Back in Edinburgh
April 04, 2007
We have been home on Mull for the past four days and arrived back in Edinburgh late last night. While I was at home I looked at our copy of The Reverend Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch and, this morning, looking down on Duddingston Loch from Samson's Ribs, I tried to work out where the picture was painted. I decided the painter probably stood near the boathouse and that the hills in the background of the painting are the ones that now house the Midlothian dry ski slopes. In the painting, it somehow looks more out in the wilds, which I daresay it was at the time.
We went home mainly to do some sorting out. The house is terribly cluttered with stuff left over from the chalets we are selling. I spent a lot of time moving stuff out of the attic to make room for things we do want to keep.
I'm not one of these decluttering bods. I find lots of old stuff around me comforting, and all my books are like old friends. I put this down to spending the first few years of my life living above my mum and dad's antique shop and waking in the morning in a room full of huge pieces of furniture that had overflowed from the shop and were waiting there ready to be sold.
However, the contents of the attic were something else. I found old lecture notes and Computer Science journals I had stored there ten years ago. The recycling wheelie bin was so heavy by the time I had finished that I could barely push it out of the gate.
But I did find at least fifty bottles of home made wine we had stored away and forgotten about. The Sloe and the Mulberry, dated 1999, should be very good indeed.
It was lovely to be back home. I forget how different island life is from the city. Just having room in my garden to do t'ai chi, with the birds singing, was a great change from doing Step Back and Repulse the Monkey only to step backwards onto a dog who has decided to park himself in my path or a pair of slippers.
And I had forgotten how quiet it is at night, walking along by the loch. It was beautiful this weekend, with the moon almost full, lighting up the distant hills, and Venus shining brightly in the West. All I could hear was the sound of the water birds, warbling and cawing across the shining loch.