“Back Home from Scotland”
I joined Mum for a final breakfast at Meldrum House on Monday morning. The bride and groom were enjoying breakfast as well and we got to catch up with the whole family before starting our drive home.
If you zoom in on the picture above you can see Heather and Michael peeking out behind the doors of their “turret room.”
BP got into one last piece of mischief – posing atop Heather and Michael’s car with the one remaining bow attached.
The drive back home was smooth, with a quick stop at some Services near Stirling for a coffee and some supplies. Diana very wisely saved the extra large coffee cups for our 4 a.m. start on Wednesday.
The Dunlops visited on Monday evening and it was fun to listen to their stories, tired as we were from the journey. Our favourite was a relative saying, “I just need to switch on my electric blanket now”, as a way to indicate to guests that it was time for them to leave.
Diana and I went for an extended walk/run on Tuesday morning – all the way down the Lainshaw Woods trail and round to look at the fancy new housing development. We visited Dad in the afternoon and had a wee birthday party for him. He made a valiant attempt at blowing out his candles – which we shouldn’t have used in a ward with oxygen – oopsy!
We stopped in for coffee and a cake at Morrisons on the drive home. I navigated from the hospital to Morrisons and home with no issues – just getting adjusted again in time to fly back to right hand side driving.
The 4 a.m. alarm on Wednesday morning was harsh, but up we popped and headed to Glasgow airport. Some snack breakfast in the British Airways lounge, then breakfast again on the flight to London. Heathrow was much easier this time with no bag screening requirement – they trust the folks in Glasgow much more than those in Dallas apparently. We spend a few happy hours in the lounge again – this one pretty fancy with custom order breakfast options, rose champagne that was fully approved by McD, and lots of other goodies.
Then we rode the train out to board the Dallas flight. I’m always amazed at the massive scale of the double decker planes they use.
Everyone got strapped into their upstairs pods and off we went for the 9.5 hour flight home.
Lots more eating and drinking, reading, and movies and we were in Dallas. All settled at home 20 something hours after rousting in Stewarton.
There was a lovely blessing ceremony in the Crosshouse hospital chapel on Wednesday afternoon. Everyone got dressed back up in their wedding finery so that Dad could participate in the blessing.
Elspeth was the first to walk into the chapel with him, and he said “Wow!” on seeing her outfit. The chapel personnel did a beautiful job of arranging things for the ceremony. What a wonderful idea to do this.
I was back into work on Thursday and coped with the jet-lag relatively well. Friday was pretty quiet heading into the three day weekend.
We watched the new Elvis movie over the weekend. Very well done but so dark and depressing. The “Colonel” has a lot to answer for.
The U.S. Open tennis occupied most of the rest of our viewing time. Some really great early matches – Nick Kyrgios defeating Medvedev was an outstanding performance. It will be interesting to see what he does in his next matches.
Diana joined me to swim laps at APEX on Sunday morning – she did really well for not having swum in so long. We’ll try to get her swimming again next week.
My book this week was “Acceptance” by Emi 
Nietfeld. This is a memoir about a variety of struggles growing up, and overcoming those to attend Harvard, work at Google, and embark on a successful writing career.
I was hooked in the beginning but tired of the repetitive seeming details and the way major portions of the narrative seemed to be skipped. This excerpt from the NY Times review says well what I thought:
“Despite the narrative’s inconsistent pacing — exhaustively detailed at points and conspicuously glossed over at others — Nietfeld’s gifts for capturing the fury of living at the mercy of bad circumstances, for critiquing the hero’s journey even while she tells it, make “Acceptance” a remarkable memoir. At every turn she asks us to remember the cost of success stories like hers: This all might make for a great story, but it doesn’t make for a very nice world to live in.”
I did enjoy the details on the Ivy League admissions process and on how Nietfeld dealt with the prestige of those institutions.
I enjoyed this tune from a Chris Squire solo album – he was the bass player for Yes. Great musicianship and horn arranging:
I love this from “Sunnyland Slim” – a blues piano player born in the Mississippi Delta in 1906, who moved to Chicago and was a founder in the local blues movement:
And finally, a great cover of “That’s How I Got to Memphis”, originally by Tom T. Hall. There are several good covers of this one.
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and compassion for all!