Ok, I know I'm childish ...

But I pass this tree every day on my way to and from work. And it just makes me giggle.

 Anyone else see what I see?

Perks of the job

Just occasionally I get to do something really cool through work. And today was one of those days!

Tomorrow the Scottish Cabinet is meeting in Stirling as one of their summer 'out and about' meetings. Tonight in preparation for tomorrow they hosted a reception in the Great Hall at Stirling Castle to celebrate Scotland's Year of Food and Drink. In return for listening to politicians speak (sorry guys!), we invited guests got to sample some of the best local offerings from Stirling and beyond whilst marvelling at the fantastic venue that is Stirling's Great Hall.

I personally particularly enjoyed Scotbeef's mini beef wellingtons (minus the vol-au-vent for me obviously), Macrae's smoked salmon, Graham's organic ice cream and (my absolute favourite of the evening) CookRoom's yummy gluten free chocolate muffins! I also noticed that the fabulous Mhor Bread was there, but for obvious reasons I didn't try them out - not with it being a school night and me being in polite company!

All in all, a good evening. It's tough work sometimes, but I want you to know I take on these challenges selflessly! (Heh, heh!)

Childhood revisited

Yesterday I did something a bit different. Or more accurately something I haven't done for quite some time - I went to visit an archaeological excavation. One of the local primary schools is due to be extended and as it's already known to be built on a Roman fort, any further work at the school requires an archaeological assessment to be done first. So I thought I would go up and have a look, not having anything better to do with my day.

It was pretty interesting, although Time Team it wasn't! But perhaps you're wondering what that has to do with the title of the post. Well, here it is. My dad was an archaeologist (no wonder my spelling is generally pretty good, imagine having to spell that from an early age!) and quite often we would join him at some excavation or other. Since he was a specialist in Roman archaeology in Scotland, and in particular in determining the extent of Roman penetration into northern Scotland, much of what we saw or were present at the excavations of were temporary marching camps. In other words, a field with a ditch round it - and if you were lucky you might find a gateway! Fascinating as these are to archaeologists and historians in tracing the Roman occupation and penetration of northern Britain, to a small child they can be deeply boring. I suspect the most fun and excitement my sister and I had was falling into the trenchs!

But yesterday's excavation was fascinating - not just for the finds, but to be told that actually it was my Dad that discovered it in the first place and undertook the first exploratory trenches. The person I spoke to even told me that the woman living in the house next to the school has photographs of Dad digging there way back when!

The team working there just now seemed genuinely excited to be talking to 'Gordon Maxwell's daughter' - and I was ever so proud of him! So my next task now, is to get him to visit before they finish the excavations!

And by the way, he's also been on Time Team! But no, I haven't met Tony Robinson.
 

Me, myself and I

Pondering the view
Originally uploaded by bexybeads

There are many many wonderful things about living on your own. Some of my particular favourites are - not having to accommodate anyone else's tastes, not being woken up at an unearthly hour by little people, being able to choose what I do and when I do it without reference to others - including hoovering at 2 in the morning if the mood takes me, not that it does very often, at 2 am or at any time if I'm honest!

I also enjoy being able to cook whatever I like for my dinner and not worry about whether it's going to be ok for others too. Or even not cook at all and just snack and graze my evening away. It's good fun being able to come home and decide for myself whether to put the TV on, listen to music, play on the computer or just sit and knit without having any of that moderated by AN Other.

But at the same time, it can be really lonely. I find Friday nights are the hardest. When everyone else is looking forward to the end of the week and a break from work, I'm quite often wondering what on earth I'm going to do to fill my time on my own. It's not every weekend and I don't really know what the trigger is, but there are Friday evenings when it all just feels too much.

Last night was one. I came home from work after a long, busy and quite hard week and instead of feeling relieved, I just felt incredibly sad. I don't think it was helped by being one of the last people to leave the office either. Walking out on my own with no-one to say cheerio to just reinforced the Billy-No-Mates feeling I suspect. I wandered into town intent on cheering myself up with a takeaway from the new Indian restaurant that's recently opened near me but when I got there, I couldn't quite bring myself to go in and order food. The effort was just too much. Pathetic, I know, but when I get my 'Friday feeling' even things like that are too much.

