TADDY
McALISTER'S DIARY. Taddy came over
in August 2005 with her mother and two friends.
They had a great tour of Scotland which included: Clan
lands, the Pipefest event and much more. This is
her diary, for which Taddy has graciously provided for
us to use.
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, AUGUST 2005
-- Taddy McAllister USA
INTRODUCTION
In Santa Fe with Mother and friends for the opera in the
summer of 2004, a plan was hatched to go somewhere else
for the opera the following summer. That somewhere
turned out to be Glyndebourne, the summer opera festival
in England south of London in Sussex. Tickets to
Glyndebourne are notoriously difficult to obtain but our
beloved, trusty Rudy Avelar at the Houston Grand Opera
easily got us some. Subsequently at Glyndebourne,
everyone on our row wanted to know how we had gotten
tickets. The man next to Mother had been on the list for
twelve years to get a subscription! As long as we
were in Great Britain, Mother wanted to go to Scotland
and find the McAllister Lands. We had both been to
Scotland before and although it is my practice not to go
back to places I have already been, the prospect of
driving around Scotland under new and different
circumstances was irresistible. My two pals Elliott
Jones and DeJuana Jones (not related), both opera-goers
and globe-trotters, signed on for the two-part trip. If
one does not see much of Elliott in this journal it is
because she did more than we did, especially when the
sun went down. She was otherwise her usual excellent
traveling buddy self.
England and Scotland Journal, August
2005 -- Taddy McAllister
Friday 12 August 2005
The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne
East Sussex, England
It's difficult to nap when there's an air show going on
outside the window. When we checked into this hotel
mid-day the desk clerk said proudly, we've given you sea
view rooms. Great, I said, only to discover what a
left-handed gift it was when the sonic booms started and
the fly-by's roared past the
tall windows. This beautiful old hotel is not air
conditioned and it is summer, so the windows are open to
all the wild noise of a large and serious air show going
on over hundreds of thousands of people on the beach
across the street and on their boats offshore. It's
colorful but not restful. I gave up on my nap although
Mother is across the room obliviously sawing it off. She
sleeps the sleep of the innocent.Yesterday we landed in
London late morning after the usual uncomfortable
trans-Atlantic flight, and Mother went immediately to
bed. DeJuana had arrived after midnight and was in our
room at the Stafford Hotel. She and I set out to walk to
the National Gallery for an afternoon of museum
inhalation but I was overwhelmed by the sheer extent of
the collection and the endless rooms and on shaky legs
went back home for food and rest. Later DeJuana and I
had an early supper in the bar and I personally was
sound asleep at 7:00 p.m. and slept eleven hours.This
morning we left the Stafford and taxied to Victoria
Station to catch our train down here to Eastbourne in
East Sussex on the English Channel near the bottom right
hand side of England. With the demise of porters, one of
the drawbacks of modern life, we had consolidated
suitcases and now wheeled and hauled our own bags
through the station and onto the train. Without wheels
we'd still be at home, or actually not, since there
would be porters. We didn't just throw a dart at a map
and choose this charming city; we are here because there
were hotel rooms available and it is somewhat close to
Glyndebourne, where we will attend the opera tonight. We
were delighted at the fin-de-siecle wedding cake
appearance of this grand hotel and haven't been too
inconvenienced by the roar of the jets.
Saturday 13 August 2005
The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne
The fourth member of our traveling group, Elliott,
materialized in the nick of time yesterday afternoon
from her independent travels and managed to get cleaned
up and spiffed up in time to meet us in the lobby at
4:00 p.m. to be picked up by our driver to go to
Glyndebourne. The driver, John, was a competent
well-spoken fellow who whisked us the 20 or so miles to
Glyndebourne through "Old English" countryside that
caused memories of a lifetime of English literature to
come to life, and indeed we were in Virginia Wolff-land.
