| lesley153
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Gary, Jonathan first went to Edinburgh in 2001, and has been telling me that for nine years. It's just a question of when - finding when he has enough time and I have the strength. He suggested we go away at Christmas but I said no because I would just have dragged him back, and I wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway. Soon, perhaps. We haven't been away together, except to family, for years. We had a week in the Lake District, and it was lovely.
I looked up Giulianos, and the menus are mouth-watering, although I did smile when I got to the final set menu and found deep-fried haddock and chips. And they're going to open one inside the Playhouse. Captive audience or what? Does anyone care? No, thought not.
VM, I am on a a special care list - that's what they call a service call - and have been for ten years or more. I've also made sure they know all about my medical issues. But there's a difference between the women at the other end of the phone, and the knuckle-draggers who empty the bins. And sometimes don't empty the bins. There's no point letting the bins air out, and certainly no point cleaning them, because they will be hooked up on the machinery and immediately pick up all the filth from everyone else's.
I probably will try haggis, given the opportunity. I'll usually try anything once, and wait to see if I regret it. :)
Deunan, I'd forgotten about languages. So often I've asked for help finding something in a shop, and been greeted by a blank stare and a shout for someone who does speak English. I asked a manager once, what's the point of having shop floor staff who can't communicate with the customers, and she said she thought the top people might be scared of accusations of discrimination if they refused to emply anyone who can't speak English. I'd be more worried about losing customers, but they know we won't go somewhere else if we can wait five minutes and find someone to talk to. Surely if communicating is part of the job, they can't complain?
I think the truth is that immigrants who can't speak English make very cheap shelf-stackers.
I read a while ago about complaints that a job advert asked for reliable applicants. Apparently it discriminated against unreliable applicants. I'd love to think that they were having a laugh at the expense of the politically correct, but who knows?
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Reply #1021. Aug 05 10, 12:44 PM
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| Professer
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Yes they do have one inside the theatre, as the theatre does a combined ticket and meal deal now and again.
The Carbanara is to die for, must say the food is really good there even the fish and chips and mushy peas lol.
If you do go Lesley the travelodge Central is a good place to stay, is 5 min taxi ride from station, and is round the corner from the royal mile. When i stay in Edinburgh thats my perferred stay.
Reply #1022. Aug 05 10, 1:13 PM
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honeybee4 
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We live in the country and on trash pickup days, trash was scattered from one trash bin to another up the road and so on. My husband sat out and waited for the trash truck and he told the men that he was tired of having to pick up the trash that they were scattering along the road. It continued until he called the companie's main office, that worked.
Reply #1023. Aug 05 10, 1:16 PM
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| lesley153
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Jonathan's only ever been there on orchestra tours, and they stay in the Napier University digs, which are arranged in little clusters of five bedroom to each communal living room and kitchen - most civilised! I shall remember the Travelodge - thank you.
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So far, calling the council offices has worked, except when the men have said the job has been done and it hasn't been. I suppose the council is their employer.
The black rubbish bin is back by the front door now. They're usually in a little row but someone has decided to put it on the opposite side from the other two. I'm happy with that. It's where I can reach it.
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It may stop the milkman getting to the doorstep but I'll worry about that if I have to. I have had milk delivered for as long as I have had a kitchen, and would hate to see the service destroyed, which I think Europe wants to do, but I think it's destroying itself.
A new delivery man took over the round last year. When he left his first invoice, I got the money ready to pay him with. For weeks I had money just waiting for him to call and claim it, and even rang the dairy a few times telling them to stop sending me reminders - all he has to do is knock at the door and the money will be his. Eventually he left a scruffy note telling me to leave it out for him with the empty milk bottles. That makes him the first milkman I've had who I haven't met.
He delivers at 3am. Not nice. They used to deliver six days a week, possibly even seven days a week once upon a time, but it now tends to be three everywhere. He was coming on Mon, Wed and Fri, but changed it to Tue, Thurs and Sat, because he was being attacked. I have to take their word for it, but I've never seen anything in the news about 3am attacks on milkmen, on any day of the week. Dogs biting people who deliver things, but not people attacking milkmen.
Before Jonathan went off to Devon, he bought some filtered milk, which tastes the same as normal milk but lasts for much longer. I am enjoying not having to stay up till 3am to take the bottles in before it cooks or freezes, or trying to go to sleep early and get up early to take it in before it cooks or freezes. I was getting organic milk in nice glass bottles, and finding that it had usually gone off a day or two before its best-before date. Doesn't look like I'll be going back. |
Reply #1024. Aug 05 10, 2:52 PM
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honeybee4
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It would be nice to have home delivery of milk. I got married in 1962 and we had home delivery for a couple of years. There were a couple of local dairys that bottled there own milk and delivered it to the community. They shut down and I haven't heard of any home deliverys around here since then.
