a Wimbledon miscellany

A day of (serious) packing and clearing.  Found in the nether reaches of a filing cabinet - my father's design for a post-retirement business card ... [in point of fact, after he retired, he became an independent consultant, working for some principled entities ... like Enron ...] - so this is an interesting document ...

To take a break from this, we went for a walk around Cannizaro - of course - where I puzzled over these very pale chestnut leaves - on a tree that's clearly been severely cut back against Blight - but I can't find any explanation as to why a clump of leaves should grow back in this way.  

And then there was a completely adorable trail of tiny ducklings.

 

back to the Wimbledon roses

After a morning in the Scottish National Art Gallery, and a long train back south, it was disappointing to find that the brilliant blue skies of the north had given way to chilly grey - not really conducive to sitting outdoors, shivering slightly, and listening to screeching parakeets.  But what was not disappointing was how the roses of No.20 had blossomed and blossomed and blossomed in our absence.  

Back to sorting and packing, tomorrow - but the break was wonderful.

 

A research trip to the Royal Botanical Gardens

The research highlight of this trip - that is, the planned research highlight, as opposed to moments of inspiration that occasionally drift in front of me as I walk through a temperate rain forest - was the Aeolian Harp Pavilion in Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Gardens.  It was built in 2012 by harp maker Mark Norris from a wych elm that had fallen victim (as almost all British elms have) to Dutch Elm disease: the huge stump remains.  I guess - if the wind ever blows through it (it was a still and sunny day) that it sounds its own lament.

These Botanic Gardens are spectacular, and wonderful.

Exhausted, we caught a bus to Leith, and wandered around, and I introduced Alice to my favorite tongue-twister: The Leith Police Dismisseth Us.  Try it.  Now try it again, faster.

 

Mull to Edinburgh - an eventful journey ...

One last breakfast and early morning on Mull; one more lichen covered boulder -

and then we went to catch the 11.10 ferry to Oban, in order to catch the 12.10 train.  Only ... the ferry was over half an hour late getting into Craignure, where we had to board it.  Obviously we would miss our train ... but we held out some hope of catching the 12.55.  Only ... a couple of sea miles outside Oban we had to stop for ten minutes or so in order for the Waverley to clear the harbour.  The Waverley is magnificent - the last sea-going paddle steamer in the world.  So ... we disembarked and crossed over into the station just in time to see the very rear end of the 12.55 disappearing out of sight.

Pause for head scratching.  We had another train to catch from Glasgow to Edinburgh at 4.30 or so ... and the next train to Glasgow from Oban was at 4.10.  Weirdly, the buses follow the same time schedule as the trains. So I tried my best charms on a taxi driver, who couldn't take us - Alice tried another, who said they weren't allowed to - then my driver said Well, he'd try a mate of his ... and ten minutes later, David turned up, in a very large, clean minicab, and drove us to the door of our Edinburgh hotel - not only was he a great driver, and a lovely man, but stopped off so that we could see St Conan's Kirk, on Loch Awe.

This was a truly lovely late Victorian masterpiece - I'd never heard of it, but if you're in the area, do go ...

We were so relieved to get to Edinburgh on time to check into our hotel, and walk from the New Town to the Old for an excellent Indian meal and back ...

 

Mull and Iona

Woke up to a grey, damp morning with shafts of light -

then took the 96 bus for an hour and a half's worth of beautiful wildness to take the ferry to Iona - startlingly clear water -

The Abbey at Iona, seen through drizzle from the top of the mound on which, they think, St Columba's writing hut was perched: the scriptorium to end all scriptoria was here, since it's where the Book of Kells was produced - though way after Columba's own time (though this was subsequently taken to Ireland for safe keeping from Viking raiders - whether finished [which of course is what they claim here] or partly completed).

The Abbey itself has been restored - beautifully and simply restored -

though there are some bits of ruins scattered around.

This is where the Abbey's herbal/medicinal garden was;

and here, on a walk further up the road from the Abbey, is one of the local inhabitants.

