Month: December 2014
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Curling in Ballater and the Royal Station Museum
This morning I went for a run around the golf course in Ballater. The roads and pavements in the village have icy patches which aren’t visible with the coating of snow they got yesterday and so it can be slippery running around the streets. The grassy golf course seemed a safer option. It turned out…
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Ballater in the snow
It snowed this morning in Ballater. I was ecstatic. An Australian in the snow is a bit like a puppy with a smelly leather shoe to chew. Ben was less excited about it. This is the Royal Station in Ballater, a magnificent building: The River Dee, which is lovely in all kinds of weather, was particularly beautiful…
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Linn O’ Dee
FossilCycle pointed out in the comments on my post yesterday that we were just down the road from the Linn O’ Dee when we visited Braemar. If you Google Linn O’ Dee you’ll see this is a place worth visiting. So we drove back to Braemar today, a drive I would happily repeat because the…
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Christmas in the Cairngorms
Christmas Day in the Scottish Cairngorms looks like this: Lots of people said to me before we moved here that we’d be shocked by the number of people and the amount of traffic. Maybe this is true for the rest of the UK but not here in the north-east corner where the roads are extraordinarily…
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Santa, reindeer, and snow!
I got my Christmas present early today in the form of snow! No, it’s not snowing in Ballater but we drove to the village of Braemar – a gorgeous, gorgeous place – and then up to the ski field at Glenshee. It was only about 30 minutes away by car but I was driving and so…
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Stone circles and whisky
Today we went in search of some stone circles. Humans have lived in Aberdeenshire for thousands of years and there are lots of important archaeological sites here including some strange and intriguing stone circles. They don’t really know what these were used for but I’ve read they may have astronomical significance and/or they were used…
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Ballater, Scotland
I am on holiday and my sister is here for a week and I’m in one of the loveliest places on Earth: Ballater, Scotland. Life is very good. We arrived in Ballater this afternoon just before the sun disappeared on the horizon. It was the longest night of the year last night, the winter solstice,…
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Mince pies and free the nipple!
When I first moved to the UK as a twenty-year-old I was puzzled by the mince pie. Why were they eating meat for dessert? I thought a mince pie contained beef mince rather than fruit and nuts. Now I’m a little more cultured than I was then, although not by much, and I’ve got a good…
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A Christmas dinner in Keswick
One of the benefits of living in the UK is that I’m not the only Automattician in the country. Why is this good? Because it means I get to go to a work Christmas dinner and that’s exactly what I did last night. The dinner was in Keswick in the Lakes District, at a fabulous…
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A NIN is not just for Christmas, it’s for life
Shortly after we arrived in the UK back in early October, I sent away for a National Insurance Number (NIN). I already have one as I worked here over 15 years ago but I couldn’t remember what it was so I had to fill in a “I’ve lost my NIN form” and send it away. They…
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Angels, Christmas Trees, and Opshopping
Elizabeth said to me today, “I know what angels look like”. To which I replied, “How do you know what angels look like?”. Elizabeth: “Because Mr MacDonald (not his real name) put one up on the white screen”. Then I asked her what they look like and she said, “An orange clown”. The kids have…
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Marischal College, Aberdeen
It’s a beautiful day in Aberdeen today. I had to run some errands in town this morning and I took these photos of the very gorgeous Marischal College. It’s the second largest granite building in the world, and is owned by the University of Aberdeen and leased to the city council. Apparently much of the…
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Enchantment on a bicycle
It’s getting close to the shortest day of the year now and according to BBC weather, sunrise is at 8:36am and sunset at 3:26pm in Aberdeen. However it’s light at both of these times, I guess because we get the sunlight before the sun appears on the horizon and also after it disappears. The temperature range…
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Cashew nut pasta ~ vegan of course
I’ve shared recipes before that contain cashews all ground up but this one is a little different because I am currently without my coffee grinder for grinding nuts. It is on a ship somewhere between New Zealand and Scotland. So I decided to buy some cashew butter instead which is just like peanut butter except with cashews.…
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Breasts are multifunction devices
I made the mistake yesterday of following the #breastfeeding hashtag on Twitter. Most of it was good reading but there were a few comments from people who objected to breastfeeding. I have never met anyone personally who claims to be offended by breastfeeding so this was new for me and quite astonishing. These people think their…
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Is breastfeeding offensive?
I’ve written a bit recently about how sometimes I just want to tell someone to “get over it” when they claim to be offended by something. Breastfeeding is a great example of this. Apparently a flashy London hotel has asked a breastfeeding mother to put a napkin over her baby’s head while breastfeeding. This has sparked…
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A deliberate deception
I have a confession to make. It was the school fair recently and we were asked to contribute some home baking to sell. I bought a lemon cake from Marks & Spencer, took it out of its packaging and then wrapped it up in cling film to make it look like I’d made it. Then…
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NatWest: tearing marriages apart
Ok, I’m not being serious with my title. I just want to make this clear that I’m exaggerating slightly here. Quite a bit actually. But I am pissed off with Natwest and so this is going to be a bit of a rant. A little while ago I wrote about the problem I had trying…
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When is it ok to take offence?
People seem to get offended by all sorts of things. As I was cycling to school today an old man shouted at me from a beat-up old van to get off the pavement. Then he stopped to take my photo. I’m not really sure what he plans to do with my photo. Perhaps he’ll write…
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Snow!
No, it isn’t snowing in Aberdeen. Not yet anyway but hopefully it will soon. However it is snowing on my blog because I’ve just switched on the snow effect which is available for all WordPress.com blogs over the Christmas period. Go to Settings > General in your Dashboard and scroll down to Snow if you…
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