Reply #1025. Aug 05 10, 3:49 PM
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satguru
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I wonder what junk they filter out if it allows the milk to last without it? And if it has that effect why isn't it done automatically? I've never come across that but know if they bake bread longer it won't go blue after a couple of days, they speed them through the ovens and don't care if it gets thrown away as only a family of 6 could finish it in time otherwise.
I had haggis in a chip shop in Portsmouth Harbour in 1984 and was very nice, even better than the black pudding I had in the Happy Eater in Buckfastleigh when I had the mixed grill and decided not to dismiss the strange fruit they'd placed next to the parts I was familiar with (liver, bacon, chips, beans etc). That was pretty good but haven't come across it since, and when I went to the same chip shop years later they'd stopped doing haggis. Sainsbury's have it but like the bread you need someone to share the few pound's worth of packet before it goes out of date. I don't want to get bored with it just to finish it all myself in time. But highly recommended and should be in Sainsbury's at least. Good with chips of course.
Reply #1026. Aug 05 10, 5:07 PM
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| veronikkamarrz
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When I buy a loaf of bread, I keep it in the freezer, and use as needed. It's only me, and a bread can last a month!
I have used Silk (soy milk) and liked it very much. I believe it stays longer than regular.
Reply #1027. Aug 05 10, 5:16 PM
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| lesley153
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I'd much rather support a continuing milk delivery service, but have thoroughly enjoyed not being woken up at 3am, and am less keen if I'm going to start being woken up by clinking glass at 3am again, and to find that the milk goes off too quickly if I don't take it in quickly enough. Decisions decisions!
OK, I'll try the haggis! :)
I have with much gratitude gone back to the good bread I was eating before I suspected that I had gluten intolerance - coeliac disease - but it comes unsliced. If I were to freeze it unsliced, I wouldn't be able to do anything with it - except perhaps thaw it and make bread pudding yum.
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I'm up too late again, but enjoying the glorious silence, as it used to be before the apologies for humans moved in next door.
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Good day today. Nice long phone chat this morning with the niece who was ill a year ago (still is, really), but acted as information receiver-transmitter for me while I was in hospital, and also for her younger sister, who has just spent an aggregate three months in hospital after gastric surgery, still can't eat properly, and will probably have to go back: and another nice long chat this evening with one who sent me a get well card "from your favourite niece."
Jonathan did a matinée this afternoon as well as a normal evening performance today. I thought he'd be tired but at midnight they were all still going, and having a ceilidh. Trying to remember if I ever had that much energy. Might be easier if I could remember being 22. |
Reply #1028. Aug 05 10, 8:39 PM
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| veronikkamarrz
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Unsliced bread? Yikes! :)
Reply #1029. Aug 05 10, 9:40 PM
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| Lochalsh
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I love Edinburgh. I mentioned salmon specifically because I fondly recall sitting in a second-floor restaurant on Prince Street and dining on salmon fresh from the North Sea, which I could easily see from the many-windowed room.
It's a city for those who love literature. Not too far from the Royal Mile, there's a whole area--maybe a sort of museum, though I don't remember exactly--dedicated to Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotsmen all.
Oh, and the Tattoo, and the lone piper skirling high above the city at the entrance to Edinburgh Castle ....
It's a place for romantics, to be sure.
Lesley, it would be a wonderful place for you and Jonathan to shake off the cobwebs from the recent health scares and hospitalizations. Just dress warmly. I was there in mid-August, just arrived from Spain in sandals and light slacks--and I had to equip myself with closed-toe shoes, a sweater, and long, heavy pants just to attend the evening Tattoo.
Yeah, and haggis is great. So's the single malt, of course!
I'd love to see you go to such a pretty place, and the land of your conception. *giggle* You're a dear wee lass, and deserve that beautiful country to the north of England.
Reply #1030. Aug 05 10, 10:31 PM
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| Professer
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I agree with Lochalsh Lesley in every way, have to say i love Edinburgh this time of year and unless raining i can walk around in a nice pair oif trousers and a t shirt.
Went to the edinburgh fringe some 3 years ago to see the launch of a new musical, when we came out the heavens opend and we ended up drowned
Reply #1031. Aug 06 10, 1:23 AM
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| Lochalsh
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Professer, what is it the Scots say? "Scotland would be paradise if only it had a roof"? And,yes, during an August daytime, a t-shirt's enough. It's just when night descends over the bonny braes that one freezes oneself!
Ah, but my own heart's in the Highlands, and on the Isle of Skye. Let's get Lesley to Edinburgh first, and she'll then want to tour the rest of the land.
By the way, I love England, too, and it has a few decent poets to its credit. :)
Lesley, good morning, when it suits to you to arise from your late-to-bed sleep! :) Did you dream you'd awaken to a travelogue or two?
Reply #1032. Aug 06 10, 1:54 AM
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| Professer
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Lochalsh hope lesley does not mind me replying to you here, but my heart lies in the Highlands too in paticular Invergordon, but i love Skye, and Plockton and Durnish
Reply #1033. Aug 06 10, 2:10 AM
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| lesley153
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Yes, very much yikes at the bread. It's a nuisance, but it's good bread, made from organic stoneground wholemeal flour, and I think it's worth the inconvenience. It's very dense, so I'd want it sliced it more thinly than most, certainly more thinly than any of the settings on in-house slicing machines, and then it would fall to bits. :( So you take a brick of bread home, and attack it with a breadknife.