The approach to Glyndebourne was past tended fields of
hay, cows and sheep. The driveway to the opera house was
the entrance to the Christie family estate on which it
sits. Three generations of Christies have run
Glyndebourne since the founder, John Christie, started
it in 1932, although the hall itself has grown
considerably in eight decades. Yet it is still small by
American standards - only 1200 seats - and intimate in
the European fashion. It is red brick on the outside and
polished wood on the inside with a state-of-the-art
stage. We strolled the grounds and got the lay of the
land before the performance. We were as interested in
the people in their black tie finery as we were in the
location. There is a tradition of Londoners getting on
the train in the middle of the day in their formal
clothes to come down to operas at this famous summer
festival. "Flight", on the bill that night, was a
contemporary opera about a man trapped in an airport
that I abused by sleeping through part of the first act
(remember that interrupted nap?), but by the end of the
second act, when we dined in one of the onsite
restaurants during the "long interval", we could talk of
nothing else. The last act cinched it; the audience went
nuts and we talked about the story and symbolism all the
way back to Eastbourne with our driver John.This morning
DeJuana and I walked for exercise (my first in 3 days; I
was happy for it), Mother swam in the heated outdoor
pool and Elliott slept in. She then took off for the day
to go to Brighton on the train. DeJuana and I walked
again for an hour and a half in the middle of the day,
savoring the pretty bright, cool weather, the crowds and
displays of the air show and the very town itself. We
found we could change money at the Post Office for no
commission. We walked out on the old Victorian pier with
its onion-domed buildings housing various
entertainments, the chief of which was fighter jets
doing loop-de-loops and flying upside down above us and
the audience below on the pebble beach.Naturally the
noisiest airplanes performed when we got back to the
hotel to rest. For all the noise there was something
touching about the vintage planes and references to the
Battle of Britain, part of which had taken place nearby
over the white cliffs of Dover.
Sunday 14 August 2005
En route Eastbourne - London
John the driver picked us up again and this time we cut
it close to curtain time because it had started to rain
and all the air show traffic was leaving town as well.
But I had an ace in the hole as we stressed about
missing the curtain: the curtain doesn't go up when they
say it does. It goes up ten minutes later. We arrived in
plenty of time This night we saw an "Otello" we all
agreed was the best we'd ever seen. I think Verdi
choruses were intended for larger halls; I was
particularly blasted out of my seat (fifth row center,
thank you Rudy Avelar of the Houston Grand Opera) but
all the singing was superb and the Iago was unusually
well acted. We dined in a different restaurant, a
carvery called Under Wallop, and ate roast beef and
Yorkshire pudding during the long interval. We were
ecstatic and voluble in the car on the way home as we
dissected the opera.This morning DeJuana and I walked
toward Beachy Head, the white chalk cliffs of Eastbourne
that are characteristic of this part of the coast. We
had an invigorating time admiring the plethora of
flowers while huffing and puffing uphill. After
breakfast as we were dressing and packing to leave there
was a dog show sideshow down below at the air show.
Police dogs jumped onto high platforms and through
burning hoops. This was an improvement over the great
engines of war (boys and their toys) that had
entertained us the two days before.We are training back
to London as I write.
Monday 15 August 2005
SCOTLAND
En route London - Inverness
Back at our beautiful Stafford Hotel, this time in the
"carriage house" (350 year-old converted stables),
Elliott, not one to miss a thing, set out in rain gear
to go to the London Eye (the Millennium Ferris wheel),
the new Tate and other points. DeJuana, Mother and I had
a leisurely lunch in the hotel (on Sunday at 2 p.m.
there was not a lot of choice of where to eat), then
spent the balance of the afternoon at domestic pursuits
in order to go to bed early. We admired Elliot her
boundless energy and curiosity without necessarily
wanting to share in it.We left the hotel well in advance
of our flight this morning because Heathrow had been in
chaos for four days due to a wildcat strike and sure
enough, even though things were said to be getting back
to "normal", it was still pretty hairy. We got in the
"Bag Drop" line even though we hadn't gone through the
"Self Check-In" line so Elliott and I left the Bag Drop
line and went to tackle the Self Check-In line with all
our tickets. The machines wouldn't work for our tickets
so an expediter took pity on us and said we could check
in with the Bag Drop clerk. By this time Mother and
DeJuana had inched our luggage (on carts) to the head of
the Bag Drop line and minutes later we were free and on
our way to the gate. It pays to get to the airport
early.
