Finding the bright side ...

... even if I have to use an electron microscope.

An eight-spotted skimmer that will be relevant later

I've been trying not to grumble too much most days, during this year of up-ended plans and cancelled events. Not because "there's always someone worse off than" me - don't you hate people who tell you that, when you're being open and human instead of stoic and perfect? No, it's because I'm so extremely fortunate, it would be a challenge to to find anyone with less to grumble about. I'm well, safe, and solvent. I'm holed up with someone else to chat to. I've got tons of outside space and multiple streaming subscriptions. I work at home anyway at the best of times . . .

So I've been fine till now. What's changed? Well, this morning (Monday) I should have been waking up on a United flight, eating that soggy little croissant, drinking one last cup of alleged coffee, and watching the clouds part to dump me down in the drizzle of an Edinburgh August. My mum and dad would be there at the barrier. The house I was born in would be exactly the same as ever. The stuff I left behind last year swearing I'd remember would be as big a surprise as it always is - All that shampoo! So many books! Why two hairdryers? - and I'd spend the day getting my jet-lagged brain around the Tesco account that turns my phone Scottish. Somehow. That I always forget from year to year.

This was going to be such a bumper Scottish summer. One of my nieces had - finally! - managed to time a baby correctly and I had every intention of playing the "emigre" card to elbow my way to the front of the queue of other aunties for first cuddle. Seriously, this is baby number 12 and the only one to be born while I'm there to burst in and hog the wee bundle.

Tchach. What a scunner. If I let rip, this entire blog would be a whine (I want a fondant fancy. I want to drive around terrible roads in a car like a fridge magnet. I want to hear the shipping forecast.)

So I'm not going to let rip. I'm going to list the top five wonderful things about being in California this August. In reverse order:

 

5. Watermelon.

The watermelons at the fruit stand are 40c a pound and the size of toddlers. Truly, most people - and every single woman - who wait, holding one to weigh and pay, start rocking from foot to foot and patting the melon gently on whichever end is lower. Some people shush them. Then, when you've brought one home and given the fridge a coronary trying to chill it, there's that moment when you put the very tip of a knife into its tight haunch and it splits open - just about bangs  apart with pent-up juiciness - and you know this is one to eat in old clothes. Heaven. 

They're a handful at this age

4. Moonlight

The sunshine is lovely, of course, but when the sun goes down is the real treat. To watch a moon wax and wane and wax again in clear cloudless skies, night after night all summer, is a wondrous thing. And because we live out of town a bit, the stars dazzle too. To lie on warm ground in the dark and look at the Milky Way is a bit of all right.

3. Money

It's cheap, staying at home. Or - to put it another way - taking what for lots of people would be the trip of a lifetime (six weeks in Europe) every year is not cheap. The car hire is eye-watering and the insurance makes the hire fee look like a bargain. Okay, I stay with friends and family a lot but I also have this book habit that, when you add it to a shipping-them-home habit, would make a financial adviser weep into their spreadsheets.   

Last year's books

2. Wildlife

Yes, there is wildlife everywhere in the world. There are red squirrels and hedgehogs in Edinburgh. But here, now there's a pond (thanks, Neil), I get to admire impossibly glamorous dragonflies close-up every sunny day. And the teensiest little lizards doing their press-ups. There's a frog living in the scullery sink, taking a dim view of us running the tap, but refusing to leave. Plus a California racer under the wee solar panel housie for the pond pump. And, let's agree, if you can see a hummingbird and not care, you've lost something vital, haven't you? Eagles, buzzards, kites, gophers, a skunk who goes by every evening, not close enough to be obnoxious but still definitely there. Woodpeckers, bluebirds, redstarts, gold and purple finches, the humble scrub jay that I've got a soft spot for. Why is it no state's state bird? Snobs! It does sometimes feel, in this house, as if two humans are the least of it. And that's okay.

Spot the dragonfly

1.I lied. I want fish and chips on a harbour wall. I want the day I always steal away with my mother-in-law to do whatever we fancy, I want to go bra-shopping with my mum, see my sisters, my brothers-in-law, my impossibly tall nephews, Baby number 11, who was born in the spring. I want to sit and do a jigsaw in my dad's loft/den and listen in to whatever telly programme - with EXTREME in the title - he's watching. I want to see the friend I've had since I was born, and the one I met in the 80s and my new friend that I only just met in 1990 that I'm getting quite close to. I want to sit on a city bus during the Fringe and moan about the tourists with other locals who can't tell that I am one now. I want to research settings for new books and sign copies of the last books. I want to drive to London in the fridge magnet and see my editors, and my agent, and a play. I want to eat seventeen different kind of pastry-encased meat, and a modern British (i.e. Bangladeshi) curry, with my schoolfriends. I want to eat a packet of Marmite cashews in a country where Marmite cashews are a thing that can happen. I want rain.

Damn. Sorry. I tried. 

Cx

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Holly West]

Awwww. I love this post. Hugs to you.

[Sharan Newman]

I keep turning the pages in my datebook and seeing another trip I can't take or cancelled visits from friends. I want to show them all the glories of Ireland. I want to sit in the bar with other writers and laugh. But my baby is nearby and I live in a place with a sane government that respects medical experts so I have no right to whine. Hope you can come home soon.

[Mysti Lou Who, Whoville]

You’re making me miss a Scotland I haven’t experienced. Hugs to you and Neil and the hummingbirds.

[Alexandra Phipp]

I laughted and I understand, but marmite cashews? you lost the plot there...i didn't know they were a thing. Ill swap for drinking Pimms at an outside concert, with fireworks and Rule Britania to finish...