Perhaps breadknives and breadboards are what Old People have, like cut glass fruit bowls? I have long suspected that you can tell how long a couple has been married for, by counting how many cut glass fruit bowls they've got.
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Lochalsh remembers sitting in Edinburgh, eating salmon fresh from the North Sea, and I remember sitting in Boston, looking out over the bay, eating fishy things and blueberries. Wouldn't it be nice if we had as much respect for our home-grown things as we did for things we need to travel hundreds or thousands of miles for?
I've seen the Tattoo on the telly, and it was impressive and enjoyable. It was one of the years Jonathan's orchestra was there, and the announcer welcomed Bedfordshire youth musicians, which was nice.
Isn't a good malt the drink of choice to accompany haggis, neeps and tatties? Or perhaps it's just my drink of choice to accompany anything.
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Bad luck about getting wet, Gary. :) I hadn't heard the line about Scotland having a roof, but I love it.
No, Lochalsh, I hadn't expected to wake up to travelogues, so that was a nice surprise. It's OK, you don't have to praise England and English poets, in the interests of balance or anything else, but perhaps you could do that in a travelogue about England?
No, Gary, there is no reason for me to object to your chatting about Scotland or the Highlands. Anything that keeps a cheerful, positive chat going is most welcome. |
Reply #1034. Aug 06 10, 10:01 AM
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| Lochalsh
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I remember sitting in Boston and environs, eating clam chowder and blueberries, so I do appreciate some of our indigenous offerings. By the way, if you're going to talk about Massachusetts, please pay some homage to cranberries! I also like the sweet Silver Queen corn I had when I lived in Iowa, as well as the various little fishies available to me when I lived in Florida. (Yes, typical American: move, move, move).
I truly think Boston is the hub of the universe, as it advertises itself, and I'd even have moved there at one point if it weren't so bone-chilling cold in winter! Oh, and my first college boyfriend was from the Bronx, so you and I have trod some of the same paths in the U.S.
Reply #1035. Aug 06 10, 10:34 AM
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| Lochalsh
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Bone-chillingly, I should have said. As for English, I know nothing. :(
Reply #1036. Aug 06 10, 10:54 AM
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| lesley153
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The trip to Boston was short and sweet, part of our honeymoon! and one of my cousins was then working there, as children's book editor for Houghton Mifflin. (She puts on her CV now that she was Textbook Editor, so perhaps it was for a mixture of ages, or perhaps she's ashamed of working on books for children. I don't know why - I'd have thought that responsibility for children's books was something to be proud of.)
I don't remember any cranberries. Is there such a thing as a cranberry that wouldn't strip paint? And isn't Iowa the corn hub of the universe?
Bone-chilling, bone-chillingly... most of us see what was meant, not what was written. If someone corrects or points out a typo, I can spend five minutes just looking for the original mistake. Except proofreaders, I suppose. Any proofreaders watching?
Hi, Deunan! Thank you, I am feeling surprisingly good; possibly better than I deserve. :) Healing, moving a little more, reducing painkillers - it's all very gradual, but it's all going in the right direction, for which I am inexpressibly grateful. My chances of surviving this were 90% and it feels good to be on the right side of the % sign. :)
Something else good that's coming out of this is a new sort of relationship with my brother's children. They are no longer bro's irritating sprogs; they are adults, and we hae been communicating as adults. They have also said that Jonathan is family. That I think was worth waiting for.
How about you - where shall we look to see your news? |
Reply #1037. Aug 06 10, 12:39 PM
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| Lochalsh
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Proofreader here, thanks to a summer at the University of Chicago.
Surprised? :) (Says Lochalsh the Obsessive)
People refer to HM as How-ton, Hoo-ton, Huff-ton and Hoh-ton. At one point, the editors there had t-shirts (that they wore away from the office, I'd imagine) that listed all those variations, along with a "Who Cares?" at the end. :)
Am I remiss in asking after your health? You just sound so good--and well--that I almost feel you're back to your long-ago normal. Maybe it's just wishful thinking ....
Reply #1038. Aug 06 10, 1:04 PM
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| Lochalsh
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See, I did it again. Should've said "Am I remiss in *not*...."
And,yes, Lesley, I do indeed drive myself crazy. :)
Thank goodness for painkillers, no?
Reply #1039. Aug 06 10, 1:09 PM
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honeybee4
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Maybe the painkillers are doing the job. You are doing so much better than I did with my open heart surgery. I was sent home with a big bottle of pain pills but, although I was in pain, I only took five of them. It was over a month before I could do a fraction of what you are doing. I am amazed and happy that you are doing so well.
Reply #1040. Aug 06 10, 1:45 PM
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