A Bit Behind

It seems my brother has pre-empted me. I will sort him out the next time we are in touch. My focus has been on Hester recently, and we have had some very good times. I should also add that our (Robert and I's) recent loss of our mother has meant that both of us have been involved with family matters, rather than blogging.

Hester and I had a Chineese Buffet meal on the Sunday night with her brother and his wife. It was fun although some of the food had probably been around since lunchtime, and it showed.

I remembered that JK Rowling started writing Harry Potter in a cafe in this street. When we left we saw newspaper cuttings which said the place we had been in was converted from the cafe JK used to visit.

Will describe our museum visit in detail soon, but here is a taster.

Here is a picture of my beloved in a space suit. I think it is very becoming. She has other ideas!

More Crooked

I am still dining out on my visit to "The Crooked House" inn with Hester last week. I have shown lots of people the pictures I took. I was a bit upset about her imposing a sherry ban on me. In hindsight she was probably right though. You can't really see it in the interior pictures but the floors are all over the place in the same way the walls are. After a few glasses of my favourite refreshment I very much doubt I would have been able to navigate my way to the door. That would have been very unseemly and embarrassing for a lady.
Still trying hard to do the paraghraph thing. Robert can be a pedantic nerd at times.
I took the above picture in Morningside, which is a posh district of Edinburgh. I also took some pictures of pillar boxes for Robert shortly afterwards, but he can tell you about that himself. If you look at the vertical face of the buildings on the left and then the top of the roof of the building in the distance you will see there is something wrong with the angle. There is an underground stream to the right of the building and it is sliding in to it. Maybe Robert would like to start a new feature on squint buildings but I am done with the subject.
Hester is staying for a few days and we will be out and about snapping away so I am sure I will have more pictures to share with you soon.

Snowscape

Before I went down to see Hester on Saturday I took a couple of pictures when I was delivering. On the right you can see Swanston Village. I have made a mistake with the colour balance but I think the "blueness" enhances the coldness of the scene. It was very slippy, the dark patch at the bottom left of the picture is sheet ice, which I nearly fell over on, seconds before the picture was taken.

I posted a picture taken ages ago by Hester when the re-thatching was in it's early stages. All it really needs now, to be finished, is for the ridge at the top to be trimmed and then capped.

Another blueish picture on the left. Not too clear, but it is a Jacobs sheep. They, unusually, have four horns, two curly ones, which you can't see, and two sticky uppy ones. From this pic I am pretty sure this girl is the one that has only one of the sticky uppy ones in the herd.

Grand Weekend Out

This week is my turn to visit Hester. I ended up taking a later train because I was delivering to Swanston and Damhead despite having changed my duty this week. Because of engineering works on the line the journey is much more complicated. I had to get a train from my usual station to Edinburgh Waverley. From there it was a coach to Lockerbie, about sixty miles south. Finally another train to Wolverhampton, and a meeting with my beloved. I took the above picture somewhere near the England /Scotland border. As you can see it is very "winter snow scene" up my way.

Today Hester and I did a bit of Sunday motoring. It was cold but dry and a bit windy. She took me to the above Inn first. As you can see from the name it is a bit squint. There is local theory that this is caused by subsidence. Hester and I are much more of the opinion that it was built this way. Make up your own mind.

This interior shot gives you another perspective. When I sent it to Robert he said the builders might have lost their spirit level, what ever that is.

The last call of our trip was to Bridgenorth station on the private Severn Valley Railway. Sadly they have been subject to major storm damage and they need a lot of money to re-instate the damage done to their tracks. We saw some smoke coming from the engine sheds but it turned out to be just a brazier. You can see Thomas the Tank engine in the foreground. I thought Hester was joking about there being a full sized one. Couldn't see any Fat Controller though!