Christmas Angels & Bagpipes

In Edinburgh last week, for a spot of quality time and Christmas shopping with daughter the elder, I found that all was quite wonderfully Christmassy.

The Dome on George Street, where daughter and I must indulge an annual tradition of Christmas drinks in extravagantly festive surroundings. 


The city's heart  -  the area between medieval Old Town and Georgian New Town, overlooked by the Castle - is transformed at this time of year into a winter wonderland of lights ...

The gardens become a sparkly ice-rink, over which the redoubtable Bank of Scotland looms with its splendid green and gold dome ...

a giant ferris wheel is a splash of whirling colour against the sombre dark spire of the Scott Monument

and a sprawling German Christmas market pops up in front of the National Gallery, enticing with smells of dried oranges, cinnamon and spices, gluhwein, wurst und bretzels

On a freezing clear day, the city skyline at sunset is all deceptive golden warmth

and fairytale spires with frosted icing ... these views from the roof of Edinburgh's Camera Obscura where, in a turret, we crowded into a tiny blackened room to sit around a pale circle of light, as at a seance, and spy on the city through a 19th century camera in a tower ...

By night the High Kirk glows atmospherically in lantern light ...

With a bitter, icy wind whipping in from the Firth of Forth via the North Sea, the name of the game was to hop from one warm, friendly interior to the next: and so it was breakfast at Eteaket on Frederick Street ...

old-fashioned afternoon tea at Jenners, Scotland's oldest department store, here with giant Christmas tree in its grand hall

drinks in the cosy, antlered Whiski rooms on the Mound ...

and in between, art galleries and the Poets Library (about which more in another post)

until it was time to leave (with bulging suitcase) my Scottish lass

in the city of  frozen angels with bagpipes

xxxxx

Christmas north and south

This month's international BIO post asks us to consider the best Christmas we've ever had. For me this always involves a reflection on the merits of a northern versus southern hemisphere Christmas

Growing up in Europe conditioned me to the view that a cold, preferably white, Christmas is the only kind worth getting excited about. But after years spent in Cape Town, the special charms of an African summer Christmas worked their magic on me too.

source: www.littlegothichorrors.blogspot.com

One thing I did miss down south was the ritual of the tree. For years I peevishly and stubbornly hauled out an artificial tree every December, because it at least looked like the proper thing (sorry, my compadres, but those pines with the long spindly needles drooping sadly in all the wrong directions as though wilting in the heat,  just aren't christmas trees). 

source: www.expatcapetown.com

In earlier years living in Finland, surely the archetypal Santa-land, we used to simply wander a couple of feet into the dense forest around our rented lake cabin with an axe and (illegally, I'm sure) chop down our own. 

source: www.greenpeace.org

Here in the tame non-wilderness of England we head instead for the local commercial Christmas tree farm where we're greeted by a giant, tacky, waving Santa

and an ordered, labelled array of types and sizes ...

Getting the star on top requires team work

(and a supportive cast)

And with the likely prospect of another white Christmas, all is good and properly Christmassy. But sometimes I'm overwhelmed with nostalgia at this time of year for a December that looks like this ...

where these were the views from my toes in the sand 

and December summer living looked like this ...

(my last home in Cape Town)

and morning coffee on the balcony had this as backdrop ...

Christmas north or south ... which one does it for you?

Outside and In

Large parts of Britain are being washed away in floods, it seems. But not my bit of it, which is helpfully well above sea-level. Though it has been raining an awful lot, we are warm, safe and dry indoors.

Happiness for some, in fact, is being sandwiched between two furry dog-pillows, on a soft and cosy - ahem - dog-bed.

The days now short on light, it's that time of year when lighted windows exert a kind of fascination, pulling one in to the cosy indoors ... 

... looking out and looking in ...

The last rose is hanging on tenaciously in the garden

alongside frost and autumn's debris

I'm not sure who this colourful chap on the lawn is - a woodpecker?

The last of the lurid yellow that was carpeting the countryside a couple of weeks ago -

is still hanging around in the city - here in Marylebone High Street

and at St Marylebone parish church, its little park with the orange Victorian facade of the Conran shop, decked out for Christmas, lurking behind the trees; gilded angels keeping watch on the dome ...

but in Fleet Street it's all rush and busy-ness 

against a backdrop of stark black branches

A jolly friar overlooks the entrance to The Blackfriar pub, built on the site of a 13th century Dominican friary and saved from demolition by poet laureate John Betjeman who enjoyed a regular pint there

Back home, cat free, the dogs reclaim their bed and work their look of abject melancholy ...

... since HRH is now making it perfectly clear that he has no intention of letting them near the fire

English village autumn

Autumn colour seemed to come late this year, but it hasn't disappointed. 

 saturated colours after heavy rain

My favourite season was on full display on a trip to Penn village in Buckinghamshire about a week ago, where I snapped these pics.

Penn means 'hill' or 'headland' in Brythonic, one of the old Celtic languages, named for its position on a hilltop in the Chilterns. From the tower of the 900-year-old church here on the village road, it's supposedly possible to see eight counties ...

but definitely not on a misty morning like this one

As you might have guessed, Penn village is the birthplace of William Penn who set up the colony of Pennsylvania in the USA. Though originally the Penns are thought to have been Norman French nobility and called de la Penne - settlers who came to England following the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Like many Norman-era churches in England, the list of names of rectors or bishops tell this story by themselves. Earlier rectors of Penn's church had French, or at least Frenchified names, like William de London (1273) and Gilbert de Segrave (1304), up until a few centuries later when these change to solid English names like Thomas Goodlake (1400s) or John Davis (1684).

The Crown pub, above in the morning mist, is first mentioned in written records of the 15th century as a local ale-house.

There are plenty of traditional English cottages to be had, if this lifestyle appeals ...

(though they're likely to set you back a bit: your Rose/Oak/Briar cottages and ye olde vicarages mostly come with a fairly hefty price-tag in this village) ...

... and open gates invite you to country trails across surrounding farmland ...

Thanks to the "right to roam" law, there is a public right to access to farmland in Britain.

Veer off the main village road and you'll find yourself in narrow lanes like these ...

where it's difficult to imagine  

what might happen if another car came in the opposite direction

yet amazingly it is possible for two cars to squeeze past - in fact it's an opportunity to stop for a chat ...

Right next-door to Penn is Tylers Green ... 

which for all its small size, checks off all the mandatory features of an English village - a church, a pub, and a village school  - all positioned round the village green ...

... site of cricket games and village fetes in summer and bonfires on Guy Fawkes night, but where in the damp mist and November chill, small girls let out from school were chasing ducks

who thought the weather just fine.