Tales from the Gael

Rome

Goodbye to the umbrella and warm coats of Amsterdam, for Rome was ablaze with sunshine, and we were whisked into the heart of Trastevere by the most charismatic taxi driver, whose voice was like warm syrup as he asked passers by the directions to our Luxury Guest House hidden in a maze of streets.

What a find! It was beautiful and new and the view looking out over the piazza at the restaurant that was a buzz all time was a wonderful introduction to the city.

Our first mission was to meet up with my fellow granny, Geraldine who has been my friend since Crieff days. We were to meet at the Bellini fountain in Piazza Navona, amidst the tourists. I took a wooden tulip so that she might recognise me.

And then we drank spritz with Aperol and ate delicious artichokes and later in another piazza we ate maron glace gelato out of glass dishes.

On the corners chestnut sellers were roasting their nuts and it seemed so improbably, in the hot October sunshine. Around us people came and went, middle aged men met their mistresses, noticeable by their short polka dot dresses and very high heels, and grandmothers rested and shared pictures of their ‘little darlings’on their I Pads. It was a wonderful introduction to Rome, leisurely and companionable, and for a few hours ‘the sights’ had to wait.

Then the fun began, the Ancient Britons went walkabout in Ancient Rome!

We saw it all, the Pantheon with the beautiful singer outside with her band, singing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ whilst a woman, all in black, listened, her head resting on her hands in an apartment overlooking the square.

We went walking through the streets of Trastevere, searching for the church of Santa Maria. I had visited it twenty years ago when I was doing my Open University course, and I wanted to see it again. It is said to be the oldest church in Rome, and dates back to the 3^rd Century, and it stands on the spot where according to legend, a fountain of oil miraculously sprang from the ground. Maybe so, but it is the glittering mosaics that I remembered. Both inside in the apse and also outside.

Then we found the basilica of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Pretty roses were blooming in the garden, and we stopped and had a cappuccino.

Fortified we decided to cross the Tiber and walk through the Jewish area where we skulked passed the most awful restaurant that we had visited the previous night.

Oh my God, I had been at a loss as to what to order, so the waiter recommended the plate of three fishes. I had visions of three grilled fillets with a nice salad. Instead the plate came with a mangled collection of fish that had been dropped into boiling oil and had died, some biting their tails in fright. That was all. No salad, no fillets, just heads and everything. I was flabbergasted. We left, hungry. I thought Jewish food was supposed to be good. Maybe if I knew what to order?

Anyway we walked and walked until we nearly expired and ate a sandwich in the Theatre Maximus.

We finally came to the Coliseum, and were gobbled up by the tour touts, and were soon frog marched around the ancient world. We particularly liked the tour of the Palatine hill and the Forum, the guide was funny and we learnt a lot of interesting ‘by the ways.’ Makes history come alive. He told us that this foot had been finally ‘fixed’ but some ancient clever clogs had attached a finger instead of a big toe!!!

We did like the new study they have done on Trajan’s column, photographing all the details and telling each story to make sense of the battle scenes. When you look up at the dizzying heights you can appreciate the stories and the work that has gone into it.

There was a picture of poor St Cecilia in a pot, being burned alive, and being shown the heads of her husband and brother before she expired. Very graphic.

Somehow we got back to the Guest House and the familiarity of our suitcases and rested, heads spinning with ‘stuff’.

The next day we leapt on a bus and went to see the most wonderful church, the Basilica of San Clemente. From the outside it looks quite ordinary. But inside it is like a piece of lasagne. The layers tell the story of Rome. Inside the door is a chapel to St Catherine (with her wheel). The 12thC basilica built over a 4^th Century church, which stands over a 2^nd Century pagan temple and 1^st Century Roman house. Beneath everything are foundations dating from the Roman Republic. Down in the dank darkness of the house, there is the original herring bone brick floor and there is the eerie sound of a subterranean river, running through a drain dating from the Roman Republic. I could just picture a family living there.

