Drying

The sun is shining. There’s even some warmth. I’ve put my washing out to dry.

I’ve tried putting up a washing line in the walled garden. I found myself feeling quite envious of people in the Netherlands with their washing blowing on the line. Since we had the garden done, there has been no posts to tie a line onto in the back garden. I’ve been taking out our airer instead. Although things do dry on it, they are so closely packed together they take a long time to dry. The wind also cannot get the creases out as it does on a line. The walled garden is shadier & more sheltered but certainly in the morning, things do seem to be drying as fast if not faster than on the airer. Maybe I’ve finally found a more satisfactory solution to the drying process – some on the line, some on the airer. However it does mean more walking & therefore more pain. I suppose there is no perfect solution.

It has to be admitted when they designed the garden they didn’t seem to spend much time on practical matters, such as where to put wheelie bins & rubbish boxes, where to dry the washing. We did persuade them to pave an area behind the garage for the bins & boxes –in theory the base for a small greenhouse in the future. However, I didn’t think about a washing line until it was too late. They had finished & gone. Now I look around the back garden & cannot see any great distance in which it is even feasible to put a line without going through shrubbery, trees, pergolas etc. or climbing over raised beds, except in the walled garden & even that isn’t for a very long line.

The referendum

Part of our sense of disorientation since our holiday, is the fact that world seems to have gone mad. While we were away the referendum took place. We put in our votes by post before we left. Even on holiday the news inevitably filtered through to us – we’re to leave.

We instantly thought “We live in interesting times” we just didn’t realise how interesting. Our other immediate thoughts were that that would be the end of David Cameron as Prime Minister & that there would be a stock market crash. Both of which came to pass.

What I didn’t think was that neither party, be it for staying in or leaving the EU, would make any plans for if the vote came in for leave. The result seems to be absolute chaos, with no real government. Now we have calls for a second referendum as people voted as an anti-Cameron protest rather than wanting to leave, they were voting against immigration although they wanted to stay in the EU or they didn’t vote thinking their vote was valueless as staying in was a foregone conclusion. I’m not entirely surprised about the result. The polls seemed to suggest staying in would win, but talk to people in this area it was obviously going to be a close thing. Even we dithered, unsure which way to go. Whatever people may think of the vote surely we must now make the most of it & try to ensure we leave the EU on favourable terms.

What really perturbs me more is the number of xenophobic attacks & insults that have occurred since the results were announced. Such actions are not acceptable whatever the results were. And who is the foreigner to be abused? The person with black skin born in this country? Or is it me, born abroad but who happens to be white with English parents?

The holiday

AS time has gone on & we’ve thought about our Scottish holiday, the more convinced we are that it was a poor holiday. I suppose you have to accept on a coach holiday that you do end up going places, doing things, that you wouldn’t normally do, but the sheer amount of shopping sites we visited was too great. They sapped our energy while boring us in the process. I accept a certain amount. Whenever you visit tourist attractions there is an inevitable tourist shop. We will stroll through. We may even see something & buy it. But we wouldn’t spend hours doing this as we ended up doing on this holiday. Some destinations were purely for shopping.

It was unfortunate that the weather turned bad as we went up the Cairngorms in the funicular. By the time we reached the top all was shrouded in a veil of mist & water. There is very little to do up there if the view is not forthcoming.

 

Looking down the valley when going up the Cairngorms in the funicular

The Caringorms from the funicular. The mist closing in.

We did enjoy our trip to Culloden, which turned out to be more interesting than I expected. The interpretation centre was well done. Even the field itself was available for to you to roam with an explanatory tape. We just didn’t have the time for a long enough stop, mainly because we’d spent half the day at a shopping centre already.

The Glenfiddich distillery

The Glenfiddich distillery was disappointing. We saw a short, essentially advertising, film, followed by some whisky tasting. I learnt nothing about whisky distilling & how it is made, which I would have thought should have been a minimum for such a visit. Surely there must have been one distillery that was wheelchair accessible where it would have been possible to see the process, or at least, put on a film about the process. 

Nairn beach

Nairn beach

On Thursday this week, I went down to Morecambe on my electric mobility scooter. I couldn’t help being struck by how much more exciting the prom of Morecambe is compared to that of Nairn. We’re spoilt here. Maybe it was more impressive to those living elsewhere, far from the seaside.  Nairn does have a pleasant small museum, essentially giving you the idea of life in Nairn in the past. It has more of a harbour than we have here. 

Nairn harbour

Nairn museum

After our Dutch trip, we had expected to come back exhausted. We were right on that. We’re still trying to get to our normal energy levels. We took few photos this time – we don’t see any point of taking pictures of shopping centres! We are reminded of the virtues of going on holiday & hiring a car as we usually do. It may be tiring for the Fox having to do the driving all the time, but at least we can go to places that excite us, stop if we see a good view, visit places when the weather is likely to be dry, pace the holiday to suit us with some quiet relaxing days in comfortable places, & not be herded around like a flock of sheep with one eye constantly on our watches. Suddenly it seems worth the month or so it took to organise our French holiday later this year. Hopefully that will turn out better.