Edinburgh 1.7.09: Officious Misses and Communion Tokens

To the Scottish national library yesterday, with folderol at the desk issuing a visitor’s card: two lasses talking at the desk, neither helping (or even acknowledging) those waiting for a card. When I was finally called to the desk, the officious miss I drew greeted me not with a hello, but with a “You’ve filled out only half of the form,” and a peremptory order to complete a form she provided me with on the spot, which was not offered online at the section of the website with forms where we’d downloaded and printed the application form weeks back.

She then tsked-tsked that I had written the date as 1.7, and told me it was 30.7, instead, writing 30 July in a big scrawl over my script. Whereupon I sweetly asked, “30th July?” and she caught herself, said, “I’ve gotten ahead of myself,” and softened to a quasi-humanity.

A few hours reading about Hugh Montgomery and James Hamilton and the settlement of Ulster, and then we walked to Jenner’s, where we had tea and bought two bottles of Montepulciano wine for the dinner. We stopped in Sainsbury’s and got plums for a cobbler, and then home to cook.

Made grillades and grits, using polenta for the grits, with a nice peppery rocket salad to which I added a sharp vinaigrette with a mustard bite. And then the plum cobbler, which turned out good, if I say so.

And I amused the table by trying to scoop out a dip of very hard-frozen ice cream, which went flying through the air and landed neatly in my dish.

Before dinner (well, tea, Ian called it), Margaret Berwick stopped by and she and Ian presented me with a gold token struck for the 400th anniversary, a replica of the 1909 token devised by John White. They gave Steve one, too, in some metal like pewter, and to both of us, replicas of communion tokens from the past. Very kind and very touching.

Edinburgh 30.6.09: Skye Terriers and Murano Hedgehogs

Another nice, slow day. Ian took us on a driving tour of various areas of Edinburgh, beginning with Valvona and Crolla, which he thought we’d like to see for its significance to Alexander McCall Smith’s stories.

It was certainly a beautifully arranged shop with beautiful food, but far less splendid than various sources had made me imagine. We looked but didn’t buy, since we fly to Germany on Ryan Air in two days and weight restrictions are strict.

From there to the Morningside area of the city, where J.K. Rowling used to live, and where she liked to shop at Waitrose. We went there to buy ingredients for our meal tomorrow. Didn’t spot J.K. Rowling or Alexander McCall Smith.

We did, however, enjoy a good cup of Italian coffee at a café on the main shopping street down from the store. And in a small second-hand shop for the disabled across the street, I found a pretty little handmade vase from Guernsey that I’ll bring back as a souvenir of my time in Edinburgh.

Then on to the Grassmarket, where Ian dropped us to shop. It was rather touristy and uninteresting, so we quickly found our way to Westport, a street with several used bookstores that Ian’s daughter Jennifer had kindly marked on a map for us.

Several of these turned out to be closed because it was Monday, so we could only stare longingly at the books displayed in their widows. We did find one open, though, and spent a delightful hour or so in its narrow tunnels of books guarded by a sleeping dog at the entrance—something we had just encountered at a little antiques shop in the Grassmarket, where a Skye terrier in a basket sleepily sprawled across the threshold as we stepped into the store.

People unfailingly helpful and hospitable even when we bought nothing from them. Steve had wanted to find a replacement for the two small thistle-marked whiskey glasses he’s broken from the set we got on our last visit here.

We looked in several second-hand shops to no avail, asking in each where we might find something like that. In each, we received recommendations to stores of nearby competitors, along with detailed instructions (Ebay, etc.) of other options to try if that failed.

In the shop with the Skye terrier at the door, I did spot, however, an adorable Murano hedgehog for Mary’s collection, and bought it. It’ll be handsome in her collection, with its dots of green, yellow, red, and blue on bottom catching light and throwing ribbons of color up into the sparkling crystal.

Then we stopped for a glass of beer and a sandwich at one of the many pubs on either side of the central square in the Grassmarket, and spent some time sitting and writing there, in a garden behind the pub, and on a bench in the square.