We came up the musty stairs, and finally came to the sunlight. We decided to have another spritz with Aperol and a sandwich.

From ‘Ancient times’ we bussed back to the centre, and hurried through the Japanese tourists thronging in Piazza Navona, and found the Escher exhibition. From faded murals, glizzy mosaics, headless statues to the mathematical craziness of Escher. His work is amazing, and we had to have a plate of risotto with porcini mushrooms to recover from so much viewing!

There were more churches, more wonderful meals, but then it came time to find a laundry. We did, and as it spun about in its suds, we found a café while we waited. A lady shared our table and we discussed sweeteners for coffee and such things, and then she told us that just up the road, in another café, many many years ago in Trastevere, a Mafia chief had been gunned down and had died in the hospital just across the road. Hmm, a different kind of history.

I had to wonder on one of our visits, what this nun had to confess?

Of course no trip to Rome would be complete without the guided tour of the Vatican. We saw a red porphyry bath, the size that might have held a whole legion of soldiers, we saw maps, and embroideries, statues, paintings. We ogled at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and later I wanted to buy a jigsaw but felt 26 euros seemed a bit steep, and all the time I was thinking of the film, The Agony and the Ecstasy with Rex Harrison as Pope Julius and  Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. All very evocative,  and finally we ended up in St Peter’s basilica. There was Michelangelo’s Pieta (now behind glass after some mad man hacked it with a hammer) and mummified popes, relics of holy places and saints and even a bit of the cross, it was all so big and so over whelming.

But of course we saw the other things too, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi fountain, piazza de Popolo and we took time to sit and savour and enjoy.

When you go on a mission, whatever it is, whether it is for climbing mountains or looking at different churches, you walk through different streets, pass through different areas, stop and have a meal, drink a coffee, but all the time your eyes are taking in the different landscapes, absorbing the bricks, the architecture, the flowers and sometimes you hear the stories. So although we had a mission to search for special churches, we saw and learnt so much more.

We made our way to the station and booked our tickets with a charming man who is married to a Scottish girl and has a son called Angus, and he warned us not to use the ATMs, and beware of gypsies. Pickpocketing is rife, and the ATMs have been known to just gobble up your cards.

We were off, and it was wonderful. I loved it all.

Arrivederci Roma!

My goodness it has turned cold all of a sudden. I have just made a cup of peppermint tea and gobbled up two chocolate marshmallow things, and just feel so relieved I don’t have to go out and watch a bonfire or a display of fireworks. I shall happily forget the fifth of November with its gunpowder, treason and plot and concentrate instead in trying to remember the most wonderful month of October. It all began….

In Amsterdam.

The few days that we spent in this pretty, charming city, cross hatched like a quilt pattern, with watery canals and picturesque bridges I seemed to be permanently light headed.

The smell of the dopey weed was thick and invasive, and there really was no need to enter a ‘special’ coffee shop, for the air all around was free to breathe in the ‘happy’ fumes. We did sample a couple of bright green lolly pops, and it is with shame that I admit that I was still sucking mine when we entered the secret, hidden church of ‘Our Lord in the Attic’. The converted upper room was beautiful, and quite amazing, a place where Catholics could come to worship in a time when their faith was banned. It was so different from the ‘Secret Annexe’ where Jewish Anne Franke and her family hid from the Nazis. That was so pitiful, cramped and dark. When we queued for an hour it was raining. We bought an umbrella.

We found the city full of history and persecution, and we tried to see it all. We marched around the Van Gogh museum, the Rijks Museum, with so many pictures of Christian martyrs, particularly poor Saint Ursula who was put to death along with her 11,000 virgins, and poor St Sebastian with his body full of arrows.

We did find ourselves walking through The Red Light district, and we did try to avert our eyes from the stark reality of Sex for Sale but the girls stood inches from our faces. Beautiful girls, lithe and young, and it was all so awful. Just a shop window and a bed, and a curtain. It was so basic. We found out later that nine hundred girls are working every day, and sadly many working against their will, often the victims of physical and psychological violence.