So instead I headed home, feeling sorry for myself and sat in the flat by myself. I could (and probably should) have called a friend but I didn't. I didn't want to inflict myself on anyone in that mood, and anyway - I reasoned - they'll all be out doing things and it will only make me feel worse to find out they're all too busy to see me. What I did instead was dig something out of the freezer to eat - which by happy coincidence turned out to be a vegetable curry I'd made a previous weekend, and not the aubergine bake I thought I was defrosting, poured myself a large glass of wine and settled down to watch some mindless TV and try to finish my sister's birthday present.

It worked a bit but what worked more was taking the plunge and posting on Facebook that I was feeling a bit down, and then seeing all the lovely, funny, sarcastic, thoughtful comments and messagescome back from friends. Reading other people's posts was also a good tonic - friends who invariably see the world in the best possible light, who generally have quirky, funny things to say, or who just deal with so much more difficult things than me in an awesome and inspiring way.

I'd love to say that I'm feeling fully recovered today and that everything is just lovely. I'm not, but it is better. And I'll get up shortly and get on with my weekend. I know that doing things will make me feel better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself. I know that while I'm sad just now, I will be happy another day and that both emotions are important and natural and inevitable. And if they're not, then life would be really really dull.

In an attempt to cheer me up, a friend texted me to remember that Life is Pain, referencing someone I'd never heard of. So in this internet age, I went ahead and googled it. I'm not sure if this is the intended reference but it made me laugh. Thanks x

I've since discovered that the reference was to a film quote instead - much more benign than the one I found! Which made me laugh even more!!

T'internet

 
These days when I go online I generally have a fairly set routine. I log in, check my email, check my Facebook page, read the blogs I subscribe to, check my own blog for comments, skip by my Flickr page to see who's looking at what photos and then drop into BBC News Online to catch up on the headlines. These days I also generally check out the local preperty website to see what's for sale and I might want to go see. And that's pretty much it. I don't do much Stumbling through websites anymore - to be honest, Facebook takes up most of my surfing time one way or another.

But the other day when I was putting together my Lammas Day post for this blog and I was searching for a photograph of llamas to illustrate it with, I ended up visiting YouTube. Do you know what? I'd forgotten how much fun it was!

Not only did I find Secret Bob and his Llamas with Hats (nope, I don't know why either!) but I was also reminded of the happy discoveries of the Lego Star Wars epics, recut movie trailers, and perhaps more sedate montages. It can also be educational, enlightening, or just plain entertaining. And some are scary!

So it just goes to prove a couple of things. Every once in a while it's good to stop and smell the flowers - or stumble around the internet for a bit. And a break from routine can really be good for you!

Want to share your favourite YouTubes find?

And while I'm at it, a few other of my favourite T'internet thoughts.

My 7 year old nephew (who has only just referring to it as to the tontooter) for his birthday asked if he could get an email address and a blog. I kid you not!

A friend at work told me that her little boy asked her what the inside of a clock looked like and when she asked him how he thought they might find out, he just said, Look it up on the 'puter Mummy!

How times have changed!

Running to stand still

Which is quite often how I feel about work and life in general but isn't actually the point of this post.

No, this blog post is to celebrate that tonight I ran 5.5 miles in 57 minutes. Not only does that put me well on track for being able to complete the Stirling 10k in September, it's also the furtherest I've ever run.

Yay, me! I'm so proud of myself. And also somewhat knackered if I'm honest!

Off to sign up now for the race so I can't change my mind.


(And in case you're wondering, the photo is of the old municipal baths in Stirling and their amazing modernist frieze - a kind of cross between Soviet art and the League of Health and Beauty!)