Back on Mull, and waiting for the bus, I had plenty of opportunity to admire at least two of Mull's 700+ species of lichen [700+ !! - I could spend a lot of time here ...]

before the wonderful bus ride back.

I would - I hope I will - very happily return to Iona, and stay for a few nights and soak in absolute quietness.

 

Mull, day 2

Our decision to come to Mull wasn't entirely arbitrary.  Back in 1947, my parents came on honeymoon here, to Tobermory - indeed, they stayed in the pink hotel on the harbor front. I have no idea if it was pink then - but there again, I have absolutely no idea what brought them to Mull.

Deciding where to scatter Joy and Ray's ashes has been a challenge.  Ray said, right at the end of his life, that he wanted them - with Joy's - in the garden in Wimbledon.  Joy, on the other hand, had said in no uncertain terms that No Way did she want hers anywhere in London.  I made other suggestions - her family grave in Ossett; a familiar place in Oxford, and she wasn't amenable to any of these, either.  Needless to say this was never resolved in her lifetime (memo to you all - do what we have done, and make your wishes Quite Clear in your will ...).

So I've fulfilled Ray's wishes in small part, and some of his ashes are under the magnolia tree back at 20 Hillside. But I kept quite a few - not being sure what might be developed and built on in the nearish future - and of course I still had Joy's. So it seemed very suitable to bring them to Mull.  Only ... the harbor in Tobermory was hardly conducive to a quiet and secluded moment or two.  We walked along the cliff path - which smelled wonderfully of wild garlic - but there was no way down to the sea (also, my mother loathed garlic).  Much beautiful gorse in bloom, though ...

So we came back to our hotel, near Craignure, and went down to the edge of the rocky, sandy shore, with much bladderwrack lying around, and the tide just on the turn: quiet, beautiful, private.  The bottom picture is just before I started to let go of two bags of ashes - shook a few drops of Tobermory Whisky on top of Ray's by way of a suitable libation - and sprinkled wild flowers on top of the water as they began to swirl among the rocks, part blending with each other, and part not; forming little eddies, and starting to mingle with the rest of the universe's substance.  It seemed absolutely the right place to release them - and later, looking out over the sea from our room, there was the best of glorious, peaceful views.

 

Glasgow, wildness and wet, and Mull

This morning, to Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Museum, which is a magnificent piece of Victoriana.

I was especially interested to see all the Charles Rennie Mackintosh - influenced decorative art - a different brand of Art Nouveau to Prague - here's a panel for the Argyle Street tearooms; 

here some pieces of glass from James Couper & Sons Clutha range (as sold at Liberty's).

And - although I dutifully spent time with the Glasgow Boys section - I really loved an 1838 Turner, The Pifferafi - here are some bathers from it.

Then the train to Oban.  I was super-excited to be traveling up Loch Lomond, and to glimpse Inversnaid at the other side of the loch, through the trees (I have an article about Hopkins's poem "Inversnaid" coming out in Victorian Poetry any moment - an eco-crit reading which is especially hostile to rhododendrons, an invasive species - they are everywhere, and blossoming beautifully at the moment)

And then the ferry to Mull - here are some view around our hotel.

I love these ferns, in particular - they are part of the whole temperate rain forest eco system on the West Coast - I've learned so much about these rain forests recently from Guy Shrubsole's The Lost Rainforests of Britain.

Bluebells are everywhere.  We don't expect this weather to last, incidentally, but it's been glorious today.

 

to Glasgow!

Alice's first time in Scotland, and mine for - what?  25 years, maybe?  So here are some startlingly yellow rape fields seen from the train;

the sculpture descending the stairwell in our hotel (which is the station hotel - very convenient for arrival and onward travel);

the statue of Walter Scott in George Square,

and the ubiquitous slogan - People Make Glasgow - on a building rather close to George Square, which makes one despair about civic planning (on the other hand, there are streets and streets and streets of Georgian architecture stretching west from the city, and very magnificent they are too).