a postcard from elgin

Alexander Northern, Leyland Olympian @ Elgin, Scotland,1989
Originally uploaded by Lady Wulfrun

Having a lovely time here in Elgin. The train journey to get here was very pleasant (I crocheted all the way from Stirling to Keith) and the weather has been beautiful since I arrived. I have mostly been spending my time crocheting by the fire with Patch the three-legged cat for company, but have also been eating lots (and lots) of very tasty food, admiring the wildlife and scenery, and visiting lots of charity and non-charity shops with my mother. We bought some baby clothes and it made me feel very organised.

Wish you were here!

Laura
xx

underground resistance

Glasgow underground is being "modernised". They cancelled the plans to extend the route (which would have been amazing) and instead are replacing the orange and brown colour scheme that I love so much with...

... boring and nondescript white tiles. How depressing. Hillhead station is being changed at the moment and every day a few more of the interesting tiles are hidden by the attack of the bland. Yeuch. I will admit the underground system does look dated, but it was really just beginning to look dated in a very good way and I do think they should have tried to hold on to its identity just a bit. I know the Glasgow underground is no Prague metro, but perhaps it could have angled itself as Prague metro's cousin. Not any more. Boo.

One good thing about the work getting done has been seeing all the exposed brickwork in the roof space. I can't think of any other good things about it so far.

In other news, I just can't believe how happy I am. This morning I was looking at the mess (our mess) that surrounded me in the kitchen (our kitchen) and I couldn't stop smiling. Just thought I'd share that! Hope you managed to keep your breakfast down...

Better go and pack my bags before I hit the road. I did have an exciting guest post planned for tomorrow, but the guest blogger has been sacked after making non-committal/maybe noises about whether or not he really would blog. I am not blogging 28 days in a row just to have unreliable staff let me down on day 29! So somehow I will have to find a way to blog from Elgin without my mum and dad noticing. Yes, I like to keep my blog as secret as possible from people who actually know me. This is strange behaviour, I will admit, but I know I'm not alone in it. Most of my friends have found my blog by now, but I'd really rather they hadn't. If only I hadn't designed a logo with my real name on it, then I could have stayed anonymous for ever.

the good news and bad news of new shoes

These are the new shoes I mentioned a few weeks back. They are very... sensible, which is just what I was after. The bad things about these shoes are 1) they are bruising my ankles because I am not used to sensible shoes that actually support things like ankles, 2) they have developed a slight squeak which makes me feel very self-conscious when making my very frequent trips across the office floor to the toilet, 3) the soles are quite bouncy and give me a funny walk a bit like Will from The Inbetweeners, 4) they are very... sensible. However, these shoes' one major good point outweighs all of these bad points, namely that they keep my feet dry! I have been out in all sorts of torrential rain, wading through puddles etc. and my feet have stayed cosy and dry as a bone. In the 13 years I have lived in Glasgow, I think this is the first time I have been able to go outside in autumn/winter and not get wet feet. Hooray!

Later on tonight I am going to have one of the cherry and cinnamon scones I made the other day. Yes, even though I blog every single day, I still manage to do all sorts of things that readers of this blog don't know nuffink about! (Not really - I just forgot to blog about them until I saw the photo on my camera tonight.) The scones turned out really delicious, but this will be the first one from the freezer that I have tried. I hope it's still nice. If so, I will take one as part of my packed lunch for my long train journey tomorrow. I am going away for the weekend to visit my parents, leaving Graham in charge of things around here. I am looking forward to being mothered (and fathered) and fed. I'm going to take some crochet for the train journey too, so I want to go and finish the cardigan for my sister's baby tonight (just half a sleeve to go!) so that I can take a new project with me tomorrow.

another day in the office

Well, I feel a bit lame blogging about what I have been subtitling two days in a row, but it's not just laziness. I actually had a totally different post planned for tonight (two to choose from in fact!) but I just had to blog about Frozen Planet instead. It's on BBC 1 tonight at 9pm and it is just so, so good. The animals in tonight's episode are amazing, but the little bit about snowflakes (see clip above) really tickled my fancy. I never knew that each snowflake was formed around a particle of dust. There's something about that idea that I just love. I will look at the first snow shower quite differently this year, thinking how if the world didn't have dust (current bane of my life since our neighbours are knocking down practically every wall in their flat) then we wouldn't have snowflakes at all.

my day at work (the short version)

Best subtitling task of the day. Hooray!

Worst subtitling task of the day. Ugh!

sunday at the cinema

Yesterday afternoon we went to see We Need To Talk About Kevin. I was really in two minds about whether or not to go. I thought this could be the most ill-advised film for a pregnant person to watch (I was also worried about it putting the parenting fear into Graham) but, because it was directed by Lynne Ramsay and had such great reviews, I couldn't resist in the end. I'm glad that I did go and see it. It was a really engrossing film and gave me lots to think about without actually giving me any fears that I didn't already have. I'd be really interested (if time travel was possible and I could take a copy of this film back with me) to see what my reaction would have been before I got pregnant. I seemed to be a lot more angry with the father's character than Graham was and it reminded me of the time we watched Control (the biopic about Ian Curtis) in the early stages of pregnancy. That film left me quite furious and vowing to turn off the radio whenever a Joy Division song came on, a reaction I'm sure was down to hormones and anxiety. I've calmed down now though!

have you seen this yet?

Asking For Trouble 5 Year Diary, a photo by marceline (diskant | asking for trouble) on Flickr.

Have you seen this exciting new item from Asking For Trouble? It's a five year diary. Designed for people who are not very good at keeping a diary usually, it has just a small box to record a few notes for each day. You start it on January 1st 2012, fill it in all year and then go back to the next box on page one on January 1st 2013... and so on. Come the end of 2016, you can look at any page and see what you did on that specific date over the last five years. It also has some other exciting features like a personal profile you can fill in once a year to see how your tastes and fancies have changed too. I think this is such a fun idea and I might have to treat myself to one for Christmas. I have quite a lot of half used diaries lying about (I found a few when looking for that issue of Melody Maker the other week) but I think even I could jot down a couple of notes each day and hopefully not just write, "Went to work, had dinner, watched telly, went to bed," five days a week either!

Have you seen any fun items popping up on the internet lately? All Christmas present ideas would be gratefully received!