NARDINI'S

Last spring I suggested a day trip to Largs because it was a nice day. I imagined a nice drive, a stroll along the beach and an ice cream at Nardini's. Much to my horror on arrival I found Nardini's derelict with a sign advertising luxury flats attached to the building. I bored Thomas and the kids with the story of my first ever flavoured ice cream on a trip to Nardini's circa 1972. I told of how my parents had bought me a strawberry cone and I had stared at its pinkness in wonder having only ever seen vanilla, or 'plain' ice cream as we called it, in my life before then. My kids of course assumed, as always, that I was some sort of prehistoric fossil from an era of black and white tellies.

We returned home and I sadly uploaded my last photos of Nardini's, or so I thought.
This week I was on facebook when I noticed a friend, who lives in Canada, had set his current status to 'going to Largs for ice-cream from Nardini's'. Could it be true? Several friends queried its existence there and then and the reply popped up 'Nardini's is very there - all redone and reopened.' Music to my ears! Less than twenty-four hours later with Thomas and all 4.3 kids packed into the car we drove down to Largs to find it was indeed 'de retour'.

The ice creams on display made your mouth water. The flavours and presentation were superb and for someone who tends only to indulge in such extravagances in the likes of Nice or Paris, the Scottish prices were even better!
I had caramel shortcake and honeycomb, Thomas had tablet, raspberry cranachan and one of their many chocolates, Anna had banoffee pie, Lots had After Eights, Irn Bru and caramel shortcake, Marcel had another chocolate with tablet and caramel shortcake and for my Pudgeman - what could we buy him at nearly 4? A large cone with Nardini's own fresh strawberry ice cream of course!
Hopefully one day he'll take his own kids to Nardini's and tell them all about the day when he was nearly 4 when Thomas and Mum bought him a lovely strawberry ice!

DECEPTIVE TARTAN

I was born a Buchanan as you know so I have always known what Buchanan tartan looks like. If you'd asked me to describe it without showing me a sample I'd have said predominantly red and orange with two shades of green and a wee bit of yellow. Yesterday I decided to colorize a photo of the wedding just for fun. To do that I obviously had to magnify if to 400% and colour in each patch of the kilt individually. I was amazed at how deceptive the overall effect is. Firstly it seems to contain almost no orange at all but has large patches of both bright blue and fuchsia pink. I stand amazed!

FARMERS' MARKETS

Nice market
Originally uploaded by PhylB

Have you ever been to a Scottish Farmers' market? I know I shouldn't but whenever I see a sign for a Farmers' market, I get quite excited at the thought of all the produce, the fruits, the veg, cheeses, breads, honey etc. I imagine taking beautiful, colourful photos there too. I imagine comparing 10 different types of tomatoes and haggling for the best price. So I go along only to find about 8 stalls - 1 selling overpriced, pre-packaged tomatoes - already with price lables so no negotiation possible, 1 selling small, homemade cakes, again at inflated prices, ditto the Indian carryout stall, the 1 meat stall and the 1 fish stall etc.
Silverburn's Farmers' market on Sunday added a face painting (no thanks) stall and a homemade soap stall. We really don't get it. On the continent you can spend hours in a farmers' market. At the end of the day you can pick up a bargain or two as everything has to be sold. Produce isn't packaged and priced like in Marks and Spencers. The quantities are all wrong too - the sellers seem to expect few visitors and bring very little produce - of course this is also why they overprice it. I think they believe people should be willing to pay more than at the supermarket because they want people to support local farmers rather than expecting to sell to us slightly dearer than they do to supermarkets but slightly cheaper than we buy from the supermarkets. They expect to attract quirky people - hence the face painters and jugglers, rather than your average guy.
Please send the farmers' market organisers on a day-trip to Aix or Nice market and then provide us with a great continental farmers' market experience.

GRASSHOPPERS

Clown or Grasshopper?
Originally uploaded by Hamed Saber

I'm used to grasshoppers. Every summer I have been in southern Europe and I have fallen asleep to the strange squeals and screeches they make rubbing their legs.
On the other hand, in 40 years I have never ever heard a single grasshopper in Scotland.
Today is a very warm day - Léon and Lots are out in the garden playing in the paddling pool. Anna is naked on the grass... and to my utter amazement I have just heard a grasshopper in my garden in Glasgow!
Global warming????

