Monthly Archives: October 2010

Scottish Hallowe’en

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In recent years Halloween has become very popular in parts of Britain where it had been completely unknown before, and by that I mean England. Unfortunately it is the American version of it featuring pumpkins, which are completely alien growths in Britain. Sadly, because there are now no Scottish owned supermarkets we aren’t even able to buy the big turnips which are a necessity for making the carved turnip lanterns which ward off evil spirits.

And here it is lit.

I had to make do with this small turnip and yes, I do know that in England this is what is called a swede, but as far as we are concerned there is nothing Scandinavian about it at all! Say no to pumpkins, unless you happen to be American. Seriously, I once carved a pumpkin and I couldn’t believe how horrible it smelled, just like sick. How could anyone possibly eat them, maybe that one was over-ripe. Are they supposed to smell of sick.

When I was a wee girl Hallowe’en was a really big thing and there were always school/Brownies/Scout parties where we dooked for apples and ate huge pancakes which had been spread with black treacle and strung up across the room. With hands behind your back and up on tiptoe to reach the pancakes, there was just no way you could eat them without getting your hair and face covered with treacle. We were all dressed up as witches, warlocks, ghosts or pirates too. Such fun!!

When we went out dressed like that it was called ‘guising’, obviously because you were in disguise. We were only allowed to visit the houses of friends or relatives and we had to sing a song or tell jokes, something to entertain the householders anyway. In return we would be given some fruit, nuts or sweets and sometimes a small amount of money.

There was none of this terrible chaos that seems to go on nowadays, especially in England, where they seem to have got the wrong end of the stick altogether.

Hallowe’en is the old pagan festival signifying the end of summertime, which it is literally as we’ve just moved the clocks back an hour and we’re now on Greenwich Mean Time.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

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Miss Petigrew Lives for a Day cover

This is the first Persephone book that I’ve read and it was the perfect choice after reading Dracula. I wanted something completely different and light-hearted and this just fitted the bill.

The story takes place over one very eventful day in which Miss Pettigrew, a 40 year old spinster who has very little experience of the world, has had to eke out a meagre existence working as a governess to ghastly children whose parents are even worse.

Finding herself unemployed again Miss Pettigrew is sent by the employment agency to Miss LaFosse’s flat as she is apparently looking for a nursery governess.

Miss Pettigrew is bowled over by Miss LaFosse’s beauty and quickly becomes involved in the exciting life of the night club singer who is juggling men, and considering this book was written in 1938, is so ‘fast’ that if she were a car she would be a Grand Prix winner.

Anyway, if you want a jolly good uplifting read this one is definitely worth reading, you’ll find yourself smiling your way through it.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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Dracula cover

I’m really not into horror in fact I’ve avoided even the mock-horror Dracula/Frankenstein films but spurred on by other bloggers like Stefanie (So Many Books) and Jane GS (Reading, Writing, Working, Playing) I decided to give Dracula a go. And they were right, it is a good read, so much better than the only other book of Bram Stoker’s which I’ve read – The Seven Jewels.

I’m sure everybody knows the gist of the story, because even I did so I’m just going to comment on what led me to read the book which was Stefanie’s remark about it being full of weeping men, which it is, very weird. There isn’t a stiff upper lip between the lot of them, in fact I think the kindest thing that could be said of the men is that they are a bunch of wet willies!

I think it must have been designed by Bram Stoker as a bit of excitement for his lady readers, what with all that male bodily fluid being transferred to Lucy I suppose it was only fair that he should try to titillate his female readers with scenes that I’m sure none of them would have experienced before in Victorian Britain, such a lack of control! How exciting!

Anyway, first published in 1897 and it’s still entertaining us, can’t be bad.

When our boys were wee we rented a cottage in Whitby and because I knew very little about the book I had no idea that it featured in it. I had it in my mind that Dracula was set completely in Transylvania. I thought that all the tourists walking up the steps to Whitby Abbey were doing so just because it had been used as a film location. But Whitby is an interesting place to visit and spookily, while we were there we saw the most amazingly dramatic sunsets that we’ve ever seen.