We walked on to a Barnados benefit shop selling old lace, and I found a pretty antique linen tea towel fringed with lace for Billie, and a handbag made of reclaimed vintage fabric (green and gold, glimmering in the light) for Kate. The day had turned sunny—our first sunny day since we arrived—and it was pleasant to be out.

A taxi ride home then with a taxi driver from Mauritius, a rest, and then to dinner at Fishers, a seafood place in the oldest part of Leith, where Ian had made reservations, since we wanted to take him and Donna and Albert out to thank them for their hospitality and celebrate Albert’s graduation.

A wonderful meal—fish cakes (smoked haddock and salmon mixed with mashed potato and bread crumbs) with a garnish of rocket salad and Sancerre wine to drink. Donna shared her appetizer of mussels cooked in white wine and garlic, and they were succulent, tender, and delicious.

For dessert, we shared an array of sorbet (raspberry and red currant), toffee cake, strawberries melba, and truffle cake. The latter surprising, since it seemed to be made with ground walnuts, like a Reine de Saba cake. It was delicious, light, not too sweet, with a smoky deep chocolate base.

Afterwards, a little walk around the old harbor area, very romantic as the haar settled in, muffling cries of seagulls above us. We went into the lobby of the old Malmaison hotel (Fishers was across from it) and admired the beautiful square, solid architecture and appointments one finds in many old Edinburgh houses and buildings. And then home to bed, and another chapter about Henrietta, Christopher Wren’s redoubtable traveling cat.

Edinburgh 29.6.09: Castles and Bright Poppies, Golf Courses and Rocky Beaches

Sunday after service Ian took us on a wonderful driving tour along the Firth of Forth south and east of Edinburgh. We went through fishing villages and vacation communities including Musselburgh (the honest town, a welcome sign proudly proclaimed), Prestonpans and Cockenzie, a traditional fishing village, Aberlady (chi-chi beach and golf town), and then inland into rich East Lothian farming country and the typical village of Dirleton, with its beautiful castle that gives the village its name.

Stands of bright scarlet poppies here and there, varied landscape and flora and fauna, ranging from areas of sand dunes and grass populated by many birds to rocky beach and rolling hills with golf courses. Inland, in the farming area, the land flattens and landscapes is dotted with farms, widely dispersed clusters of buildings, and cool green wooded areas.

The graphic is Alexander Runciman's "East Lothian Landscape," in the National Gallery of Scotland.

Edinburgh 28.6.09 (2): Roman Forts and Secret Gardens

After the church, Ian took us to a pub alone the Firth of Forth, overlooking Fife on the opposite shore. It was a wet, misty day and we could see only the outline of Fife, green and rolling, on the other side.

The pub, Starbank, is an old family-run place where we had each a different local beer on tap, a bowl delicious cauliflower soup with cream and flecks of chopped parsley, and an egg and onion sandwich. We shared a bag of crisps in one of those incomprehensible British flavors, roast beef and sharp mustard.

Conversations punctuated by cheers, as the patrons watched Wimbledon on t.v. and cheered when the Scot scored a point. As we sat, the owner brought around a plate of meat pies fresh from the oven and gave us one as a treat. I enjoyed watching the gray river through many-paned windows, some of them with those raised circles surrounding a spy-hole that one sees in windows overlooking water.

Then a driving tour through the little medieval fishing village of Cramond on the river Amond, and to what remains of the Roman fort near Cramond. There Ian took us to a church hall to see a piece of sculpture by the same artist who just made a memorial for the South Leith graveyard, for all those buried there in unmarked graves.

Margaret had shown this to us. It’s on a wall in what the church calls its secret garden, a little space walled off from the graveyard proper, with flowering shrubs, tombstones, and the memorial on a wall.