GREENOCK TOWN HALL

Town hall
Originally uploaded by jimmy2yk

Thomas and I were at a wedding on Saturday in Greenock town hall. We had received the invite (verbally a year ago) and officially about 6 weeks ago. I didn't think another thing about it.
Last weekend we were having dinner with my brother who works down that way so I asked directions to Greenock town hall. On Saturday we followed google's directions, Derek's directions and with a little help from this tall tower on the skyline we finally found Greenock town hall.
After the ceremony, which was held in one of the side rooms, we were shown into the main hall and it hit me. I've been here before. I looked at the coat of arms, the blue paint, the decorated ceilings, balconies and cornicing. It took me forever to place it. How could I know this room? As far as I could remember I had been to Greenock to visit André in the 80s when he had a student bedsit there, I had often visited my friend Shona in Forsyth street and I had been to my brother's lawyer's office in Union street. So how could I know the inside of the town hall?
Then it hit me - I had taken part in the Greenock festival in 1975, representing my school as a singer in the annual competition (Do they still run it?) It was suddenly clear as day. We'd left Crookfur primary in a single decker bus and driven to Greenock. I was wearing my favourite creamy white winter coat and had felt very important!
Oh, and did we win the singing contest? No, not by a mile but hey I still have it tucked away in my memory after 33 years so it can't have been all bad!

HOW SURPRISING!

Léon and Gordon playing together
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I read today with little surprise that Scotland's population is falling because we aren't having enough kids. (Ok, refrain from any comments on me myself)!
Now Scotland, if you don't know it, is a country where the average female graduate salary does not cover two simultaneous private nursery places for under 5s, where the average house price requires two salaries to pay it and where students aren't out of debt from their uni days till they are into their 30s... and they report people are having less than two kids but want more... hmmm - I know I'm no rocket scientist but come on?

GERRY WAS WRONG!

I met an old mate in the pub last night. He predicted I'd go into labour at 7pm tonight. Why? Well, he said that when Scotland beat Italy the whole country jumping and dancing at once would cause such huge vibrations that it'd start my labour. Looks like you were wrong, Gerry :-( No jumping happening here!

...1 hour later - why oh why are England always so bloody hoachy?

CRUNCH DAY

Crunch day
Originally uploaded by PhylB

This van seems fairly typical of Glasgow this weekend, if you look closely at the graffiti on the back of the van! Today, Scotland is playing Italy to try to qualify for a major tournament for the first time in a decade. Yesterday the whole country, all the way down to Pudge was meant to attend work, school, nursery decked out in a Scotland football strip. Last night Thomas and I went to the pub for Elspeth (a work colleague)'s leaving do and in the 5 minutes we walked up Saltmarket, 2 bright pink limos passed us with teenage girls hanging out the windows singing 'Flower of Scotland' at the top of their lungs! The atmosphere is great. I hope that the team's effort will mirror the fever in the country. Apparently if we win, we qualify, if we lose we are out, if we draw, the whole thing depends on the other results in the group and is out of our hands. Call me a cynic, but I'm going to bet on a draw where the other results put us out. Scotland is famous for that.

FOOTBALL

I was going to blog it last night but I had a migraine. Scotland has only gone and beaten France in France - how surreal is that?
I went round to Derek's to watch as it was only on Sky - for some reason the terrestrial TV thought us Scots would rather watch the England match - don't start me - grrr! I know the French team well, having spent at least 10 years supporting France, not only because half the family is French but also because Scotland failed to qualify for anything for at least the last 10 years! So it felt odd watching what is supposedly my team, who I didn't recognize, play my other team who I know well! Anyway Scotland beat them and gobsmacked them all in one. We then had a problem getting home as Sauchiehall street had turned into an impromptu party, with singing, dancing and horn tooting, blocking the whole street - even my kids finally accepted that it was ok to support both France and Scotland - unlike the floods of tears we got last year when Scotland last beat France. I think as long as both France and Scotland qualify all will be quiet in my household, but if the evil Italians, who my kids still accuse of cheating France out of the last world cup, qualify instead of one of their teams, life will not be worth living!

MIDGES

We're just back from a weekend camping trip to Oban, which I will blog all about once I have uploaded the photos. In the meantime I have to ask? Are midges the ultimate proof us atheists need? Having walked around outside after sunset and been devoured by these evil little bastards, I have to conclude there can be no ultimate, all-loving creator - firstly because a God evil enough to have created midges is not worth worshipping, secondly if a God had created them in a moment of weakness, I'm pretty sure he'd have caused the extinction of the species within hours once he'd discovered quite how intolerable they are. I even prefer mosquitoes - at least you hear them coming and they don't hunt in packs. These little buggers are half the size, silent and attack in their hundreds. I am sitting here scratching my the back of my neck, my left elbow, my right shin and foot and wondering how they got under my clothes when I was only outside the tent long enough to go pee :-( 

WHY MAKE THE DREARY DREARIER?