More Edinburgh

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From Rose Street we strolled down to Princes Street which was fairly mobbed but I managed to get a few photographs from there.

This is just the usual view of the castle. I suppose when you’ve seen something from an early age then it’s inevitable that you get blase about it. I was on an airport bus years ago coming back from Germany and there were tourists on the bus whose jaws actually dropped when they saw the castle in the middle of the city.

I like these buildings, I’m not even sure what they are but they always remind me of a German fairy tale. You can see them better when the trees have lost their leaves.

This one is of a part of the National Gallery of Scotland.

Then we walked back to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, taking the route through the city instead of the scenic way. The park land in front of the gallery has been landscaped by the American architect Charles Jencks and looks really lovely.

The autumn trees looked really beautiful reflected in the water.

A Day Out in Edinburgh

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Yesterday was one of those lovely crisp, blue sky autumn days so we took ourselves off to Edinburgh, parking the car at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. After a quick look at the exhibits we took the path by the Water of Leith which leads to Stockbridge again. It’s becoming a favourite walk with us and quite a few others, you can hardly believe that you are in the middle of a city. There are plenty of ducks but it’s the heron that always amazes me. I suppose it must get fish there but it’s amazing how patient it is.

This photograph is just a wee bit further on, you can see one of the massive supports of Dene Bridge to the right.

A bit further on again and you reach St Bernard’s Well which is mentioned in Frankenstein. It was a very popular place to ‘take the waters’ in Victorian times. I wonder how many survived it!

The usual stroll around the Stockbridge bookshops ended with me buying only two books. Both of them hardbacks, Hatter’s Castle by A.J. Cronin (to replace the paperback which I’m sure is in the house somewhere but I can’t find it) and another Rosamunde Pilcher one, Coming Home, which is pristine and cost me all of 99p. I know I’m not meant to be buying any more books and I had intended only buying Viragos or vintage crime but the people of Stockbridge are holding on to those ones themselves.

It’s only about a 10 or 15 minute walk from there to Rose Street and we thought we would go there and have a late lunch at The Black Rose which is a typical Scottish pub, bare floorboards but no sawdust nowadays! We took a bit of a chance as we hadn’t been there before but the food was fine. We didn’t sit outside though because we aren’t quite that mad. Joan in Pennsylvania, but now ‘pining’ for New England had a memorable holiday in Edinburgh some years ago, staying in a flat in Rose Street and I’m wondering if it has changed much since she was last here but I don’t think it’s easy to make out much from my photographs. It’s quite difficult to photograph Rose Street as it’s so narrow. Well, that’s my excuse!

Rose Street used to always be called ‘notorious’ in years past. Not only because it is full of drinking dens but there used to be a famous brothel there. So it was a popular destination for stag nights. Classy!

It has been pedestrianised and ‘tarted up’ – no pun intended, honest. And now there are small, high class jewellery shops and such as well as betting shops and bars.

Looking east.

Looking west.

There are a few mosaic stone roses laid into the paving on Rose Street. Here’s one.

There is an Art Deco type building halfway along Rose Street, the red sandstone one.

It seems to have been a John Menzies once. Maybe it was their headquarters.

There are a few more photographs of Edinburgh to come tomorrow.

Radio 7

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I love Radio 7 but we’re so spoiled for choice at the moment with all the great books that are on the go there. It such a damn shame that there are blocks on the BBC iplayer which mean that people outside the U.K. can’t listen in.

The banned season has just started and they are having dramatizations and readings of:

Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Madame Bovary
Animal Farm
Fahrenheit 451
A Clockwork Orange
Brave New World

But the one that I really have to get around to listening to on the iplayer isn’t part of the banned season at all. It’s vintage crime – The Murder of the Maharajah by H.R.F. Keating. I haven’t read it and it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like.

There’s scary stuff scheduled for around Hallowe’en too. The Turn of the Screw, Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula.

On a more personal note, the builder has finally finished all the work and we’re pleased with the results, now I just have to sort out my devastated garden before the ground freezes up.