The memorial is two pieces of sculpture, a gray plaque of granite with sparkling bits, depicting water and fishes, an inscription commemorating the dead buried in unmarked graves. Beneath is a beautiful red sandstone piece showing us a tree with roots exposed. As we looked at the sculpture at Cramond (a fish shaped from a light granite with a beautiful rose streak running through it), Ian told us the fish and water motif in the South Leith memorial echoes an ancient Assyrian carving.

Margaret told us the need for this memorial became apparent as work began recently to run a tramline beside the graveyard. The work began to uncover bones, and the congregation were reminded that a part of the old graveyard once extended beyond its present boundaries in the direction of the tramline.

Then back to Ian and Donna’s house for a rest, followed by a dinner in anticipation of the Sunday event. Guests included Avril, the session clerk and a Leither; Fiona, a nurse and aromatherapist who grew up in Essex but has Fifeshire roots on her mother’s side; Dawn, a Yorkshire woman who’s a librarian; and Louise, the assistant pastor, with her husband Derrick, a religion teacher from Ayrshire.

A wonderful meal prepared by Donna and their daughter Gillian. Appetizers of haggis, bruschetta, sun-dried tomatoes or peppers in puff pastry, a wonderful smoked salmon on tiny pancakes with sour cream. A co-worker of Donna’s had caught and cured the salmon with sugar and smoke. These appetizers with champagne.

Then boeuf bourgignon, mixed vegetables (sugar snap peas and baby corn), and salad. Desserts a marvelous key lime pie in our honor (an American dish), and a pavlova with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and the obligatory (and always mysterious) kiwi.

At dinner Donna asked us to share something of our story (others had done so), and I made a spectacle of myself by mentioning Simpson’s death (the 26th would have been his 58th birthday), and then bursting into tears. Avril and Louise looked very sympathetic, which made me feel slightly less horrible about making a proper fool of myself and discomfiting an entire table full of strange folks.

We seldom have any idea of the deep rivers of feeling that run beneath the surface—the brittle surface—of what we call our selves.

Edinburgh 28.6.09 (1): Dignitaries Hither, Divines Yon

Fanfare now over and done with, Deo gratias. The 400th anniversary event was today. Dignitaries hither, divines yon. The service was moving, especially the communion, celebrated by the assistant pastor Louise Duncan, an Ulsterwoman. Huge shining goblets of inscribed silver filled with port wine, aromatic in the still air of the church, silver platters of bread.

All welcome. Louise emphasized that South Leith is a parish that invites everyone—young, old, everyone—to the table. The opening song was Marty Haugen’s “All Are Welcome in This Place.”

Several older men in kilts. A Mr. Lindsay, a high constable of Leith (if I heard correctly), spoke to me afterwards, twinkling blue eyes and sharp nose like my grandfather’s. Florid complexion. There’s no way we can’t be related, somewhere back in history.

Yesterday, we went with Ian to the church to see if we could help people set up for the celebration. A member of the congregation, Margaret B., gave us a tour, showing us cabinets of old communion tokens in the vestry, which had a Raeburn pointing of a former minister above them (or perhaps Raeburn did only the face).

I particularly liked going to the gallery and looking out at the beautiful carved hammerbeam wooden ceiling with its interlacing woodwork and angels with texts. Margaret told us her family’s pew had been in the gallery when she was a girl, and it bothered her when she realized people were walking to the gallery steps over gravestones each Sunday—and thus wearing down the ancient stones with their inscriptions, on the church floor.

So she got a friend of hers who was with an historical preservation group to photograph the stones. She also told she had an ah-ha moment when she looked down one day as a girl and saw the phrase, Hic iacet. She said to herself (drawing herself up and raising her brows as she told us this), “Ah ha! Hic iacet.”

And I had no idea in the world of the point of that story, no idea about why the inscription suddenly struck her as meaningful. Had she suddenly realized she could read and understand the inscriptions in Latin?

After the tour, we helped a bit setting up the communion things and tables for cake and champagne. Margaret was apparently for years the head of the communion committee and has just been removed from it, which, Ian told us, explained why, when he asked her to give us a tour, she replied, “Oh, but I believed you considered me dispensable.”

