Blow, winds and crack your cheeks

I got back from Scotland, where it is very very windy. Not a nice journey. I'm getting better at this travelling light stuff, but then it's very easy when you don't have to think about makeup or knickers or stuff like that. My only constants are my electric toothbrush and my mad pills, and you could fit those into a handbag. Obviously I travel with a large holdall full of jumpers, just for the hell of it. My BF came round and we have just sat and gossiped and listened to music - all unplanned, it's just that a works do was in the vicinity.

I have started to worry a bit about how shallow I am. Incident 1: listening to the Today programme, the second item on the news bulletin started "Jordan has issued a statement of condemnation..." "Bloody HELL!" I thought, "You can't even turn on radio 4 without being assaulted with b-list celebrity culture!". Unfortunately for me, the item continued...." of Al-Qaeda's claims to be behind the bombings in Amman yesterday".

Incident 2 - well, not an incident, just a nice evening wandering round the shops. It's not so much buying things, or spending money, as buying things that you really like. All the stuff I bought was very dull (two bath towels, anyone?) but I really like it. And my current executive flat is very boring so any stuff I add to it is good. Bring on the leopardskin throws!

Going Forth, not multiplying

I had a perfect moment this morning (and about 1000 shitty ones yesterday, but let it pass). I was driving over the Forth Road bridge in brilliant sunshine, with the countryside and the Firth spread out below and in front of me, and it felt like the best thing ever.

So what if I was going to a meeting to discuss finances that I don't fully understand? The hills were singing.

And now, the news.

Well, I've been gadding about. Glastonbury two weekends ago (it feels like a lot more), which was lovely - a beautiful house, where we were left to our own devices, clearly someone's home, with books everywhere. I looked at a lot of them and thought "I used to have that" - mostly about feminist theory. I don't know how I feel about not having them any more. I'd like to think that I have internalised them, but maybe I am just irredeemably frivolous these days? Or too old and tired to care any more. I loved Glastonbury, but unlike some of our group didn't think "Oh, I want to live here". I'd just like all of its second hand bookshops to be teleported to Earls Court, please. I think between us we came back with about thirty more books than we went with.

Then last weekend was singing in York Minster, with a technically very good but not particularly friendly choir. I have sort of inveigled a friend and my mother into it too, so we hung around together. Ma is very crumbly and I have to run around behind the scenes (carrying cushions, sticks, anything heavy) for her to be able to do things - I have a sneaking suspicion that she's aware of this but won't admit it because it's an admission of weakness. So I end up, always, in a state of exasperated, enraged love and affection - but I suppose I wouldn't have it any other way.

York was my cup of tea much more than Glasto. And with two branches of Betty's of Harrogate, what's not to like? I now have a bag of Fat Rascals in my freezer (very fruity scone things - yum!). I think because it was less earnest. And with fewer shops full of witches and crystals. The Minster was being lit by a French son et lumiere (well, lumiere anyway) man - the central section of the west front was striped in different colours, with the tracery of the west window picked out in pink, and the side towers constantly changing colour. I love stuff like that - ephemeral, intended to enchant, and for no other purpose. It's like makeup for buildings.

Finally, I am back in my London flat. I was a bit worried on the way home that my sojourn in my swanky Edinburgh pad would have spoilt me and that the lack of central heating and general tattiness would irritate me more than usual - thankfully they don't - I went around touching and patting things and just enjoying all my Stuff. And my bed is much better here. Why does anyone buy a six foot long bed? For anyone over about five foot six who doesn't stay entirely motionless when asleep it is too short. Here endeth the lesson.