front, with Little Balone mostly hidden by the tree on the left:

The view on reaching the main road, out over the hills:

Looking down the hill along the main road:

The roundabout where the main road meets Bogward Road:

Our bus stop:

The entrance to the Lade Braes:

A playground shortly after entering the Lade Braes:

Up a slight hill:

Law Mill Pond, sometimes with ducks:

A stone bridge over the Kinness Burn:

The Kinness Burn running alongside the path:

Hallow Hill:

Through a glade:

Bench and flowers:

The Kinness Burn:

A tree along the path:

And another:

Small rapids in the Kinness Burn:

More flowers:

A fountain:

Another pond (I think it's part of the St. Andrews Botanic Gardens):

Part of another playground (what Brigid seems to call the "little saving for later playground):

Starting to enter town at this point:

Some Scottish gardening:

The pink on the ground here is blossoms dropped from the trees:

This section of the Lade Braes goes by a row of houses:

Another garden:

Now in the town center, looking along South Street:

A church on South Street:

Market Street, the main shopping district in St. Andrews:

The view from The Scores, the road that goes right along the ocean. Looking out on the North Sea:

Edgecliffe, the philosophy department building. Edgecliffe looks out over the North Sea:

There are two entrances to Edgecliffe, depending on your preferred brand of philosophy:

The main quad of St. Andrews:

Tower across the street from my office:

The Arche research center, where my office is:

Total distance: about 2.3 miles. 15:38 best time for the run in, so far.