We ended the tour with Margaret sitting in the vestry in a venerable old chair made and reserved for the clergy, with us across the table from her on wee elders’ chairs. I had to imagine she knew full well the dignity she was assuming in choosing the dignitary’s seat, since she had tsked-tsked in another room that someone had placed a box on an old stool made to hold a coffin at a funeral and said, “I believe these old objects should be reserved for their proper use or otherwise kept from use.”

Edinburgh 26.6.09: Skating Parsons and Spinach Gnocchi

Now in Leith with the Gilmours. Such lovely people. A Zambian friend, Albert, is with them, to graduate shortly from a university in Glasgow. The South Leith congregation assists him and the school at which he teaches.

Still jet-lagged. We slept long last night, 12 hours, but I still feel tired. Feet and hands terribly swollen. I begin to wonder if I’m reaching a point in my life when travel will become too arduous.

In the entryway of their house, Donna has put a vase of lilies, which are so fragrant that their scent fills the whole house. I woke in the night and got up and could smell them fragrancing the upstairs. I remember just the same variety of lilies, with the same beautiful scent, in Lennoxlove House in Haddington on our last visit to Scotland.

Apprehensive about Sunday. Ian told us today Queen Elizabeth had been invited and apparently wanted to be at the event, but some mix-up may have occurred in her schedule. Then he said that I will replace her. Though he was being facetious, of course, the thought alarmed me. I do have friends who would find that observation—Bill Lindsey as queen—hilarious.

Ian took us for a wonderful driving tour today past Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Craig. Wonderful views—soft Scottish colors (browns, blues, greens, grays) spread in pleasing panorama below the highest places. We looked down on Duddingston church with its loch where Reverend Robert Walker famously skated in the Raeburn painting.

And then he took us to the National Gallery, where the Turner exhibit we had hoped to see was gone. So we had lunch in the café attached to the museum—Steve gnocchi in a spinach-tomato sauce, I a salad of broad beans, ricotta, and nut crumble. The menu promised olives and tomatoes, but none were to be found in the salad.

En Route to Edinburgh 24.6.09: Stars in Liberty's Crown, Kicks in the Kidneys

In the plane in NY, waiting to take off for Edinburgh. Our trip began early today in Little Rock, then to Atlanta and NY, and now overseas.

When we got onto the plane in Little Rock, they announced the air conditioning was not working. And oh by the way, we’ll be delayed due to a malfunction of our computer system that requires us to do all the paperwork by hand.

Then, as we take off: and oh by the way, the bathroom is broken. Inauspicious omens for the start of a trip!

In Atlanta, we prepare to get into the queue for take-off, and an announcement comes. Please keep your seats, ladies and gents. We can’t go further as long as you’re not seated.

Edinburgh, 31.7.01: Bidet Battles and Highlanders

Another clear and pretty morning, though the forecast on t.v. last night said the weather will become unsettled today and rainy the next two days, especially in the Highlands, where we’re headed.

Thinking about the Highlanders: I read somewhere that, if you want to find people who see themselves as Scots in a fierce way, you go to the Borders, where Scottish people accentuate their difference from England.

The Highlanders, according to this book, are not so. Their English is less accented, in the stage Scottish way, than that of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow.

That makes me wonder: is part of the explanation that the Celtic people retain another outlook on life that’s difficult to understand or appreciate in the modern context? True, they remember voraciously, and refuse to forget. True, when stirred to battle, they fight with a vengeance.

But they’re also known for their open-handed hospitality, even to the foe. Despite what the English have done to them, the Irish take the English in, along with a plethora of other races and nationalities. They have a genius for cultural absorption, John Ryan says, a genius the English lack.

I wonder about the spiritual roots of that genius. In everyday life, the Irish forgive freely (despite their penchant for holding incredible grudges). Their everyday discourse is full of little sayings to let the offending party off the hook: Ah, well, he does have that little fondness for the drink; ah, well, the poor darlin’s not herself today.

