Monday

Today was an hour earlier all day. Odd.
Slower house progress as all but two of last week's turbo-charged builders have gone off to Valencia or somewhere. The two remaining built the gable ends before it started raining and the sun set in the middle of the afternoon.
More pictures soon.
This evening I cooked indian food with boys from a youth club in Hawick, a job through You Can Cook. A great bunch of young teenagers with real interest, energy and good knowledge of food. 
Drove home through a blizzard of wet leaves.

Street View

Peebles is now on Google Earth Street View !
Have you noticed that wherever Google goes, it's summer ?

Anyway, it's worth a look at our pretty summer town.

Whiteout

Yesterday I watched the sun rise over frostladen fields washed in pink and gold light. Everything bright and cold and still. Today someone's shaken the glass globe where Peebles nests. Snow tumbles up past my first-floor window.

Filigree

You get the picture.

New Year's Eve

Night, and the blue moon full; half the world in the new year and half of us still in the old. Snow tumbling softly through the street light outside, settling in a coarse white patina. Candles, food and wine, a company of friends gathering here from nearabouts bringing music and sweets.

A year ago we were newly returned, sitting amongst boxes and rediscovered books.

Thongor and the Boulders of Doom

Last weekend we drove north from Dunedin, stopping at a fine secondhand shop called The Oddity where I picked up all but two of the Thongor series of chronicles - you know the ones - for a few dollars. The titles tell all:
The Wizard of Lemuria (Thongor the Barbarian faces the vengeance of the Dragon Kings)
Thongor In The City Of Magicians
Thongor At The End Of Time (joyfully, not the last of the series !)
and Thongor Fights The Pirates of Tarakus
Several coffees and junk shops later we meandered through Oamaru.

Somewhere up that coast we stopped to view the Moeraki Boulders, an extraordinary collection of spherical rocks each about the height of a man and lying in the surf on a narrow sandy beach. Other tourists wandered, as we did, in a bemused way along the tight strip as waves broke over these dinosaur egg alien pod gallstones, as if luggage had been washed up from an unseen tragedy. I took photos, sat on one and wondered, as I often do, how to respond to them. Thongor would have known what to do.

In Oamaru two motels diverged on a wide street and we took the one less travelled by. It was, you may say, satisfactory.

Thereafter we headed upstream along the Waitaki river, stopping at Peebles.

That's right. Peebles.

Ukulele albatross

Dunedin city faces, across its long harbour, a peninsula that doubles back and lies parallel to the shoreline. A drive out on this tongue of land ends at a high point where thousands of albatrosses arrive every year to mate, nest and raise their young.

At this Spring equniox, or at least near the first full moon after it, the birds are arriving and pairing so the colony is off limits to the public. I braved the threatening cold today and drove out there to watch the sea pounding the cliffs and see thousands of gulls also gathering and nesting along the edges of the land.

People also nest here in colonies of baches; small shed-like holiday houses that doubtless teem with families in the summer months, though they are closed and shuttered in the last of the wintry season.

I didn't see an albatross, and I contented myself with photographing swirling water and wheeling gulls. On the way back I stopped to look at the little boathouses that sit out from the shore on clusters of sturdy wooden posts. Some are plain and some painted gaudy colours or decorated with bright murals.

Tonight Marty took me to see the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra at Dunedin's last remaining grand theatre. An unlikely treat; dry humoured and still blinking somewhat in the light of their success, they gave a grand evening's entertainment. They look like a collection of Open University lecturers and students clothed entirely from charity shops. The double-bass player, who suggested that his instrument was in fact a ukulele and that he was just very small, looked like a Tim Burton animation, and I'm sure that was Neil from the Young Ones sitting third from the left. Peculiarly New Zealand, with hints of the Conchords and undoubted musical genius.

This weekend is the mid-point of my current sojourn. It's also the full moon, and snow is forecast. I'm the furthest away from Scotland that I've ever been, and now I begin my return journey.

Rites of passage

Another day, another rite of passage. Simon and three friends all left Primary school yesterday, the entire year group surrounded by a crowd of (mostly) mothers taking photos. They had adorned their T-shirts and faces with felt pen signatures and messages, a strange looking crew of almost-adolescents ritually painted for their journey.

The mixed emotions arising from leaving their educational cradles and starting seven long weeks of summer holiday manifested mostly in wild whoops, play-fights, fierce group hugs for the cameras, sudden departures when they'd had enough or glimpsed the edge.

The boy plus his three friends became the Four Chefs for the evening, having spent the past few days gathering at different houses and cooking together. Four families met at the first house for dips and drinks, processed to our house for tacos, fajitas, chilli mince and vegetarian fillings, various sour cream dishes, champagne and other drinks. Carrying our drinks through the twilight and down the hill we enjoyed creme brulee, crusted with a blowtorch, together with more drinks and a dessert wine. At the final destination at the bottom of the hill Simon had set up his chocolate fountain (seriously) and happy kids dipped chopped fruit in hot chocolate while the adults had coffee, chocolates, fruit and ..er.. drinks.

