rachel.blog

insignificant ramblings of a 50-something woman

  • An orchestra in the toilet

    I got my bag early yesterday evening, thank goodness. There’s a B&B in the building we’re staying in so I had the idea to go and knock on their door to see whether my bag had been delivered to the wrong place and it had! I slept poorly again last night. The window which connects my…

  • Fear the hungry vegan

    I’m currently imprisoned in our accommodation in Barcelona and I’m hungry. A hungry vegan is not someone you want to mess with. I’m stuck here waiting for my bag to turn up and if I go out in search of food, they won’t be able to deliver the bag. I have this cynical idea that…

  • I’m in Barcelona

    I made it to Barcelona but my luggage didn’t. Of all the travelling I’ve done in my life – which is a fair amount – this is the first time I’ve ever lost my bags. Today I’m wearing the same outfit I wore yesterday. My bag is expected to appear today so I’m hoping my…

  • Aberdeen’s amusement park and extreme wealth

    Elizabeth turned 5 on New Year’s Eve. We didn’t have a party for her this year and instead took her out today to the amusement park on Aberdeen’s waterfront. Yep, Aberdeen has an amusement park right by the sea called Codonas. Personally I think it’s a god-awful waste of good real estate but who am…

  • Travel anxieties

    Something happens to a woman when she becomes a mother: she starts to worry about things – crazy things that will never happen. It’s very frustrating but there’s nothing that can be done about it except to laugh at the absurdity and put up with the worries. Next week I’m going to Barcelona for work. It…

  • 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…

  • Ballater in the snow

    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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…