Car Park
Originally uploaded by Pete Ashton.

I decided last week after my car's little gearbox problem, that the time had come to buy a new one. Sure it isn't that old at 5, but I'd rather have something I don't need to repair from time to time, buy new tyres for etc. I decided I would prefer a 7-seater this time as I often need to take my 3 kids plus say my parents to the shops or for a day out, which is just much less hassle when I don't then have to force them to bring one of their own cars along. So on to the internet I went to surf myself a nice new people carrier. I tried the obvious in Scotland - that is to say Arnold Clark, and he had a wonderful selection of 1 year old 7 seaters, all makes - the Seat Alhambra, Peugeot 807, Ford Galaxy, VW Sharan, Citroën C8, Renault Espace, Kia Sedona etcetc - you name it - dozens of them - great, but 90% of them were grey or silver.
Why?
Scotland is often a grey, cloudy, dreary and depressing land where you feel you could catch a cloud just by reaching a few centimetres above your head. This isn't like Greece or Italy or the South of France where you are greeted every morning by brilliant blues, sunflower yellows, explosions of purple bougainvillea. We spend 80% of the year looking at grey. So why do we paint our houses grey and fill our roads with grey cars? Can't we have pink houses and yellow cars to make our life a little less dismal?
Anyway as luck would have it, one of the best cars I found on sale at Arnold's with the lowest mileage and highest spec wasn't grey so I bought that. Call back in a few days if you want to see what colour I am trying to brighten the world up with!

BEAUTIFUL CULZEAN

Culzean has to be one of my favourite places to go for a day out. Especially at this time of the year when all the bluebells are in bloom on the cliffs and in the woods. Yesterday Thomas and I spent a lovely 5 hours walking along the rocks from the castle to Port Carrick, then over the cliffs and round the Swan pond, stopping occasionally for a picnic or a seat. It was nice to spend some quiet time together for once. Afterwards we'd to rush back up the road to Glasgow to lend Derek my car as it has the largest capacity in the family and he had some beds and stuff to take to the dump. We stayed there and had a lovely curry and family evening. I hope Derek, Amanda, Mum and Dad enjoyed it as much as Thomas and I did.

BLYTHESWOOD SQUARE

Aren't the trees in Glasgow pretty at the moment? :-)

FIFE AGAIN

Too tall for Fife!
Originally uploaded by phyl1.

I'm not quite sure how I got talked into it but just 3 days after my hopeless wild goose chase round Fife, when I vowed never to return without satnav, I got talked into another day out in that neck of the woods. Considering I have only been to Fife about 8 times in my life, twice in 3 days was pushing it. This was, however, a much less stressful experience - we 'multimapped' and printed out a list of places to visit and as the weather was beautiful, it was the perfect choice.
First stop was Culross (pronounced weirdly 'Cooriss' or something similar - (don't you just love Scottish - Milngavie, Strathaven and all the rest?) What an astoundingly beautiful little place (see my photos on flickr) - I felt like I was somewhere in France or the likes, not Fife with all the pretty coloured buildings - though I guess the natives are fairly short, as Thomas had a bit of a problem!
Then we saw Crail - a pretty fishing village - though more Scottish.
And finally we stopped in Anstruther - a place which patently has the best fish and chips on the planet - though we decided to forgo the 2 hour wait and simply bought our supper at Mearns Cross on our return.

FIFE IS FUN!

 

Until today I thought that satnav was for stupid and/or rich people! I mean, why on earth would anyone pay 1 to 5 hundred pounds for something that tells you where you are and where to go when there are road signs everywhere anyway? I have driven since I was 17, all over Europe - lefthand drives, righthand drive, manual, automatic, I've taken buses in the States - believe me - there are road signs EVERYWHERE...except Fife! Now I know why satnav was invented - it was invented for any poor bugger who even attempts to visit Fife! This morning I took a quick glance at a map, saw my route was Falkirk, North Queensferry and figured - piece of cake - 45 mins tops. 90 minutes later and after 4 trips through the centre of effing Falkirk I was so in despair I got Marcel to text Derek at work and ask him for directions! You see once you get to Falkirk there are no sign posts for anywhere in Fife - not Kircaldy, N Queensferry - nowhere - just Glasgow or Edinburgh or Grangemouth - and I knew I didn't want those! Grudgingly, I ended up going from Falkirk to Edinburgh and crossing the flaming Forth road bridge though knowing that was an utterly stupid route. 

