insignificant ramblings of a 50-something woman
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I planted four trees today
As part of Giving Tuesday my company encouraged us all to plant a native tree during our work day – they paid for the trees. I was a bit cheeky and bought four trees because the Woodland Trust sell packs of four for a very reasonable price. I got the bee-friendly garden mix. The trees…
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The farting woods (Tullos Wood)
During the lockdown early this year, Ben did a lot of walking around Aberdeen. On one of his walks he discovered a woodland just south of the city in Torry. We decided to check it out yesterday. We cycled there from Duthie Park. The first part of the ride was all on shared-use paths so…
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Prince Albert’s Cairn
I love Sundays. This is the one day of the week when none of us is working and there are no extracurricular activities to take children to. We like to spend our Sundays walking in the hills somewhere in Aberdeenshire and perhaps because there’s a bit of royal mania with the latest release of The…
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New hairdos
You never know these days when there’ll be another lockdown and all the hair salons will close. With this in mind I decided to take drastic measures and have several hair cuts all in one go today just in case the salons have to shut again for several months. I think I lost a couple…
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Christmas Fair at Crathes Castle
We went to the Exclusively Highlands Christmas Fair at Crathes Castle today. It’s a food and craft market that runs every year in the weeks leading up to Christmas at different locations around Scotland, usually castles. They sell only stuff that’s made in Scotland which especially appeals to me so we go every year. This…
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Cycling to Aberdeen beach … with children
A friend of mine started cycling around Aberdeen with her young children during lockdown when the roads were quiet and they’ve continued even now the roads are busy again. She inspired me to try the same with Daniel and Elizabeth because although I have cycled with them many times around Aberdeen, they always sit in…
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Thank you, America
The world is heaving a collective sigh of relief today. Thank you, America, for electing Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States. We shouldn’t forget, however, that some 70 million Americans voted for Trump. As Peter Singer writes in Has America Lost its Soul? those 70 million people voted for someone…
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In the paper, cat news, a kilt in a cargo bike, Foodstory, and zombies
I’m in The Scottish Daily Record today in an article about the state of cycling in Scotland. This is in response to the tragic death of a young woman in Edinburgh this week. It’s a good article that got a full double page spread and my photo spans from top to bottom of the paper!…
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Engine idling, butt flashing, and balance training
I’m the most hated parent at Highland Dance. I asked another two motorists today to switch their engines off. They both did and were very good about it but I know how much people dislike being told what to do even if when it’s done politely. I had to do it though because the man…
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Not a kitten any more, cycling lessons, and in the paper
Victoria sleeps in our bed most nights now and I mean literally in our bed. She buries herself under the covers head and all. I don’t know how she can stand it. It must get terribly hot. I think she probably alternates and spends some of the time on the bed and some of the…
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I can’t even begin to desribe my frustration and disappointment with Aberdeen city council … again
Last month for the first time ever I was impressed with the Aberdeen city council for installing European-style bike lanes at the beach. This was a first for Aberdeen which is an oil city with a transport strategy straight out of the 1970s. The bike lanes were built with funding from the Sustrans Spaces for…
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Engine idling and nobody in London needs an SUV
As regular readers of my blog will know, one of my pet peeves is when people sit in their cars with the engine running. This happens a lot outside primary school gates where children gather and inhale the fumes. Pollution from motor vehicles is especially harmful to children because they are smaller and absorb more…
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A walk at the Finzean watermills
We went for an amazing walk and picnic today at the Finzean watermills. They’re quite tricky to find because the road doesn’t appear to have a name (it’s referred to as an access road for the Forest of Birse) and there’s no obvious postcode for the mills, so print and follow the directions on this…
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Of cat food and poo
Ben ate cat food. I was refilling the cat food jar with dried biscuits and one of them fell on the bench. Ben has a habit of hoovering up all food scraps. Nothing goes to waste in our house. Later that evening he saw a crumb of food on the bench and put it in…
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There’s no getting rid of me now
We got some very exciting news today. The home office emailed us to say: I’m sorry, Britain, but this means you’re now stuck with us! I love living in the UK. I always have. As a 20-year-old I came here on a young person’s working holiday visa and I knew then that I wanted to…
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Her Majesty’s butler
Last week Victoria began showing interest in wanting to go outside. Being the softy that I am I conceded and now she wants to go outside everyday. This would be fine except that I have become the butler to Her Majesty as she constantly wants to come in and out all day long. She begs…
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Poetry in motion
One of my blogging friends, Geoff Le Pard, is an author and poet. You can see his list of ever-growing books at Amazon. His latest publication is a book of poems called The Sincerest Form of Poetry and in celebration of this I’ve invited him to write a guest post on my blog to which…
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Glasgow in autumn
We’ve come to Glasgow for the weekend to submit biometric data (fingerprints) for our permanent residency application. We’ve been waiting to do this since March when everything closed down. The centres began opening again in June and we’ve been waiting patiently for Aberdeen to reopen but as of this writing it still hasn’t. Every month…
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Falls of Dess
Today was Ben’s birthday and we had a delightful picnic with cake and whisky beside the Falls of Dess. I never knew these falls existed and what a wonderful find they are at only 40 minutes by car west of Aberdeen along a lovely forested walk near the quaint village of Kincardine O’Neil. Ben and…
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You have to murder to call it a burger
The Dutch comedian Arjen Lubach launched this satirical marketing video for the meat industry this week to highlight an upcoming EU parliament vote on whether to ban meat-related names for plant-based products. The marketing video starts at 2:47 so you’ll have to fast-forward to then as the first part of the video is in Dutch…
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