My Day (October 30)

(from 2014)

6.30 a.m.  Wake up too early and decide to rise and work on speaking engagement waiting for me when get home from vacation at Perthshire Amber Folk Festival in Scotland. Do three minutes and then do crossword instead.

9.00 a.m. Rest of family surfaces. Well, it IS a vacation.

10.00 a.m. Go for walk alongside the River Tay. A famous preacher probably got his middle name from this river – many Scots took it, and then took themselves off to Ireland before heading to America. Beautiful autumn colors, which is why the folk festival is called Perthshire Amber. Take numerous photos and manage not to fall into the river.

12.00 noon. Mrs O collects more wool from the festival HQ. Everyone who can is knitting squares that get put into a huge blanket that then gets sold off to raise funds for a charity. They should have raised sufficient money to pay for training a guide dog by the end of the week. (Total cost about 20 thousand GBP). At most concerts there are a host of mainly women knitting away while the performers perform. I have this mental picture of women knitting by the guillotine during the French revolution...

12.30 p.m. Family repair to Indian restaurant for cheapo midday meal. Also a place that has internet and phone access.

12.35 p.m. Telephone the company back in Wales who are going to dismantle and then reassemble my mother’s special bed into another room while she is staying in respite care, after the “vaudeville special” of an ambulance crew getting her out of her house. Bed, what bed? Job, what job? Paperwork, what paperwork? Mrs O quietly rants (she is so much better at it than me) and it is promised before the week is out.

2.00 p.m. Singaround and Tunes session. Each day a different pub is “Pub of the Day” and anyone can go there to sing and drink. In Scotland it divides into a battle between tunes and singers. You have to dive in and start before yet another fiddle player starts another 10 minute opus that sounds identical to the last one. I managed to get in Wheelie Bin Fire. I don’t know what they call them in America, but over here each home has several very large plastic bins that have to be put outside their homes – some for rubbish, others for recycling. Because they are on wheels they are called – Wheelie Bins. To the tune of Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire.

Some stupid clown set my Wheelie Bin on Fire

And they danced all around as the flames they grew higher

And it burns, burns, burns (all join in on this bit)

My wheelie bin fire, my wheelie bin fire.         

The verses have such lines as – the sight at dawn was quite fantastic, smouldering rubbish and molten plastic...

6.00 p.m. Another meal and drinkies for those who aren’t driving.

8.00 p.m. Concert at Pitlochry Town Hall – Buddy Macdonald (Canadian), Eliza Lynn (American) and the Paperboys (Canadian). Good show. We went specially to see Buddy Macdonald. He emailed me the chords of his song “Bright Star Shining” a couple of years ago, and I regularly massacre it at singarounds in Wales. Free beer, and for the drivers, tea, coffee and biscuits. Very civilized.

11.30 p.m. Home and for most bed, but for me checking all emails as internet access has returned. Several comments on a post on another blog. So research and post. As you do.

2.00 a.m. Next morning. Creep into bed. A sleeping Mrs O mumbles “What time is it?” I don’t answer and she says no more. How does Gone With The Wind end? – “To-morrow is another day.”