It was a grand evening, a rite of passage for parents watching our children shaking off a few more clouds of glory and taking tentative steps on the damp earth.

The long road to Silloth

On Saturday we finished burying my Grandmother.

She died in 2005 and most of her ashes lie in an unremarkable banked field of wild grasses and young trees near those of my Uncle Chris, who died of cancer some ten years before her. But some of her remained in a small enamelled container, travelling about with my Uncle Andy on the back of his motorbike, tucked in his luggage as he packed his other belongings and moved to his new home aboard a boat in Dover.

A few weeks ago she was collected by my Mum and after a scenic tour of Essex, Wiltshire and York they made the trip North here to Peebles, where she rested until this past weekend.

My Grandmother Mary was widowed in 1943 when my Grandfather Bill piloted his warplane over the Solway Firth after a test flight and collided with a young Canadian flyer. They had been married seven years, my Mother was four, my Uncle Chris not yet born. Bill was buried in a tiny churchyard in Causewayhead, near the Victorian seaside town of Silloth, in a plot of what became thirty or so RAF graves amongst the local dead. He had been stationed at the huge RAF base which dominated the area and whose runway and aircraft hangars are still there today, overgrown and reoccupied by farms and local businesses.

Mourning would have been a perfunctory exercise during that war. My Grandmother was moved out of her RAF accommodation in Wiltshire several days later, became a mother of two six months on, filed the telegram and the few letters of condolence in a brown envelope which I found amongst papers and photos in a cake tin after she died.

So last weekend three generations of us undertook to reunite my Grandmother and my Grandfather 66 years after they were unexpectedly parted. Silloth is a little over two hours from Peebles and Carlisle was a pleasant overnight stop, including a walk through deserted streets of ornate Victorian brick houses to a downtown restaurant. The easy 30-minute drive to Silloth next morning lengthened to an hour and a half as we failed several times to achieve the critical velocity needed to escape Carlisle's gravitational pull. Finally on the right B-road west we met a 'Road Closed' notice. An elaborate sequence of detour signs took us through every village and hamlet in Northwest Cumbria before depositing us back on the same B-road half a mile and forty minutes later.

It was my Grandmother's last journey, the long road to Silloth and back to her first love, on the day before the anniversary of his death. She took the scenic route; her habit in life. It was fitting, humourous and poignant that we meandered through the same villages and byways visited by my Grandfather in the last few weeks of his life, searching with increasing exasperation for local accommodation for his wife and little daughter to join him on his extended posting in Cumbria.

In the 1980s my Grandmother finally learned what it was he was doing up there. An official secret for all those years, he was a test pilot on a programme developing a bomb that would bounce across water and explode upon impact with a dam wall. It became known as the Bouncing Bomb, delivered by the Dam Busters squadron, and Bill was one of its unsung casualties.

He is buried in Causewayhead Cemetery in the shadow of two wartime aircraft hangars. Buried next to him is a pilot from New Zealand, on the other side a Canadian. The plot is simple, well-kept, quiet. By his grave is a stand of blues irises, one of my Grandmother's favourite flowers.

We laid the last remnants of her in the bed with the irises, by the headstone. An old photograph of three smiling young people watched over this. In its battered silver frame it had stood on the mantlepiece in my Great-Aunt Elsie's house; her brother Bill, her friend Mary and herself standing in a roadway by a church, arms across each other's shoulders.

We recalled some stories, shed some tears, and I walked away with a sense of having done a good thing, somehow enriching my own soft earth, and of honouring our forebears.

You can't teach a chicken old jokes

We live on the edge of town, the magnificent southern uplands rolling away from just behind our house. Bonnington Road narrows from a broad avenue of fine Edwardian houses to a country lane winding deep into the Manor Valley. Skylarks overhead, rounded fields ploughed over centuries; cows, horses, sheep, occasional grand farmhouses, a ring of heather-patched hills and, of course, free-range chickens.

Simon and I have taken to cycling out here, taking the level road along Bonnington, puffing slightly up over the cattle grid mid-way, sometimes doing the full circle and mounting an assault on the Sware hill. A long near-vertical pushing a bike.

Yesterday we stopped, as usual, to view the free-range chicken farm where eggs can be bought from the honesty box at the end of the farm driveway. These chooks truly free range, radiating out from their giant shed across two fields, bobbing and scratching like so many clockwork toys. The artists and creatives amongst them can be seen in the farther fields, around the edges and less frequented rises and hollows. Around the corner, a ragged brigade had even escaped the fields, striding down the road, finding tasty morsels in the long grass. A troupe of wandering minstrels in their shreds and patches, they scattered noisily to the shelter of the verges as we cycled by.