We went into the Museum of Prostitution and there were stories of Hannah, Julie, Svetlana, all tricked and now trapped. We read of murders, and the fear of the pimps.

There was also a glass case with things that had been left behind, – spectacles, a sock, keys, and even a dental plate! So strange, I remember in Borneo in the museum, we read about a killer crocodile and  inside the giant croc’s stomach there was a similar array of objects. Weird what men leave behind and what they are remembered for.

But then we took the tram away from the tourist area, to an exhibition centre where we went to see the ‘The Art of the Brick’ by an amazing modern artist, Nathan Sawaya. It was fun, inventive, novel, and as we passed through the rooms of images, and large 3D shapes, we saw how he developed from a ‘copier’ to someone who tried to make the lego bricks ‘talk’ to us, and portray an emotion. There were splendid copies of the Venus de Milo, the Kiss, Whistler’s Mother, but then we moved away to things that portrayed pain, freedom, and the human need to ask why.

I have vague memories of playing with my own children, and only being able to make a small house.

We came away quite uplifted.

John was mesmerised by the bicycles … there were millions of them, and scary as hell. They just shoot about, fast as light and it was terrifying to cross the roads.

But it was fun in Amsterdam, just wandering, and buying tulips and looking at flowers and wandering through the flea markets and stopping to drink coffee or a glass of something.

On the morning that we left we went to the station, and in one area there was a grand piano, with a sign on it saying, ‘Play Me’. And some sweet girl was doing just that. It was beautiful.

John asked me, ‘Why don’t we do that?’ I was aghast.

I didn’t think we were that good. But of course he meant in our country. Ah, now that would be a good idea.

So farewell from the land of the clogs and the cheese and the tulips and the galleries. And on to Rome.

PS Just want to say that John has most of the photos on his camera, so I will have to wait till he sorts them then I can add others. I did love this sign hung in a café!

‘Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness’… Ah it takes you back to the classroom, when wasps were drunken with the fruits of the forest, and girls lay across their desks, their heads on their arms just wishing to be out, and free from the droning monotone of a teacher warbling the beautiful words. Now I am old and wild and wearing purple, and am at liberty to walk where and when I like and the season has been wonderful. Dry, crisp and leaves have been stubborn to fall. I have had such a good few weeks here – home in the city, with friends to visit, friends to stay, meals to cook, eat and share, and wine to be drunk in cosy bars in the Grass Market. I caught up with old school friends, Sheila and Susan and husband Mike, and we walked through the Botanics and along the Water of Leith, and then I met with Catriona over from Australia and we sat out amongst the fading roses and it felt like yesterday that we were together in the Highlands, in her Dad’s hotel, the Kintail Lodge. And finally a lovely flying visit from Helen and Henry, from Australia, who had just come from eastern Europe and managed to zoom up to Glenelg and see the beautiful mountains and sea and imagine that they were characters in The Highland Games! All good stuff, and now John and I are off to Amsterdam, and we shall walk by the canals and stare at Van Gogh (well, his paintings) and I shall look for stones that might have fallen out of the dykes. I loved that story of the little boy that saved Holland by stopping the gap with his little finger; and then it’s on to Rome. I am very excited about that, and we both have sensible shoes and plan to see it all before getting the train to Florence, and then San Gimignano where we shall meet up with Natasha, Leo and Bonnie! I will celebrate my BIG birthday! Then on to Venice and finally to Milan. Oh we shall be SO cultured, and plump, and full of olives, figs and ambrosia, whatever that is. I believe it’s the food of the gods, although I seem to remember it was a brand of rice pudding. I did have a nice walk the other day, which ended up having to climb up about a 1000 steps, so was quite puffed. I sat down on the grassy verge by the bridge going over the river, and a cyclist passed by and shouted something. I thought he was French so I shouted back ‘Bonjour!’. After a minute the words sank in, ‘Dinnae do it, dinnae jump!’ I must have looked suicidal!! So referendums have come and gone, the high focus on Scotland has waned, the tourists have almost gone and the students have returned. Edinburgh is ticking on into the next phase. It has been lovely to enjoy the calm days, along with the wasps and the giant spiders. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this one walking calmly along the city pavement. But for now, it Ciao from me, or as we say here, Cheerio!