A different outlook on life, a non-modern one: forgive, because you and yourself may end up in the same boat one day. It’s as if Celtic people have retained the ability to see something of a hidden spiritual order we modern folk don’t see. We calculate according to an empirical calculus.

Perhaps they calculate, too, but using a spiritual calculus: forgive, because in the spiritual world, what goes ‘round comes ‘round. You yourself will need forgiveness one day, and every act of unforgiveneness now diminishes your ability to prepare for your time of trial.

The evening light in Edinburgh: we’ve just driven from Tolcross to Stockbridge, where we’re staying, past the National Portrait Gallery—gorgeous light, the sinking sun hitting the turrets of the Gallery, bringing the brown stone to rosy flame. It’s only twilight now, almost 10 P.M. Weather remained clear, fair, beautiful all day, and the evening is cool.

In this northerly clime, far fewer flowers than in Ireland, which, also northerly, is made temperate by the Gulf Stream. I do see buddleias, though not in such profusion as in Ireland. And the hedge (Ligustrum vulgare) is in bloom, making the parks sweet. In Ireland on the coastal roads in Co. Waterford, the wax-leaf ligustrum was in bloom, yielding a heavy fragrance to the air.

Odiferous things are fewer here than in more tropical climates, but seem to have an uncommon sweetness—i.e., those that are sweet. In Lennoxlove House, huge bouquets of lilies from a wedding in the house, with a gorgeous fragrance. I noticed the same in Ireland.

One almost never smells cooking on the streets in Scotland and Ireland. The occasional waft of old grease around a chip shop, but otherwise, nothing. New Orleans by contrast…. It’s partly climate, of course, and then there’s the garlic used nowhere in Scotland or Ireland.

Day spent shopping in St. Stephen’s St., NW Circus, Prince St. Then drove to South Leith church to pick up papers from John A. Pastor was there, a nice-seeming young man. How typical of the church structures to send a young man to this grungy urban parish, and to give him a female assistant pastor and female elders (well, the latter not appointed by the church). Like novice pastors, women are always assigned to what are considered grunt-work parishes. Tea again there, jangling my nerves, since we’d just had tea at Jeffers Dept. Store, and tea and coffee for breakfast a few hours earlier.

Then more shopping….

Bill’s Bidet Battle: the b and b in Haddington had a bidet. No one has ever taught me how to use one. (Is this a skill taught anywhere?) Whenever I see one, I’m fatally fascinated. I want to try it, but feel it’s a slightly naughty thing to do, so I try it shamefully, doors locked, ready to jump at any sound.

I sat on this one several times, contorting my body to twist knobs behind me, trying to regulate the hot-cold (and always shocking myself with a jolt of cold water or scalding myself with hot), and fearing that the stream of water would go flying out of the bidet.

I finally decided one’s meant to sit on the contraption “backwards”—i.e., facing the knobs. Did so, got the water regulated, and found the stream didn’t even go out of the toilet. I bideted myself with total enjoyment.

Next day, another try at it. Alas, I was over-confident. In the first place, with my pants around my ankles, I couldn’t face “backwards,” so I faced front. Jiggled, turned, and to my horror, got myself scalded in a part too delicate to describe.

Off I leapt, followed by a jet of scalding water that drenched the wall, a decorative towel hanging on it, and the carpet around the infernal machine. I’m no nearer to deciphering the mysteries of bidet than I was a week ago.

Sea-birds swirling and crying as I write. I saw them inland in Dumfries, too. No place in Scotland is far from the sea, and the birds remind one of that constantly.

Edinburgh, 30.7.01: Headless Celts and Lemon Meringue Roulade

Dinner last night wonderful. We went to the Maitlandfield Brasserie just down the road from our b and b in Haddington. It’s a glass-roofed room outside a hotel of the same name.