Further on one was not so lucky; surprised by one of the infrequent cars it was food for crows, a bloody sight.

What a way to go though, for a chicken.

chalk lines and jigsaws

You would think there would a limited number of ways to arrange a few rooms on a postage stamp of land, but the thick and growing file of drawings on the table suggests otherwise. Our house planning goes in fits and starts, along with enthusiasm, but it feels like we're getting closer to a final plan. This week I was marking out areas with chalk spray to see just how little garden we might have left, and mentally earmarking trees for recycling. A friend produced a photoshopped view of the plot with his own house - a three-storey wooden tower - on our plot. It works, surprisingly, because it matches the large stone villa (our old house) and reduces its dominance over the plot. I hadn't appreciated just how much our old place looms over the plot until he pointed it out.

Meanwhile we've made little cut-outs of the rooms we envisage and are trying to jigsaw them into a workable shape. Tricky, and rather contrived as they should really be 3D. Still, it gives the impression of progress.

Whispers of Shakespeare

Last night I was asked to photograph a local production at the Eastgate theatre, titled So Long Lives This. It was a collection of songs, sonnets, pieces of drama and dance all connected by a loose narrative about Queen Elizabeth, Will Shakespeare, The Earl of Southampton and various other of the usual suspects. It was a gentle, occasionally dramatic piece performed in the round in an intimate atmosphere with minimal staging and rich costuming.

I've missed this; subtle and imaginative theatre woven around the life and work of Shakespeare. In Auckland I worked with a fine group of young people and dedicated parents to produce an abridged and minimal Julius Caesar, and with various groups in school holidays on some of my own Shakespearean pieces. It's one of things I like best in theatre, and I'm looking forward to doing more of it.

More info here:
http://www.shakespeare-at-traquair.co.uk/

A Gift From Siberia

It's three months on and we're in our tenth month of Winter. Today the snow arrived from the Steppes, bringing London to a standstill and dropping a light fall on us here. The heavy stuff arrives tomorrow apparently.

Here are pics from this afternoon's brief foray into the Arctic temperatures. Photo sessions last only as long as feeling remains in my fingers, the controls being impossible to operate with gloves.

It had to be today that I had a job interview in Edinburgh, of course, opening the curtains this morning to this, and the stern warnings on the radio to avoid all unnecessary travel. It was necessary, needless to say, and they thanked me for making the trip, though it's unclear whether this will be enough to secure me the post.

Three months on we are settled in our new home, welcomed warmly by friends, neighbours and even strangers who have heard our story. A fine return, and the opportunity to make a new place for ourselves.

The job ? Wait 'n' see if I get it first.

Falling for New England

Combine English country landscapes and that northern light, South Island colour and good kiwi architecture, Scottish dourness, pumpkins, millions more deciduous trees and a continental climate and you begin to get New England. We drove along roads lined with red and gold trees, a blizzard of spinning leaves falling around the car, the distant hillsides clothed in bronze rust patchwork. Villages and towns of wooden cube buildings sporting steeples, hipped roofs, peaked caps of cedar tiles and corrugated iron, painted in those colours marketed as 'heritage' by smart paint companies. 

There seems to be a seasonal tradition of stacking bright orange pumpkins on steps and verandas, or arranging them into figures with straw hair and arms of rakes and pitchforks, tying 7-foot high corn stalks to the porch posts, creating tableaux of ghosts and witches, cauldrons, spiders and other halloween symbols in the front gardens. At the roadside stalls sell pumpkins from roof-high stacks, plus apples and raspberries. We had some orchard apples which were crisp and sharp and delicious.

Pretty, characterful, lived-in, spacious and with a story to tell that seems to go beyond frontier. 

Torrent

The Niagara River flows towards Canada, reaching the border at the famous dropping point. Consequently, trying to see Niagara Falls from the American side is rather like trying to focus on the tip of your own nose. We didn't appreciate this subtle piece of geography until we got there, noticing that for most Americans Niagara Falls (the town) is little more than a petrol and toilet stop on their way to the Canadian town also called Niagara Falls. This town (the Canadian one) looms across the river, a jumble of high-rise buildings, towers, casinos and conspicuous wealth.

By contrast, the American Niagara Falls town (city, actually) is a down-at-heel urban sprawl with the through-road to Canada clearly marked but little in the way of direction to the US side of the Falls. For foreign visitors driving on the other side of the street in a car that in other countries would suffice for a community minibus this was confusing and stressful, but we eventually found the Niagara State Park with its associated attractions. Various lookout points give views of water disappearing over an edge, and glimpses of splashing torrents below. There are two parts to the Falls; the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls. The Horseshoe is the one on all the photos, and that's the one you can't see at all from the American side. I felt underwhelmed, frankly.

