a visit to the Highlands

It’s a strange thing, being not quite one thing or the other. Scottish living in England, after years of being considered English whilst living in a very insular part of Scotland. But for me the Highlands are home; I feel at one with the huge skies, the mountains, the heather. It’s part of my blood.

We drove up to the Highlands to visit friends and family over half term. I went to Inverness to visit my nanny for her 88th birthday and gossiped and giggled over cups of tea and one too many chocolates. We visited lots of old friends: the kind you don’t see for years and then it feels like you’ve been apart five minutes. We drank gallons of tea and the children jumped in the Moray Firth, just like we both did as children. And London, work, tube trains, and politics all seemed a million miles away.

These houses are right on the beach at Nairn. Aren’t they beautiful?

There’s so much – nothing – there. When I went down to Inverurie to spend a day with my lovely friend Jessica, who moved away from the village last year, we were trying to work out what it is that’s different about the North of Scotland. The air feels different. The sky is – more. There’s just so much space. Traffic is non-existent and the pace of life really is slower. We had our car fixed when we were up there and I was hopping up and down in an I-want-it-done-now fashion, but that’s not how life works up there.
The magic of the Highlands is that you can turn the corner on a country road and see a sign like this:

and be filled with Shakespearian excitement about the Thane of Cawdor (even if Macbeth actually murdered Duncan at Inverness Castle).

Then there is Culloden Battlefield.

When you close your eyes you can hear the yelling, the clash of metal, and the gunfire of the final battle to take place on British soil.

The atmosphere is eerie.
Legend has it that birds don’t sing on Culloden Moor, and I didn’t hear any when I was there.

The house in the photo is Old Leanach Cottage, which is said to have survived the battle of Culloden, and has the heather thatched roof which was common in those times.

Below you can see the cairn built in the 19th century as a memorial to the 2,300 men who died.

Thank you all for such lovely messages about Edward. We all read them and thought as an attention-seeking cattipuss he’d have been very pleased. His sister Bella is, rather unsympathetically, lapping up the extra attention.

in memory of our beautiful Edward

No, heaven will not ever heaven be, unless my cats are there to welcome me.

Our beautiful boy was taken from us this morning,
killed by a car. He would have died instantly.
He was only just over a year old.

His sister spent five minutes saying goodbye to him.
It was heartbreaking to watch.

Rest in peace, beautiful Edward.

how to ice cupcakes – a very bad vlog

(Or: how to ice cupcakes and make yourself look like a blithering idiot, by Rachael Moore aged 37 and a half)

So, a while ago, my friend Kate of the Five Fs blog stated that she couldn’t pipe swirls on cupcakes to save her life.

This has been worrying me enormously. Imagine my guilt if there was a terrible incident whereby Kate was held hostage, with cupcake icing a condition of release.

So here, for your delectation (and with quite a lot of mad Scottish rambling) I present:

How to Ice Life-saving Swirls on Cupcakes – A Film in Two Parts.
(clumsy title, but all bets have been off since there was a film called The Men Who Stare at Goats)

I don’t think Nigella has anything to worry about, do you?
(Sorry Kate, I couldn’t remember if it was you or someone else who asked when I was videoing it!)

Blog – vlog – vlogblog. (Too much icing)

And the finished products, complete with the little birthday boy himself, and a special guest role by my mum:

Terrible cackling.

The End.

finding happiness in housework

I really, really want to be tidy.
I really, really want to like housework.
But (and I can’t believe I’m alone in this) it just seems like the most boring thing in the world. One of the first posts on this blog was a rant about the never ending cycle of housework and washing that comes with having four children.
So when I was offered a review copy of Danielle Raine’s Housework Blues – A Survival Guide I was rather hoping it would solve all my problems.

It didn’t. It’s not that sort of book. It won’t tell you how to become a domestic goddess, or give you the secret to a spotless sink (I can tell you that: scrub with bicarbonate of soda – makes it really shiny and won’t harm the environment, either). But it will make you think.

One of the reasons I love gardening is the mindlessness of repetitive tasks like dead-heading roses, or weeding. I find if very zen and relaxing. I’ve never looked at housework like that: I mutter and grumble and think of all the things I could be doing. Danielle’s book challenges us to look at housework in the same way, and to use it as an opportunity to contemplate life. It works. As does her sneaky method of starting something, and finding that before you know it other people in the family have joined in. (Shh)

Any writer who admits ‘I find little in common with naturally tidy people sharing their tips’ wins brownie points from me. I know my fondness for the ultimate domestic goddess, Martha Stewart is well documented, but I still haven’t mastered the dark art of folding a fitted sheet (and frankly, life’s too short).

It’s a lovely book, and miraculously, it’s made a difference to the way I think about housework. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some thinking to do, so I’m off to clean the kitchen.