What is ART?
According to a Google search it is ‘the human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature’, and ‘it is the conscious production of arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements’.
It has been with us forever, well as long as humankind has, and it has been beautiful, appealing, and something that is created with imagination and skill. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy.

I came away from the Traverse Theatre last night, after watching a play called ‘Unfaithful’ by Owen McCafferty, with my head swimming with ‘bad’ language. F..k and c..t in every sentence, nudity that would have made John Ruskin pass out, while John and I squirmed as the lad with the willy strutted about without a care in the world. We listened to the ranting of the middle-aged woman who had booked an escort for the night to pay back her husband who had transgressed with a twenty year old he had met in a hotel bar. Lies, truth, inflections of the truth, doubts and suggestions – what was it all about? The critics said it was a play that portrayed the quashing of boredom in a long term relationship.
OK! John and I breathed in deeply when the skinny ‘old’ guy got out of bed stark naked. Where is art in all this? A body is a body after all. We revere the wonders of chiselled marble, and hold up the classical David as perfection. So why do I squirm in a theatre? Am I alone in this? Everyone just sat and looked and pretended to be so sophisticated, but how were they feeling? Nudity on the screen is one thing, and we are inured to that; nudity should be accepted as normal, for after all we are not so dissimilar from each other, but maybe it’s a generation thing, although I don’t think so. And WHY do writers feel they have to portray their characters speaking F and C all the time? Am I missing something? This play is modern, portraying NOW. It is supposed to reflect a sensitive time in our society, of how people feel towards each other as they grow older and time is running out. But we don’t speak like that, none of our friends and acquaintances speak like that, so why are we supposed to find it acceptable in films and plays?
The older man, to taunt his wife, described what he and the young girl had done in the doorway just off a busy street. The words were liquid pornography. There was a wishful thinking in his words, lies within lies, but his wife could only accept what he said as the truth. For the five minutes the actor took to deliver the lines, the audience sat stunned, listening to the graphic details of violent, erotic sex – so why was there a need for nudity? And of course, threaded throughout was the inevitable use of the F and C words.
The play was interrupted by an elderly man who had a heart attack, and the drama reverted from the stage to the auditorium. ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ (There were two.) ‘Please vacate the seats and allow him to be helped out.’ His face was as grey as ash. We all craned our necks to see how the staff managed to get him into a wheelchair and removed. Poor guy – I hope it wasn’t the play that brought it on!
Reading this through it sounds as though I didn’t like the play. In fact I did, I liked the gritty story, the set, the characters, and the clever use of feelings and language. It was Art, cleverly portraying life seen through a magnifying glass.

We also went to see the film ‘Boyhood’ on Thursday. It was pouring with rain, so a perfect way so spend the afternoon.

We loved it, it was so beautifully done, and we watched the child grow in real time.

It was filmed using the same actors at different stages of their lives as they grew up over a period of twelve years, and it’s impossible to watch the film and not relate to one’s own life experiences. The director, Richard Linklater, introduces the film by saying, ‘Here is my latest film, hope you enjoy it!’ Simplicity after such a marathon!
We came out of the cinema and it was still raining so we each had a double vodka and a packet of crisps and sat and had deep thoughts. Was this Art?

John celebrated his birthday yesterday, so we ate out in a lovely French restaurant, and walked home in the drizzle, full of duck and good wine, and as we walked by St Mary’s Cathedral we saw beautiful ethereal apparitions hanging in the trees from swings tied to the branches – so phosphorescent, so delicate, and so anonymous. Art?