[Later, in Inverness]
We flew directly to Inverness, our entry to the Scottish
Highlands. Paul McLean, our guide, met us
in Baggage Claim kitted out in a green kilt -- the
McLean hunting tartan. Our bags were the last ones off
the plane - I hate that - so with all kinds of relief we
set out in a spacious van to do some sightseeing before
going to our hotel. At Culloden Battlefield (one battle,
April 16, 1746, but a decisive one that cinched
England's dominion over Scotland) we saw where "Bonnie
Prince Charlie" and his Jacobites were defeated. The
battlefield, some hummocks covered with heather and
gorse, had to wait while we had an excellent lunch
(macaroni and cheese, and baked potatoes stuffed with
salmon in mayonnaise) in the National Trust for Scotland
tourist facility on the grounds. We walked around the
small battlefield for a few minutes looking at the old
gravestones put up to commemorate clan losses. Here we
began to get a feel for our guide Paul's clan loyalties
and antipathies. On a little one-lane back road we found
the "Clava Cairns", a 5000 year-old pre-Pict burial
ground with stone cairns and standing stones still
somehow intact under great shade trees. In neither of
these places, and no place in England, did we see many
tourists to speak off. London was quiet as a tomb,
although to say that may be bad luck after their recent
Al-Qaeda travails. In Inverness proper we drove around
admiring the pretty little city on the Ness River ("inver"
means mouth of), and when it still seemed too early to
quit we had Paul drop us back downtown after we checked
into our hotel. Our hotel was somewhat funky and when
DeJuana saw Mother's reaction to it she quickly
volunteered herself and Elliott to take the smallest
room. This was
helpful.Downtown we window shopped in desultory fashion
until we got a little too far away from the heart of
things and, after being passed by a bunch of drunk
townies (part of the "lad" culture), turned around and
headed for the taxi rank. It was a bit of a wait - rush
hour - but we made it safely home.We're having our usual
banana night; Elliott is out pub crawling.
Thursday 16 August 2005
Inverness
DeJuana and I set out to walk for exercise at 6:30 this
morning and I timed us on the outbound leg so we could
get back to our hotel for breakfast, toilette and 9:00
departure. We only missed it by a few minutes, but all
of us kind of missed it together so there were no
recriminations.This was our day to soak up the Highlands
and as it turned out, we went as "high" as we could go,
to John O'Groats, the village at land's end on the north
point of Scotland named after the Dutch ferry captain
who also gave his name to a coin.On the way we
experienced beautiful scenery as we drove up the North
Sea coast road: tilled fields, rolls of baled hay, sheep
galore, dairy cows including the rare Belted Galloways
with snappy white bands around their middles, one small
herd of long haired cattle who must be related to yaks
(no, let's see: God created all this stuff in six days
so there wouldn't have been time to relate cows in
Scotland to yaks in the Himalayas), seagulls, migrating
geese, a couple of fallow deer and all of them set
against the background of the North Sea.Half way to John
O'Groats we stopped to tour Dunrobin Castle, the last
"great house" this far north, still inhabited as so many
are. I'm not a big lover of touring castles and always
try to act cool and bored like I've see this stuff
before, but this one caught my fancy and all of our
fancies and we enjoyed it. Down in the formal garden
that sloped to the sea we watched a falconry
demonstration in which the falconer put a hawk, an eagle
owl and a falcon through their paces while
intermittently feeding them dismembered baby chicks. As
the great birds whooshed over our heads we fell in love,
and I don't think there was a one of us who wouldn't
have paid good money to pet the huge owl. By the time we
