rachel.blog

insignificant ramblings of a 50-something woman

  • Go Ape at Crathes Castle

    Go Ape at Crathes Castle

    We took Susie to Crathes Castle today and I forgot how terrific it is. I love Crathes Castle! The castle is awesome, the gardens are probably the best castle gardens I’ve seen, the cafe is excellent and has an adjoining children’s playground, and Go Ape have a presence there. We have never played at Go…

  • How to have your photo taken

    My sister, Susie, is here for the weekend and I took her out for lunch to the Foodstory café on Thursday (best café in Aberdeen) but she refused to let me take a photo of her. Why don’t people like having their photos taken? I love having my photo taken and I’m so good at it,…

  • The Burkini ban

    I find it quite extraordinary that French police are demanding women remove clothing when lying on the beach. Have they gone completely mad? It seems like half the world wants women to cover their flesh and the other half wants them to expose it. Can we just let women wear whatever they want? As an Australian…

  • A mathematician’s clock

    I accidentally broke Ben’s clock. I knocked it off the wall, thinking I was reaching for the light switch, and it fell on the floor and broke. We love Ben’s clock. It was a gift from his sister and always entertains visitors to our house. Ben and I spent a bit of time yesterday afternoon finding…

  • The Imitation Game

    I just watched this movie for the second time and it was just as fantastic as the first. We watched it with Daniel and he really enjoyed it and indeed I think it’s a good movie to get kids interested in mathematics. Alan Turing was a mathematician and a war hero. He broke Enigma, the German cryptography machine, and…

  • The anti-helmet goddess

    Yesterday when I was cycling home I was a fitness goddess. Today I had steam coming out of my ears because as I was cycling uphill and at little more than walking pace, a woman called out to tell me I should be wearing a helmet. Aside from the fact that I was wearing a helmet, it’s really…

  • Fitness goddess

    I was cycling the kids home from school this afternoon and just made it to the top of a hill when a young man shouted out in a very exuberant and “look, there’s a flying pig!” kind of way, OH MY GOD! YOU MUST BE SO FIT! JESUS! I’m really not that fit but this put a smile…

  • Haddo House

    We’re starting to run out of castles to see for the first time and so today we visited a stately home instead. Haddo House was built in the 18th Century and sits in a huge country estate with lakes, woodland, and a deer park. We were completely blown away and didn’t even go inside the house. They have…

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream

    We took the kids to open air theatre at Drum castle last night. We saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and performed by Illyria. It was wonderful and Illyria are fantastic! We thought the kids might get bored and find it hard to stay up so late but that was not the case at all. It was very…

  • This Beautiful Creature Must die

    We’re all addicted to the new 80s-themed Peta computer game to which The Smiths have lent their 1980s song, Meat is Murder. It’s quite retro with 8-bit audio and pixelated graphics and it’s also very addictive. The song grates on your nerves after a while though. Daniel is the reigning champion with a score of…

  • Is Pokémon Go immoral?

    Ben brought back an English newspaper from Russia. He thought I might be interested because there’s an article about Pokémon Go in it. Here’s an excerpt: Nintendo refuses to reveal when the game will be released in Russia. But Russia’s traditional values crusaders are already worried nonetheless. “It feels like the devil arrived through [Pokémon] and…

  • Peter Singer discusses religion, the bible, abortion, and same sex marriage in 4 minutes

    Peter Singer talks about abortion and same sex marriage in this video and specifically how Christians often focus more on these two issues than on poverty. He finds this strange because abortion is not mentioned in the gospels at all, while homosexuality is mentioned very little and mostly in the old testament; not so much in the…

  • A poppy dress

    Several of my sunflowers have opened up now. One of the plants has sprouted lots of little buds that are threatening to reveal themselves also. I thought each plant produced just one flower? Do you remember the dream I had about a dress which, when I woke up, I had to have but the shop…

  • What to do in Aberdeen?

    My favourite thing to do in Aberdeen is to cycle along the Deeside cycleway to Newton Dee. We’ve been doing it multiple times a week over the summer holidays and I never tire of it. However in the list of “Things to Do” on Trip Advisor it’s way down the bottom. It needs a higher…

  • How to use a telephone

    I’m feeling a bit dumb. I had to make a work phone call to a company today, a big company, and I was feeling nervous. I’m not good on the phone. I prefer text or even video. Nevertheless I was fully prepared and sitting waiting by the telephone for a good 30 minutes before the scheduled…

  • Dogsbody and wood chips

    The past couple of weeks I’ve been reading Dogsbody to the kids at bedtime. I love it! I’m now a huge Diana Wynne Jones fan despite having never heard of her before. The book is so well-written and so entertaining in a can’t-put-it-down kind of way. It’s a fantasy novel told from the perspective of a…

  • bounce, bounce, bounce

    For many years now we have wanted to get a trampoline. But not just any trampoline, a Springfree trampoline. Friends of ours in New Zealand had one and their kids loved it (and still do). The inventor of the trampoline is also an engineer at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch where Ben used to…

  • Sunflowers and cucumbers

    I have a sunflower at last! One of the flowers opened up in the rain today. It was one of the smaller, sickly-looking plants so I was not expecting to get a flower out of it at all but here it is with a bee hard at work. It’s lovely. We also picked our first cucumber today.…

  • Harald: my Butchers and Bicycles MK1

    I got Busby back about a month ago now but I have been continuing to ride Harald on a daily basis. I think this is probably an endorsement for Harald. He does have some shortcomings but I can’t think what other bike I’d rather ride. Even if I had all the money in the world I’d…

  • Tall things

    I took this photo in Aberdeen this evening. Check out the ladder! Is someone really going to climb all the way up there? It’s also not just one ladder but several all tied together. What are they thinking??!! One of my sunflowers is so huge now. It just keeps growing taller and taller and there’s still…