We have now joined the real world and have bought a car AND a garage! Now that is some shopping spree! It is tornado red and a VW Golf 5 door hatchback! We take possession of it on Thursday, and then the freedom of the road is ours. Vrrooom! Where shall we go? Probably to Asda and do the weekly shop!

Today we called into the Edinburgh Arts club, to see an exhibition of George McBean’s paintings, they were well observed portraits of views around the city, I liked the poignant one of two gentlemen on the fringe of things, somehow just missing the connection.

And tomorrow I fly down to Wales to meet a certain little lady that I haven’t seen since she was 18 days old. I can’t wait!

At last, I am sitting calmly looking out of the window and seeing the orange montbretia lighting up the flower border. In Glenelg I always thought of it as the herald of autumn, for it comes along with the ripe brambles, the elderberries, rowans and just a hint of the bracken beginning to turn.
We have spent the week ripping and thinning and cutting back. As I yanked heavily embedded ferns I wondered at the phrase about ‘the gentle gardener’. It is a tough world out here wrestling with unwanted interlopers, and John’s and my hands are looking a little the worse for wear. Still order has prevailed and we can now walk up and sit and have our morning coffee and discuss the lavender and pruning the roses. I LOVE MY LIFE!

We hit the ground running when we returned home from Doha, and haven’t stopped since. We did a whirlwind tour of the Royal Mile and all the Festival nonsense with John’s son James and his girlfriend Christine, back from Hong Kong for a while.


It was so nice, and so much fun to see the city through a newcomer’s eyes. We marched them down the Water of Leith, through the Botanics, and up to the castle.

The sun shone and then the heavens opened and we were all soaked. Such is life.
John and I did go out on a bike ride the other day. Probably the first trip since before going to Australia, so we were quite keen to shake off the cobwebs and get out and smell the grass, so to speak.

We cycled along the River Almond to Cramond, and ate a sandwich and took in the wide expanse of the Forth, looking over to Fife, and tried to imagine the brave Romans sitting about in their legions just where we were sitting. They soon turned back though, probably missed their warmer climes and hanging about in togas.

Anyway we got lost after cycling along the wide esplanade and couldn’t find the cycle track. We asked many of Edinburgh’s finest, in some of the more dodgy housing estates that we ended up in, where the cycle track was… ‘Dinnae ken, maybe if you go up there to the city bypass you could get back to the city centre,’ and we cycled madly along with busses and WHITE vans (the worst form of traffic) until we found a wonderful woman with sunken cheeks (no teeth?) who knew everything: ‘Aye, you just go back the way you came, it’ll take aboot half an hoor, and then you go this way and then that way and ye cannae miss it!’ We did, and she was right and off we went.
Four and half hours after leaving the house in the morning we got home, and plunged into a hot bath… Oh, it was wonderful! Amazingly enough, next day we felt fine! Maybe all the sewing I did, kept me fit!

Last night we went to Mike’s 60th birthday party at one of Edinburgh’s rugby clubs, and were met by our host wearing a brown cardigan, slippers and a horrid bald wig! Signs of things to come, but for all that he was as excited as though he had just turned 21. There was a very loud band, a crowd of rugby players and a smattering of refined ladies who struggled to shout above the music. I did like meeting up with my actress friend Irene, wife of the evening’s star of the show, and other Leith Theatre people. Good to talk, when there was a break in the hullabaloo!

I had a lovely chat with Natasha and Bonnie on skype, and met up a few times with Gerry. In fact we are going to see her this afternoon, so all that is good.

My quilts are piled up on the spare bed, so beautiful, and a poignant memory of two amazing years with some wonderful ladies in Doha.
But now I must look ahead. What will the future hold?

Perhaps it is best to live and give thanks for each day. But, just before I go, I will add this picture of Bonnie, demonstrating how useful she was to Tasha and Gerry whilst they were out shopping in Cardiff!