Perthshire Open Studios

Our friend Mhairi makes lovely jewellery. Everything she makes is beautifully hand crafted.

This week she is been involved in the Perthshire Open Studios week and is been exhibiting with Gerry and Alison in their studio. It is a unique oppertunity to meet local artists and makers in their studio's, watch them work and even have a chance to buy something really lovely...Christmas is only 3 months away......

Visit http://www.perthshireopenstudios.com/ for more info and if you are free this week, why not go along!

So the world didn't end today....

Work today has consisted of much speculation about whether we would indeed be swallowed up into a great big black hole or not. There were a few interesting theories flying around my classes...

Firstly, the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) would create are enormous black hole and by 09.15 would would all have disappeared into it. Life as we know it would be at an end. As the day went on new deadlines for the black hole swallowing us up were created, to allow for the fact that we were still here.

The second theory argued was that the world was not going to end today. A black hole would be created, however it was apparently going to be so small the only small things would get sucked into it and we were too big. I can see this becoming an excuse for the mysterious ongoing disappearance of pencils, rulers, jotters and anything required in class! :p

A group of pupils informed me that since the world was going to end today, there would have be no point in wasting their last night on Earth doing their homework!!!!! I am glad to add that the homework in question was not for me!

After much speculation about 'Big Bang Day', it is good to see that the £5billion the French and Swiss spent creating it was well spent and that we were all still here to see the the two little lights on the screen. I was informed by a pupil at the end of the day that I was wrong, we had not yet survived 'Big Bang Day', because, wait for it, we are not going to get swallowed into said enormous black hole until tomorrow morning!Although who is to say? After all no-one seems to know exactly when they plan to run the first actual collision!!!

Gwen

Back to school...

....what already???? You must be joking....

Ahh yes the echos of pupils and teachers alike, sounding all round Scotland.

It is true, as it always is, that the summer holidays have flown by. It is hard to believe that we have had 7 weeks off this year.

I have mixed feeling about going back as you might expect, but it will be nice to get back in there, I do enjoy my job, well, most of the time anyway!!!

For me it is just 'going back', for James and Esmé this week marks excting new times. Esmé starts at the school nursery and she is very excited about this. Apparently, big girls(and boys, no doubt) go to the school nursery! James, of course starts, in his first teaching job, so tomorrow is a very big day for him. Luckily he is feeling alot better.

I would like to say a big thank you to James and Esmé for a lovely holiday. After a hard year it has been great to spend time together.

So, good luck for your first day at school James!!! Don't wind the older ones up, they'll flush your head down the toilet........or is that just at secondary?

Gwen x

...and he's home!!! Hooray!!!

Just to let you know that James is now home, having had his mri this morning. He is feeling much better and is very glad to be properly reunited with his laptop, without the fear of having to leave it at 8.30pm! Glad to have you home Honey xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I would to say a GREAT BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has helped us out, while James has been in hospital. I have no idea how we would have managed without you all.

Day Release

James here on day release from hospital. The NHS at 60 is in fine shape and I have a room of my own, en suit, with a TV. It doesn't have internet access though. I now realise just how much I use it now for everything.

Hopefully I will get my MRI scan early on in the week and with any luck it will indicate what is wrong. So far I have avoided the threatened lumber puncture. The CT scan was interesting, something akin to sticking your head into the whirling drum of a washing machine.

Gwen has been great and made sure I am getting plenty of food and reading material to stop me going mad. I really miss being at home though, this really isn't how I planned to end my summer holidays.

Inverness

Last week we were up in Inverness on holiday, having a lovely time. We had intended to get a holiday post on here sooner, however, James started feeling unwell and after a trip to the doctor on Tuesday, ended up enjoying the hospitality of Ninewells. He is feeling much better thankfully, but is still in so the docs can keep an eye on him. Esmé and I are missing him loads and hoping that he will be better and back home very soon. I have cobbled together a post, we had such a good time and did so much, I am not about to try and get it all down, just some of the highlights. It will be be wholly inadequate without James' input though, I fear.

We hadn't planned on going away on holiday, but it didn't take much to change our minds!!!
So, we headed up to the lovely Iris' B&B(please get in touch for contact details). As we left Carnoustie the sun was shining on us and it remained so for the whole of our holiday. To be honest as we sat out every night in shorts and t-shirts til 11pm, it was hard to believe that we were holidaying in the north of Scotland! We slapped on the factor 50 daily and topped it up and we all have managed to still get a tan.
We managed to squeeze so much into our 5 days away.

We went along the coast abit to Burghead to visit the old fort and well. We never got into the well, the key holder wasn't available :-(

The rock pools at Burghead are fantastic, they were all crawling with crabs, hermit crabs, anemones and sea hares(as seen in the picture).
The stone was a lovely golden colour and the water in pools was so clear...they really were the perfect rock pools!!!



We decided to have lunch on the beach at Burghead and discovered that it wasn't just the rock pools that were amazing. Burghead also sports perfect sand castle building sand.

You can imagine the seen Mum and Dad getting stuck into building a huge sand castle, small child disowning parents.
Esmé was trying to pull down the castle, she took great delight when she, along with the various friends she had made in the beach, was allowed to knock down the castle!

May we add it was the biggest and best castle on the beach and there were lots of people at the beach!!!




If you are in Inverness you really do have to visit the Black Isle, it really does have some beautiful spots and interesting places to visit. We didn't make it up last time, so we thought we better had this time.

We found a museum in Rosemarkie that houses the local history information and artifacts, including locally found carved stones. It is great to see stones in the area they belong to... The museum also had a good range of things for kids to do, including this harp, which children are encouraged to play!

We saw alot of different birds and animals while we were away. We watched a red squirrel run up a tree, saw a deer, Esmé spotted many a bunny and there were jellyfish galore.

However, while up in Cromarty stood caught sight of a little lost mole looking for his mole hole. For all of us it was our first ever mole sighting!!







I fondly remember as a small child, probably about the same age as Esme is now, going on a barge on a canal. I don't think that I had ever been back to visit a canal since, until last Thursday!















Now Esmé would have loved to go on one of the boats in the canal, we didn't manage that, but we were lucky enough to see 2 boats go down through the locks on the canal. Esmé was fascinated watching the water level out between locks. She was a little disappointed that they wouldn't let her on them though!!!







We walked right along the tow path between the two road swing bridges. On our way along we found the first of the years raspberries. James bravely clambered in to get them and oh they may have been small, but they were nice and juicy!









On our visit to the Black Isle earlier in the week we had run out of time and had to forget visiting the Black Isle Brewery.
We decided that before went headed for the lowlands on our way home, we would pop in. It is a small scale micro brewery and it was interesting to see where the beer comes from.

All real ale lovers should try the Black Isle Brewery beers and if up that way, it is worth a quick visit, even if it is just to stock up...






Happy holidays!!!

We have been meaning to put this on since we came back but here is a video of the lovely summer weather at the summit of Stuc a Chroin back on the 5th of the month. Wintery conditions forecast for high tops this week temperatures close to zero brrrrrrrrr.