At last I can sit down. I have just had a morning of frenzied cleaning, and John is out shouting at the plants, it seems they have either to shape up or they are OUT. I see two loads of woody lavender haven’t made the roll call. The sea is shrouded in mist and fog and all you can hear are fog horns, while large ominous shapes suddenly come out of the gloom. I am a bit obsessed with the sea at the moment, after visiting Dundee’s fabulous museum connected to Captain Scott’s ship, Discovery.

Love the way they incorporate Madame Tussaud-like characters into the rooms, it makes such a difference to actually see how it must have been.

I was a bit alarmed at the state of the galley, then quietly amazed reading the menu consisting of turtle soup and halibut steaks and fancy puddings.

I have no idea how the cook conjured it all up on a grotty stove, with the waves pounding and the ship careering about. I was quite enthralled, and now I am reading about Sir Edward Shackleton’s epic 850-mile voyage in an open boat across the stormiest ocean, and an overland trek through forbidding glaciers and mountains in the Antarctic.

I am an armchair explorer, complete with central heating, hot coffee and a delicious feeling of contentment that I am safe at home!

It was fun to visit Dundee. I haven’t been back much since my days at teacher training college in the 70s, but I found the streets and buildings were as familiar as ever.

There was the Perth Road, and I walked up the steps of the old red brick college building. Some changes at reception, but behind the glass doors were the stone steps leading to all the various rooms, where we either rushed or slouched our way along. I remember making a crab-apple lino cut in the Art room, and learning the recorder very diligently in the music room with a very stocky upright lecturer. He looked so incongruous with the silly recorder and all of us grown-ups piping away to Old Macdonald’s farm.

I showed John the sight of the old Bangladesh curry restaurant, where John Kelly was arrested for disturbing the peace. He was carted away in a black-maria one drunken Saturday night, after his rendition of The House of the Rising Sun was not appreciated by the other clientele. ‘But I am JOHN KELLY!’ The police were not in the slightest bit impressed and he had to sleep it off in the cells. He is probably a headmaster now.

Above the city was the Law Hill, and often I went there to gaze down on the bridges, and drink a very fashionable drink at the time, Pommaigne. From this view point it was perfect to view the rail bridge linking the city of Dundee to Fife. Although it is a very efficient rail line now, we should never forget the tragedy that happened on ‘a wild and stormy night’ on 28 December 1879. The train from Edinburgh hurtled around the bend and the driver misjudged the corner and the train crashed through the inadequate barrier and went over the side.  All sixty souls on board perished in the freezing waters of the River Tay.

McGonagall wrote a poem to commemorate the disaster:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay

Alas! I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away

On the last Sabbath day of 1879

Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

He says ninety, but other records say sixty, but whatever, there were no survivors.

John and I had just completed the last leg of the Fife Coastal Path that we had started way back in February. This was the hardest part and also the longest. We finally made it to St Andrews. The way was long and rough and at times challenging. We walked out to the furthest extremity, jutting into the open North Sea, and passed rocky lagoons, grassy routes, splendid golf courses and scrambled over giant boulders.

We even saw a discarded dolly’s pram. Wonder what stories it could have told?

That morning we heard that Arnold Palmer had died. It seemed appropriate that we were walking towards the golfing capital where he must have sunk a few putts.

Rain was forecast but we made it with only a shower and we were able to walk easily over the slippery stones;  my only mishap was getting stabbed by a gorse thorn.

There were lots of lore and myths and legends to keep us occupied, we had to look out for the long grave of some Danish hero, and then we posed in the cave where King Constantine was murdered in 870 AD by the Norse raiders, his body later taken to Iona for burial.

We marvelled at the yellow sands, and serrated rocks that inspired Robert Stevenson. He had plans to build a lighthouse there, and indeed there is one there now, but not built by him. We crossed a beach covered in stones that resembled a sweet shop, there were pinks and lemons and soft cream tones, just beautiful.

Later we left the coast and walked through a thickly wooded den, following the river and then we were out,

and on zig zag path, sometimes at sea level and sometimes climbing up the hills in tortuous man-made steps. But in the distance we saw the spires of St Andrews and we knew we were nearly there.

Getting in to the town, we had to find our car. The trudge through the streets was the worst of all, we were tired, sore and wet from the showers. It was not the time to look in shop windows, we had just walked 25 km, we had been going six hours. Enough!

The guesthouse was from hell, a little way out of the town, and with a landlord that should not really be in contact with the general public. Enough said. However, the breakfast was nice.

Sewing has got me by the throat again, and I have been back in my manic state of cutting and ironing and stitching. I am making a cat quilt for a new little grandchild expected in the spring. Bonnie is going to be a sister! That’s when she is not a gymnast or (the latest) a ballerina. Her ambition in life is to ‘skip to music’.

I have always been quietly in awe of Natasha’s eyesight. From a patch of clover, she can bend over and pick up a lucky four-leaf clover.

It is like her party trick, and over the years I have special ones pressed in books and have lived off the luck it brings. She sent us two more to keep us going just recently. But, now those eagle eyes have excelled themselves. Whilst down on a beach in Wales, she found a strange looking stone, or bone or fossil, she wasn’t sure what it was. She and Bonnie took it to Cardiff museum yesterday and the expert was very excited. She confirmed that it is from the tail of a dinosaur that is 200 million years old. She even told her it was from the Loch Ness monster type called the plesiosaur.

We recently collected my mother from her rest home and brought her home for a day out.

She is 92, but very fit and smart, and it was so nice to have Gerry and Darcey over to share lunch together. Mothers are special, they remember you when you were little, they remember your friends, and they can tell your daughter what you were like. She even shed a tear when she saw my old teddy lying on the spare bed. ‘Oh Gael, there’s your old teddy!’

I had been in a fever of cleaning before she came, I even polished the brasses, steamed the floors, and just about did hospital corners. I was rewarded as she asked me, ‘Everything is so nice, do you have an amah?’ Then she told Gerry, ‘Your mother was not a domesticated type you know.’ So – it was a big milestone.

John’s sore toe has been playing up, he injured it years ago in karate, but after running around Loch Leven (21km), then running across the Forth Bridge (8 km) and then walking to St Andrews (25 km), I don’t know what he is going to say to the doctor on Tuesday! Maybe I will get a rest while he recuperates!

Now back to the sofa and the winds and snows and high seas of Antarctica, and maybe a nice fresh cup of coffee.