There was a 3-course special for ₤ 9.50: leg of lamb with new potatoes and vegetables, preceded by vegetable soup and followed by a wonderful lemon meringue roulade. The latter was very light, almost like a mousse in texture, topped by whipped cream and served with a fruit sauce made of small cherries and some other fruit (red currants?) in a raspberry syrup. This was on one side. On the other, a rich lemon sauce. A ground cherry with its husk and a slice of orange were garnishes.

Another very clear and pretty day to see Edinburgh. I’m in an elegant drawing room of the b and b, which looks through ceiling-to-floor windows into a garden of green lawn surrounded by flowers and shrubs. The shrubs are waving in the breeze.

Lindsay monument, South Leith church: “In affectionate remembrance of Captain James Lindsay, ship owner, a native of Leith, who died 26^th March 1839, and of Helen Allen, his wife, a native of Alloa, who died 10^th April 1849, aged 63, both interred in this churchyard. Erected by their son William Lindsay, Esq., F.R.S.C., Hermitage Hill, Leith, 1875. Also the said William Lindsay, Ex Provost of Leith, who died 20^th February 1884, aged 64. So He bringeth them unto the Haven, where they would be. Psalm CVII, 30.”

Before coming here, we went to St. Mary’s church in Haddington and saw the Lauderdale aisle. Very moving. It’s a small chapel, locked off from the church itself by an iron gate and glass doors, with elaborate monuments to the Lauderdales. One shows the family line back into the 13^th century, as well as I recall, indicating which of those in the line of descent is buried in the church.

On the wall adjoining the church, a bright statue of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child, with the three kings—hence the name of the chapel: Three Kings. Before this, several rows of electric candles.

I lit one of those and prayed, very moved to be in the chapel. I felt somehow a great sense of peace and belonging, as if at home.

On to the South Leith church. The odd thing is that I directed us there without having any idea where it was.

Kate, our b and b owner, told us how to get to Leith, but didn’t know where the church was. She directed us to the Haddington library, but their local history expert turned out to be out till 2, so we took a chance that we could find the church on our own and drove in right to it.

It’s back from Constitution St. in Leith, with an old graveyard outside. When we walked in, loud soft rock music being played by the beadle, a nice man who called John A., a local historian, for us.

A. talked and talked and talked, and tried to bully us into spending more time there (almost 2 P.M. when we left!), telling us it takes 5 hours to see the old church thoroughly. He did tell me what he knew of David Lindsay, and shared bits of historical arcana.

The most interesting was that the Celts removed the heads of enemies, trepanned them, and buried them around springs…which became holy wells. The origin of holy wells in the British Isles….

We met one of the pastors, a nice woman who invited us to have coffee, and an assortment of church workers. The pastor invited us to the 1 P.M. prayer service, led by a (female) elder. It was very wordy—we read together all of Hosea 2, accompanied by readings from an Israeli poet.

Interesting to see a parish dating to 1443, now in a decayed industrial area of the city, still vital. The pastor talked of the church’s need to move from the condemnatory attitude of Knox to an accepting, inclusive, welcoming posture. And Mr. A. talked of the Victorian church’s presumption in assuming the church can be exclusively middle class.

Somehow, I felt less “connection” here than in the Lauderdale aisle. Perhaps I used up all my connective energies in the St. Mary church? Or was I simply overwhelmed by Mr. A.?

A few desultory hours afterward in Edinburgh on the Royal Mile. The tawdry tourist shops were repulsive, and the crowds of polyglot tourists tiresome. We did find a nice little shop in a lawyer’s close, where we bought a glass hedgehog for M. Russell. Also had leek and potato soup and shared prawn mayonnaise sandwich at a pub off the Mile.

Then home to Haddington, shopping at an Alda supermarket on the way, where we got several scotches to bring home, and some goodies for dinner: a burgundy, a bit of ham and chicken pie, a wonderful Highland cheddar, some oatcakes, raw vegetables and a dressing, and chocolate. All of which we’ve eaten, and now watching t.v. as it rains softly outside.