Musical Mystery Tour

As some of my friends from Facebook will know, over the last couple of months I've been undertaking a small iPod challenge. I was finding that random/shuffle on my iPod just wasn't random enough and I was worried there were tracks I was never hearing. So, as a solution, I decided to listen to my entire iPod alphabetically by song title. Doing it by artist would have been a bit dull, but by song title gave a whole new meaning to the word 'random'. Where else could you listen to U2 and Thievery Corporation side by side? The only time I can remember having a run of songs by the same artist was courtesy of The Hoosiers of all people, although I do remember a bit of a Madonna segment, and perhaps an REM one.

Now don't panic, I only actually had 1444 songs on my iPod when I started this challenge (and I've only got 1473 now!!) so it wasn't too much of a mammoth undertaking. But it was incredible fun - and it did remind me of stuff I'd put on there and hardly listened to yet. In the space of the last 6 weeks I've been all the way from A-Punk from Vampire Weekend (of Oxford Comma fame!) to Zephyrus by Bloc Party and finished up this weekend with a handful of numerically inspired tracks.

As well as finding a way to make sure I'd listened to all of the tracks on my iPod, this little adventure did have a few other by-products.

For example, I've listened more carefully to the lyrics of quite a few of the tracks (most of the listening was through headphones, although some of it was through my ever surprising bargain £5 speakers - yay, PoundStretchers!). Discoveries from this were:

- Guillemots with Blue would still be Blue, a lyrically perfect song about living life

- Death Cab for Cutie with I will Possess your Heart, a truly beautiful love song (or one about a stalker if you read some of the comments!)

- Postal Service, We Will Become Silloheuttes, the jauntiest pop song about nuclear holocaust I've heard in a long while!

...to name but a few.

I also got a whole heap of new music suggestions courtesy of the Facebook 'guess the first track for each letter of the alphabet' game I played with my more long suffering friends. Quite often it lead me to want to rush off and buy the track. Occasionally it made me want to hit people over the head for thinking I would listen to such rubbish!

In my more boring moments, I even played musical mathematics - for example, did you know that the first 3 letters of the alphabet are statistically over-represented in my current collection? And by the time I'd got half way through the alphabet I was already 60% of my way through the music.

All in all, it was a great experiment that I'd recommend to anyone. But there's only one problem. Now that I've finished what do I listen to next? Luckily one of my fellow bloggers has already answered that one for me - buy a heap more music and start all over again. I've already started in fact, with purchases from the Coral, Teenage Fanclub (apparently also known as The Fannies, and that's only really funny to people in - or from, or who lived in - the UK!) and I am Kloot (although I don't actually remember buying that one!!). I also have a number of other great suggestions to rush off and try - top of the list is Pomplamousse who appeal to my (at times) quirky musical taste! And even as we speak Arcade Fire is down loading from the iTunes store.

So more adventures to come. If I promise not to inflict it on you all, can I start at A again sometime soon?

and for those who are interested, these are the first songs for each letter on my iPod at the time of the great A-Z challenge

A-Punk, Vampire Weekend
Baba, Alannis Morissette
C'est La Vie, Shania Twain
D is for Dangerous, Arctic Monkeys
The Earth Gave Me You, The Delays
Fake Tales of San Francisco, Arctic Monkeys (again)
Generator, Foofighters
Halloween, Kirsty MacColl
I'll Take the Rain, REM
James Bond, Scouting for Girls
Ka-Ching, good old Shania again
La Femme Parallel, Thievery Corporation
MIA, once again the mighty Foofighters
Nah!, Shania - what is it with you and having to be first?
O Green World, Gorillaz
The Panic, Dykeenies
Queen's Tattoos, Aztec Camera
Rabbit Heart, Florence and the Machine
SOCA, Asian Dub Foundation
Tahiti, Bat for Lashes
U Can't Touch This, MC Hammer (cringe!)
Vampires, Thievery Corporation (again)
Waiter, Bring Me Water, Shania (what again?)
X-Ray, The Macabees
YahWeh, U2
Zephyrus, Bloc Party
10:15 Saturday Night, The Cure

all finishing up with 9/15ths, Biffy Clyro

PS Sorry for the pic, big sis. Couldn't resist it when I found it on my phone!!