IKEA SAVES A WET SATURDAY

School finished last week.  It's all change for Mairi's family.  Focusing on the 2 youngest: Ellie (4) is finished Nursery and starts school in August.  Harriet (6) goes into Primary 2.

They have been here off and on during the past week.  Here is collection of photos.

Ellie, our fashion diva.   I said to Ellie "Ishbel always says  'Life's boring'... and Alastair always says 'Life's boring' ... and Harriet  always says 'Life's boring' but you never do.  What do you say instead?"      Answer:    "Life's AMAZING!"  

The 2 girls with their choc ices in the garden.

Harriet is a real helper.  She loves to Lend a Hand, is a very 'together' sort of person.

* * * * * IKEA CONQUERED * * * * * 

Knowing that I was to have the 2 of them for a Saturday afternoon which was forecast to be wet I made a bold decision.

Having recently successfully mastered on-line banking and installed some new software for my upgraded (Mac) computer I felt ready to 'graduate' to erecting an Ikea flatpack.

I headed off to our big Glasgow store at Braehead and selected a bookshelf.  Knowing how Harriet loves to erect Lego and having given her a set of Allen keys some time ago,  I reckoned I could buy myself 2 whole hours of absorbed activity.

And I was right! As predicted it was a wet Saturday so with the 2 of them doing the necessary (with me 'supervising' in the nearby chair drinking tea) we managed to get all the bits in the right place with nothing left over.

CANADA DAY 2019 - JOHN BUCHAN

Today is July 1st and the only person around me who notices (!) that it is Canada Day is me.  Actually that is not quite true.  The HSBC bank sent me an email on June 29th ... as shown here:

I have actually had Canada in my mind lately as I am reading John Buchan's autobiography Memory Hold-the-Door. He was a name I learned at school; he was Governor-General of Canada from 1935-40. He died in Montreal, aged 65 years. He wrote this book in 1939; no one know from where this title is taken.

He was born in Scotland, educated at Hutchison Grammar School, Glasgow, Glasgow University and Oxford.  He was a prolific writer which is certainly evident in this book; a master craftsman with words.

Here is an example:.  He went to Oxford University in 1895. He was friendly with Raymond Asquith, son of Herbert Asquith, who became UK Prime Minister 1908-1916.

Of his friend Raymond (who was killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916) he recalls:

"There are some men whose brilliance in boyhood and early manhood dazzles their contemporaries and becomes a legend. It is not that they are precocious, for precocity rarely charms, but that for every sphere of life they have the proper complement of gifts, and finish each stage so that it remains behind them like a satisfying work of art. Sometimes the curtain drops suddenly, the daylight goes out of the picture, and the promise of youth dulls into a dreary middle-age of success, or, it may be, of failure and cynicism. But for the chosen few, like Raymond, there is no disillusionment. They march on into life with a boyish grace, and their high noon keeps all the freshness of the morning. Certainly to his cradle the good fairies brought every dower. They gave him great beauty of person; the gift of winning speech; a mind that mastered readily whatever it cared to master; poetry and the love of all beautiful things; a magic to draw friends to him; a heart as tender as it was brave. One gift only was withheld from him--length of years."

[Guttenberg Project]

[1]  We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

From his address to the people of Canada on the coronation of George VI (12 May 1937).

Iain showing Ishbel and Alastair how to use a compass on the West Highland Way.

[2] I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.

Glasgow University Chapel