got to John O'Groats it was 2:00 and most of us were
ready for lunch. In the Sea View Hotel dining room in
company with a "rinse and wrinkle" tour as Paul called
them (very old English people with blue hair and
wrinkles), we had a darned good lunch considering we
were in Nowheresville: cullen skink (smoked fish soup),
mushroom stroganoff, steak pie - just your usual lunch
dishes. As in all foreign cultures we have laughed over
signs and the names of things. Today we saw a highway
sign that said "Heavy Plant Crossing". With visions of
trees moving themselves from one side of the road to the
other (they do take their "Macbeth" seriously up here),
we learned it only meant "heavy equipment crossing". At
John O'Groats there was a sign that indicated how far it
was to the Arctic Circle, New York City and other points
for which this could have conceivably been a jumping-off
point.There was a long uneventful drive home punctuated
with laughter and storytelling but we were ready to
disembark when we finally rolled into our hotel (after a
quick stop at the Safeway for the usual bananas and
sweets) after 6:00. Elliott went out to her pub and the
rest of us had a pajama party and ate our fruit supper.
Wednesday 17 August 2005
Oban
We left Inverness this morning and had a gorgeous drive
all day down Loch Ness and all the succeeding lochs
south of it and the canals that bind them into one
excruciatingly beautiful waterway. We stopped
constantly, which kept us occupied and stretched our
legs and backs. Our stops were:. Urquhart Castle, ruins
on a cliff above Loch Ness;. Fort Augustus, the fort
part of which which doesn't exist anymore (so why did we
even get out of the car?), to see "Neptune's Staircase",
mechanical locks between the lake lochs, and a "Nessie"
sculpture made of wire mesh. The Well of the Seven Heads
monument commemorating a gruesome clan-on-clan revenge
crime (everyone gets along now but they all hate some
other clan and everyone hates the Campbells);. Spean
Bridge Commando Monument (10 seconds, stay in the car),
and a pit stop at a nice souvenir place;
. Glencoe, where a seriously heinous Campbell clan
travesty against the MacDonalds happened that still
rankles even though it happened in 1692 - a massacre
made worse by an abuse of hospitality involved (I know
how they felt);. Rannoch Moor, one of Europe's last true
wildernesses, a starkly beautiful drive between hard old
mountains and over vast ancient peat bogs;. Another rest
stop to pee and buy chocolate; and. St. Conan's Kirk
(church), on Loch Awe, a 150 year-old folly of
architectural styles than nonetheless garnered our
praise and respect. It included a recumbent statue of
marble and mail of Robert the Bruce and, outside, metal
rabbit rain spouts.We came over a last hilltop and there
was Oban below, a picturesque seaside town full of
B&B's. We're in one, a handsome Victorian manse where we
are in comfortable rooms. We're going out to dinner for
the first time since our on-site dinners at Glyndebourne
five nights ago.
Thursday 18 August 2005
Oban
We had wine, pasta, dessert and indigestion last night.
At the time of ingestion it seemed worth it. I fell in
love with Scotland this morning. DeJuana and I didn't
walk early because it was raining too hard, so when I
got dressed I went out just to get some fresh air. It
was still drizzling a little, and standing on the
esplanade across the street in the grey mist the view
was stunning of glassy water, a ferry going by, islands
across the harbor, sailboats and seagulls. Over me was a
war monument with the names of the dead (McLean, McPhail,
McNaughton) and beyond it, on a hill, some mossy ruins.
Scotland respects its ruins and doesn't try to clear
them away. I stood for some time in a state of
enchantment and felt that giving in, when a place
finally enters you like a lover. Paul fetched us at the
usual 9:00 a.m. and we drove to the other end of this
small town to queue for the ferry to the Isle of Mull.