At least the way back would be easy - I mean Glasgow is a big place so would be signposted, surely??? Nope. From North Queensferry there are no signs for Dunfermline 5 miles away, from there, none for Glasgow though plenty for Rosyth and Kircaldy - you see once you are ensnared in the trap that is Fife, they don't let you out again! Fife is obviously for Fifers and people with satnav - they do nothing to make it easy to get there and nothing to help you escape either. 

I am glad to report we made it home safely - eventually. And I won't be rushing back (not till I buy satnav anyway) though Dunfermline and North Queensferry were very pretty.

JANUARY - THAT MOST SCOTTISH OF MONTHS

January has always seemed a more Scottish month than most. I started to analyse why... It starts I guess with all those singing-shortbread-tin programmes on hogmanay on the telly. Right up to bells you get nothing but a whole load of twee Scottish twaddle and folk singing songs their granny used to sing. A week into January the haggises (is that really the plural of haggis?) are already appearing on the supermarket shelves saying 'Burns Supper' to us. Already I had to laugh last week when my dad, that most Scottish Nationalist of Scots announced - 'I don't know why we have a Burns supper down at the golf club, I mean first we have to listen to Robert Burns' poetry and let's face it, that's shite and as for haggis, neeps and tatties, well that's ok as a side dish along with a good steak but on it's own it is pretty crap!'
Then of course this year all we are hearing about is tomorrow's big anniversary of the day the rich Scottish aristocrats sold our souls. I don't see many people out celebrating that one somehow.
Today was interesting though, back on the topic of Scots poetry. With 10 days to go till the school's Burns supper, both kids came home from school today with a poem in old Scots to learn off by heart. Their reactions were so typical of their characters. Whereas Marcel pranced around the room trying to recite Burns' own Robert Bruce's march to Bannockburn, already almost word perfect complete with exaggerated accent and pronunciation, Charlotte squirmed in a corner at the mere thought of reciting anything in this weird tongue and couldn't even bring herself to utter the title of her teacher's chosen poem, Macrae's Three Craws, which of course she insisted on calling 'Three Crows'. And as always, when I asked Charlotte if she could translate it, she had no trouble doing so, but was really, really uncomfortable at the thought of speaking that foreign language!

WEATHER RIGHT UP TO OUR ARMPITS

I went to pick up Pudge today as usual at 1 o'clock. His nursery is about 200 metres from the river Kelvin in Kirkintilloch. As I drove along parallel to the river on its south bank every road on my left had a sign up saying 'road closed'. I didn't think much about it till I went to turn left into the road where the nursery is and that road too was closed! I managed to gain access after pointing out my baby was up there but wasn't allowed to drive beyond the nursery. The Kelvin had burst its banks and cars were in it up to their steering wheels. Why didn't I have my camera with me? I have made a mental note to leave my old camera in the boot of my car from tomorrow onwards. If the road is still in the same state I will photograph it then, but in the meantime these shots of Scotland also taken today probably give you a fair idea of the scale I am talking about.

EVER SO SWEET

This shop window in Ayr is just so British Seaside, isn't it? You can almost see your kids teeth rot just looking at it, can't you? I looked at the fry-up in the middle in particular and thought yeuch, just as Marcel and Charlotte said in unison, 'Look at the ham and eggs, they are soooo cool!'

CEILIDHS

Just flicking through the channels and saw a bunch of people ceilidh dancing. I used to go to the Riverside all the time between about 1985 and 1997 - when you aren't the world's greatest dancer, ceilidhs are a fun and easy option.

I have great memories of there. I had to pretend to be a nursing student once to get in as it was booked for a private do. I also vaguely remember Vivian getting us all in after it was full one night by showing someone else's press pass and saying we were writing a piece on it for a big national newspaper! Another time Maree and I had an eye-opening experience in more ways than one. She got a black eye on a night out simply by following me - the problem being she's at least 20cm taller than me so as I walked under a shelf, she walked straight into it! That was a hard one to explain.

Of course the last ceilidh I went to was on 26-7-97. Maybe that Strip the Willow just before midnight was just one step too far at 39.5 weeks pregnant! (And it must not have been a pretty sight). Marcel, of course, showed up on 27-7-97.

I must get back to dancing.

SOLD OUT

Oh dear! Next month's France Scotland football match sold out before I could acquire tickets for it - bad parent :-( Any volunteers to break the news to the football crazy kids?