We were stuck in the house the whole first week of the school holidays, but today we managed to have a lovely day out in Edinburgh. All going well, my post tomorrow should have some nice photographs of the Water of Leith, the castle and Rose Street.

Willa Cather and others

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I’m going to start reading Willa Cather’s Death of the Archbishop soon, so I was really chuffed when I paid a call on Christopher at ProSe last night and discovered that his new post was about his recent visit to Nebraska and Red Cloud, where Willa lived. His photographs are lovely and the houses are perfectly American, picket fence and all.

So if you’ve missed it, do yourself a favour and have a peek now. One of the houses featured is linked with the book My Antonia and is in need of some TLC apparently as is Robert Louis Stevenson’s home in Edinburgh, which you can see here. It really annoys me when literary history is just left to rot like this.

On the reading front, I’ve just finished Ian Rankin’s Let It Bleed. Does anybody else want to join in with the discussion on this book over at Judith’s ? (Reader in the Wilderness) I’m usually more of a vintage crime lass but I think I’m really going to get into the Rebus books.

I’m now nearly half way through Dracula and I’m really surprised at how much I’m enjoying it. Last night I decided to read War and Peace, I’ve been putting it off for years and the only way of doing it is to have a deadline, I think I have to finish it by January the 19th when there is going to be a discussion on it.

Last but not least, The Classics Circuit has started up again after a bit of a rest and the next tour is a Trollope one. I’ve signed up to read either The Belton Estate or The Claverings, which happen to be the only two of his which I have in the house but haven’t read yet.

I mustn’t forget Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers either.

Help!!!!

Joseph Conrad – Very un PC

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Niranjana (BrownPaper) wrote a post recently about books that ‘suck’, in retrospect and Biggles books are apparently in that category. Now I’ve never read a Biggles book as I was brought up in that era where girls were kept away from anything really exciting and supposedly ‘boyish’. I know that we have at least one Biggles book in the house which was my husband’s but as usual I can’t find it.

However, in my searching I did discover this one by Joseph Conrad which as you can see has what we now think of as a shocking title. This is one of the many books which we’ve inherited from dead relatives. It’s a sad fact that we’ve had to do at least four house clearances within our families – parents, grandparents and even a great aunt who had no children, so we’ve accumulated a lot of old books over the years.

My husband’s grandad was the Conrad fan and I’m sure that ‘the n word’ was one which he would never have used as he was a well educated church minister. The book was first published in 1897 but that isn’t really much of an excuse. I know that John Buchan wrote ‘the n word’ occasionally, but it was always put in the mouth of an ill-educated rough kind of character, who obviously didn’t know any better.

Anyway, on the bright side, I like to think and hope that things have improved since those days. In Scotland this is Black History Month which is an annual celebration which aims at bringing the various cultures of Scotland together.

Cuts, cuts, cuts.

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Why is it that the Conservatives only ever have one thought in mind when they get into power? And why is it that the voters of England don’t remember the horrendous damage that the Tories inflicted on us the last time.

These savage cuts will have no effect whatsoever on the fat cats who caused all the mayhem and as usual it’s the small people who will hurt more than anybody.

What did Tory voters think was going to happen when they gave power to a bunch of old Etonian millionaires? And that includes the Lib-Dems too. Sorry Nick, was it Westminster School?

I thought that we had it bad when we were young. We bought our first house just before Maggie Thatcher got into power and by the time the house was finished and we had moved in a few months later, the mortgage interest rate had shot up, which doubled our monthly mortgage payments.

But the youngsters nowadays can’t even dream of buying a house. They are drowning in their student debt and most of them can’t get a job after university. Unfortunately it is still a society where it isn’t what you know, but who you know which is important. And we can’t all have contacts at Buckingham Palace like Cameron had when he was looking for a job after he graduated. I feel heart sore for young people nowadays, their future seems so miserable at the moment.

So, all these cuts are going to mean loads more unemployed people and there are places in Scotland, such as Fife, which still hadn’t recovered from the last recession.

I’ve always avoided the ‘big dipper’ because I don’t have the stomach for that sort of thing, but it looks like there’s another BIG DIP coming. So hold on to your hats folks!