At 10:00 we sailed and for 40 minutes floated through
exquisite scenery made more dramatic by the sky of
clouds that hung so low they laved the hillsides. We
also got to admire Judi Dench and Maggie Smith who were
hanging on the rail next to us. We took their pictures
and said nice things to them.As we approached Mull we
passed under Duart, the castle keep that is the clan
seat of the McLeans, of which our Paul is one. Our first
stop on Mull was "his" castle which seemed much more the
old, rough, thick walled hard-hearted fortress-type
castle of yore than the flossy "castle", Dunrobin, that
we saw north of Inverness.After Duart we drove almost
the entire north coast of Mull, stopping in the
picture-book town of Toberrary (Mother called it
Topiary), the only real town on Mull and a tiny one at
that - the whole big island only has 2500 people on it -
and had a kind of lousy lunch in a pub. In defiance of
how lousy it was we stopped at a chocolate store on the
way out of town and bought some candy to assuage our
feeling of deprivation but which of course only added to
the problem of poor diet.We drove further west, amusing
ourselves with gorgeous scenery and sheep who looked
like they had on Argyll socks, finally turning back at
Calgary, a village that gave its name to a city in
Canada. Calgary, Scotland had a jetty in an inlet from
which many of the dispossessed crofters during the
"clearances" of the 1830's took ships to North America
to escape their sudden precipitous downturn of life
plan. We may all have friends whose ancestors left from
this quay, and indeed relatives. All over Scotland we
saw their sad roofless stone huts which are left
standing to remind the people of the clearances. At that
point we turned back and took an even tinier road back
across the island to the cluster of buildings at the
ferry landing. In one building was a pub where we drank
hot chocolate while we waited for the ferry. The ferry
ride back didn't have any noticeable movie stars aboard
but was equally pleasant and beautiful to the outbound
leg.The sun is back out, Mother and I have walked the
esplanade and are now eating fruit on the bed for
supper. I'm sure our stomachs are thanking us.
Friday 19 August 2005
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is pronounced "Edinburra". We left Oban and
the West this morning with some regret, we'd had such a
pleasant sojourn there. At times in the last few days we
have all secretly longed for the city but now that the
time had come to go to the big city there was some foot
dragging.We had the usual beautiful drive from one side
of the country to the other, west to east, stopping for
lunch in Perth in a new restaurant in a 14th century
building. I had beef cobbler, which turned out to be
stewed beef, and we all had Caesar salads with lots of
white anchovies in them.And then before we could even
protest, we were in traffic and having to adjust to the
noise and chaos of a city that was in the full middle of
its Edinburgh Festival, its Fringe Festival and the
Pipefest, some 10,000 pipers in town. We threaded our
way through the old streets to Jury's, an unremarkable
modern hotel with few amenities (no doorman or bellboys,
for instance) but convenient and away from the street
noise. I had told our travel agent we didn't want to
spend a lot of money on hotels and she took me at my
word.We got settled in, Elliott took off on her own to
try to score a ticket to the Military Tattoo in
Edinburgh Castle [she succeeded], and at 4:30 DeJuana,
Mother and I set off to walk The Royal Mile, accessible
a block from our hotel. On this famous street of shops
and restaurants we walked and window-shopped and watched
the buskers, some of whose agendas were performance art
specifically advertising some aspect of one of the
Festivals, and others who were out to make a little
change. It was noisy and colorful and even though mother
was moving very slowly we got a kick out of the scene
and some of the crazy talent.After two hours we landed,
unashamed, at a Mexican restaurant called Pancho Villa.
We had a margarita and some nachos and soothed our
foreign souls. This was not a night for a banana in a
dreary hotel room.