More satisfying were the walkway beside the bridal veil falls and the Maid Of The Mist boat trip. On the walkway we got drenched in spray and nearly blown off our feet by wind. It reminded me of so many family walks in Peebles. One section of the walkway is named the Hurricane Deck. Directly under the waterfall and in the teeth of the displacement-generated wind I got a sense of the raw power of the waterfall, but of greater interest to me was the very prominent NO SMOKING sign on the railing beside the cascading water. Who says the Americans have no irony ?

The boat trip took us into the Horseshoe Falls where the thundering noise, flying spray and churning turquoise water, coupled with the experience of being surrounded on three sides by towering torrents, was another experience of nature's power unleashed. I had felt this in the desert, and at Yosemite when we reached the top of Glacier Point and looked over a rocky edge to a 4000 foot sheer drop to the valley floor. Having lived all my life on two small islands I'm moved by the scale of America; its size and its extremes.

Fresh from yet another wonder of the world we undertook a five-hour car journey (an inch or so on the map) to our first New England destination. A beautiful evening with the sun setting over cornfields and autumnal forests, the light slanting across red-painted hip-roofed farmhouses with giant grain silos and - honestly - old tractors parked out in the golden fields.

Oh hear that ol' piano

Not many men could carry off a rumpled white suit (might even have been off-white) and badly balanced red tie but somehow Garrison Keillor seems to find the words and mannerisms to make it work. He roams about the stage set of A Prairie Home Companion talking and singing effortlessly and apparently off-the-cuff (though sections of the script were constantly being carried on and off the stage by a man dressed in black, and sometimes handed to Keillor seconds before he read aloud from them.) It all shambled along like a a Dickensian banking office; people wandering in and out of the room carrying pieces of paper and looking vague, one hand running across the forehead, and Garrison Keillor conducting the whole show with a distracted air, like a man just doing his job. Which I guess he is. Of course under the water the feet are paddling furiously, and that's what I loved about it. It was flawless, sparkling and unpredictable without raising a sweat, indeed nothing more than a bushy eyebrow.
We got a mention, which was nice, sitting in our seats high in the second balcony; the only ones left when I got out of bed at six in the morning several months ago to book them online at the moment they went on sale. It was a special night, the first new show of the season so the live broadcast was followed by the annual street dance and meatloaf supper on Exchange Street in St Paul. I'd managed to keep that part of it secret from Carole and the kids, so it felt like a bonus and, for me, worth the flight to get there.
We stayed in a lovely (budget) hotel which used to be a railway station, and we ate our breakfast yesterday sitting on the old station platform. No such luck this morning as our shuttle driver arrived at 5.55am to take us to the airport. Breakfast in Chicago and lunch at Niagara Falls, but that's another story...

Yosemite

Superlatives become commonplace after a while when travelling through this landscape. I did my best to see the place through Ansell Adams' eyes, helped by a local gallery of his pictures and the ubiquitous opportunity to buy associated gifts, but the scale and grandeur of the valley defied my camera. We just ooh-ed and ahh-ed along with all the other tourists.

Our night in a log (well, wooden anyway) cabin at Curry Village in Yosemite Park helped us appreciate the budget Best Western hotels we've generally been using along the way, though it was a treat to meet Ed, the golf-cart driving porter who helped us carry ALL our luggage from the car to the shed - er - cabin. We've cunningly arranged the luggage so only the overnight and valuable stuff needs to leave the car each day, but we hadn't counted on the Yosemite bears. Apparently they break into cars looking for food if so much as a handbag is left inside, so along came Ed to transport our pile of bags. He chatted away about the park, the bears, life in general and helped us feel at home.

We didn't see a bear and, despite my cruising the carpark this morning with my camera, I didn't see any cars broken into. We did see a squirrel.

Today we saw the biggest living things on Earth; giant sequoia trees. A magical afternoon walking in nature scented with wood smoke and pine, a lingering memory of sun rays slanting through the drifting smoke. The gift shop was closed; a sort of gift in itself. Speaking of records, we went from sea level to 9500 feet and back to 3000 feet over the course of yesterday, an ear-popping experience.

Tonight we are in small town America. Went to a local pizza place where I felt somewhat out of place. Sports memorabilia and insignia all over the walls, three giant screens showing three different sports channels, lots of baseball caps and beer bellies, surly service. Great pizza. Local Republican HQ prominently evident across the street. Is it just me ? After all, we're not from around here...

Lots of great chats with the kids about travelling, family, learning and education, feelings, communication, loyalty, experiences. We're learning a lot about each other.