Life in the Big City

Come along for the walk to work that D. takes each morning. (Eventually T. will meet him after work when it’s not a.) raining, b.) cold, c.) raining and cold, or d.) dark or even e.) frosty/snowing. You see how often this will occur.)

On his walk to the office, D. visits the sheep both to and from work, enjoying the odd looks he gets, and particularly the odd poses (the one below had been eating, kneeling with its front legs only so as to get closer to the grass).

Once past the field of sheep, D. gets to see if it will be a morning of visiting with the bunnies. There are as many as four of them who settle for a good graze outside the cemetery, when it’s sunny and there haven’t been any dogs out walking. He’s only ever seen them once in the evening, though.

Walking home from work, D. visits the guinea pigs, whose cage is sized so as to exactly fit into one quarter of someone’s front yard, and which get moved from section to section daily. They keep the grass effectively trimmed, and seem quite happy. We wonder where they live when it snows, though.

On Tuesdays, T. catches a cab and picks D. up at his work, then we’re off to the train station for our weekly trip into Glasgow. We get into the city a few hours before rehearsal so that T. can pillage the Glasgow library system (we’re not telling them that we’ve moved) and add yet more books to her to-be-read piles. After we’ve browsed and loaded up, we stop for dinner, then make our way to chorus, where, two hours later, another train trip and taxi ride sees us home, usually by around 10:30.

The return journey from Glasgow is sometimes eventful, depending upon which train we manage to catch. Sometimes the ridiculousness of the railway company means that a late train home is simply stacked full of party people — cheery and loud — or, cranky and exhausted. Or, as happened a few weeks ago, an engine breaks down, and we’re all shifted to a new line. It’s always an adventure… of sorts. Hopefully the lines will continue to run smoothly as the weather frosts over, which, since it snowed in Aberdeen this past Tuesday (only four hours north of us) will be happening soonish, we fear! At D’s office, they are quickly making plans to allow the staff to dial-in and work from home; they have tons of work to do, and are keeping a wary eye on the weather.

Just today we finally finished with the last box in the library, and can now say officially that there are no more unopened boxes in the entire house (except the garage)! There are still two or three boxes lingering, but those are mainly art supplies and computer equipment (what does one do with all of the cables which accumulate?) that we’re finding a place to store. We’ve finally figured out how the recycling system works (it’s not single-stream, confound them all, and cardboard is compostable, but not newspaper… Really!?), and after some annoying lessons, we know that if we want a taxi to come all the way out here, we must phone ahead several hours in advance to be certain that one is available. We’re no longer using the weekends to dash around and try to make up for things which have gone wrong during the week, so we’re getting to the point where we are once again baking each weekend (nothing too exciting so far) and venturing forth a bit more into the community. (At the end of the month we’re taking in a play at the University playhouse and looking forward to it!) We’re also pricing plane tickets home for the holidays, strictly in a “maybe” kind of way… so far they’re ridiculously overpriced, so …yeah. Maybe.

While Halloween is (thankfully) not a “thing” here (people do “fancy dress” randomly, but more often for Christmas), already we’re seeing signs for New Year’s celebrations, and much to our horror, Dobbies, a large garden center in these parts, has contracted our chorus to sing for their kick-off of Christmas specials in two different stores, Glasgow and Edinburgh. We loathe the idea of caroling in October — but it means a nice chunk of change for the chorus, and these shiny, clinky-bits make El Maestro very happy indeed, so we suppose we’ll slouch over and help out as we can… it’s just a bit less convenient when a forty minute train trip precedes it! (The one in Edinburgh is just as inconvenient, but we’re actually closer than others, so we’ll probably be there.)

Meanwhile, in the field across from us, the farmer is stacking higher and higher piles of branches, and along D’s route to work, someone has hacked and stacked an old wooden dresser. The pyromaniacs of autumn can now rejoice! All of the lovely Bonfire-y traditions make us want to roast some apples and make a pie… so, we’ll catch up with you later!

-D & T