Saturday 20 August 2005
Edinburgh
While I waited for Mother to finish getting ready this
morning I put my elbows on the window sill, put my chin
on my hands and cast myself back 800 years to when the
buildings I could see would have begun to rise. They are
romantic to us 21st century travelers but life must have
been inconceivably difficult for those who lived in and
built this city. Slops would have been poured from
windows, sheets would have been washed on boards in
tubs, loads would have been borne by animals, stone
would have been broken by hand, water and fuel would
have been carried in. The ghosts must hate us our gaiety
and disregard as all the silly teenagers punctured in
their various facial parts and with their stomachs
hanging out drink and flirt and cling to their
ignorance, and we, too, serious ardent grownups, fail to
give the past its realistic due. We only love it for
what we get from it without walking in its shoes.By
prearrangement we were on our own this weekend. Paul,
our driver and guide, was in the hotel but tied up with
Pipefest. We walked two blocks - the four of us - and
boarded an open-air double-decker tour bus and took the
"city tour" to orient ourselves. The air was cool and
fresh and for the first time since we arrived in the UK
there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We looped around
Edinburgh Castle, an immense "kremlin" of buildings
dating to the 13th century that seemed to grow
organically out of the volcanic hill that predominates
over the city; and around Holyroodhouse Palace. These
two institutions anchor The Royal Mile at either end,
and are number one and number two on the hit parade of
sights to see in Edinburgh.After the full city tour we
rode the bus back around to the stop for the Castle and
walked up to it and up, up, up into it until we reached
the top. This took a lot of stopping, photo ops, bench
rests and confusion. Finally we entered the building
with the crown jewels of Scotland, called The Honours:
the crown, the scepter and the sword that were packed
away in 1707 when Scotland joined England, and only
found 111 years later and put on display.Back on the
street it was already 12:30 so we returned to Pancho
Villa and had a real meal. It took some fortitude to get
there through the masses of people and performers on the
street, and none of us was too sure how far we'd walked
but over lunch we concluded by looking at our map that
we were two-thirds of the way down The Royal Mile.That
meant we were only 1/3 mile from Holyroodhouse Palace
and it was downhill so we walked there, walked through
it and walked back to a bus stop to catch our tour bus
for a ride home. It was 4:00.Then it wouldn't do but we
had to have an ice cream cone, so when the bus stopped
where it had originally started we hiked back up to the
Mile to find an ice cream parlor. At that point it was
either go home or carry Mother, so home we went. Elliott
is out and DeJuana, Mother and I have had a girlie
evening of manicuring, pedicuring and banana-ing. We are
so pitiful, but we're tired. Did I mention that DeJuana
and I had walked at 6:30 this morning for an hour?
Sunday 21 August 2005
Inveraray
And we walked for an hour again this morning following a
route under the Castle, through a cemetery (St.
Cuthbert's) and the length of a park full of flowers. We
get our exercise but sometimes we stop to "smell the
flowers". Every city is bedecked with them. To
paraphrase Winston Churchill, we live in our
surroundings and we become them. It's been an honor to
be in a country where they take care of things.
At 10:00 a.m. we were at the doors of Dynamic Earth, a
startling new science museum with all the interactive
bells and whistles du jour. We were present at the Big
Bang, we were on a volcano that exploded, we went
through the various extinctions and started over with
new species (at this point Bushies would have been
apoplectic over the science); we went to the South Pole
(a real iceberg) and a rain forest (real rain). We lay
on the floor on our backs and watched a movie on the
ceiling, then were funneled into the gift shop where we
were curiously restrained, probably thinking of trying
to close our suitcases. In fact we raced home to do just
that to beat the noon check-out and almost made it. Paul
rejoined us and loaded the car, then took us back to
Dynamic Earth to have lunch (their café was called The
Food Chain) not out of lack of imagination but because
the museum was on the Pipefest parade route. Pipefest
was one of the main reasons we had scheduled Edinburgh
when we had.Every five years thousands of bagpipers from
Pakistan to New Mexico descend on Edinburgh and parade
through town. Today they were 10,000 strong. This was a
stirring sight, to see all those kilts and pipes march
by. We parked Mother on a low wall and went to stand
right on the street to be closer to them and take
pictures. With rare exception every band had old men,
little children and every age in between, and women,
too. The regalia and the noise were both energizing. At
3:30 we met Paul at a preordained spot in front of
Holyroodhouse Palace to leave town. DeJuana and I were
interviewed by some famous radio personality who was
broadcasting from a car next to ours. Then we were off
to Inveraray.After 48 bright, sunny, memorable hours in
Edinburgh it rained on us all the way to Inveraray, a 2
½ hour drive almost due west through and out beyond
Glasgow. We are comfortably tucked in to the Hotel
George, two well-restored 18th century buildings with no
lift and no phones. Mother has just fed me some fruit
and soon I shall further tuck myself under my comforter
for a long sleep. I feel like I have been on my feet
non-stop all
weekend.
Monday 22 August 2005
Inveraray
As I stood in the hall at 6:30 this morning waiting for
DeJuana, I stared at some lithographs of Scottish clan
warriors in their various tartans and tried to think of
another Western culture that had had historically its
own unique way of dressing. A Scotsman kitted out is a
grand and glorious thing but let's face it, strange
strange strange. One has to go to the Eastern hemisphere
to find such eccentric clothes.The rain had abated and
we had crisp, cool, clean air and bright sunshine all
day. We drove down to the Mull of Kintyre ("mull" can be
a peninsula, as it was in this case) through the usual
spectacular scenery that skirted Loch Fyne. As we drove
down the west coast of Kintyre we were on open sea
across from Ireland save for a few islands, giving us a
whole new range of scenery.Our goal, Glenbarr Abbey and
Macalister Clan Centre, was halfway down the peninsula
in a nice old castle that was shabby on the inside. The
Laird and Lady Glenbarr, heads of the McAllister clan
(it's spelled 15 different ways) give the tours
themselves. From the entrance hall wallpapered in the
red McAllister tartan she gave us the tour of the museum
rooms full of old family stuff. She was actually from
Rhode Island, married the Laird 20 years ago dressed in
their respective clan tartans after meeting him at a
Scottish clan gathering and obviously bought into the
clan and ancestry thing in a big way. I'm always
suspicious of the underlying motives of someone who is
consumed by her ancestry and even though we were in the
heart of the McAllister Lands I couldn't get swept up
into it.We bore up through the minute descriptions of
every little thing (I say "we" because I didn't run
screaming out the door) although when we entered one
oppressive, low-ceilinged room in which the Lady
displayed her teddy bear, thimble and quilt collections
Elliott said afterward she'd been afraid she was going
to have to put me on life support.At the end of the tour
we wound up in the tea room/shop and bought a few
trinkets from our Lady. I escaped to the outside air and
drank it in. Later I voluntarily went back inside to see
her Maine Coon cat, the only thing that could have lured
me back into the place. The Lord and Lady lived in
somewhat reduced rooms but the cat was attractive. As we
left we thanked her graciously, waving and smiling until
out of sight.We retraced our steps back up the peninsula
to Tarbert, a pretty little seaside town at the top of
Kintyre. There we had a tail-gate picnic in a parking
space facing the harbor - bananas, yogurt and
cookies.Our afternoon activity was to drive north to
Kilmartin, a village in the heart of Celt-land. When the
Irish Scoti tribe drifted over to present-day Scotland
this was the area in which they landed. All over
Kilmartin Glen ("glen" is valley) were standing stones
older than Stonehenge and burial cairns dotting the
emerald green fields. We walked out to some of the
stones, then drove into Kilmartin proper and went to the
kirk to see its famous graveyard of burial stones dating
to the 13th century, many carved with Knights Templar on
them Egyptian-style, face forward but feet sideways (the
Renaissance was still some way off) and some with skull
and crossbones for people dead of the plague. There was
a little museum next door where we used the facilities
before heading home.Back in Inveraray it was only 4:00
so we went to Inveraray Castle, the ancestral seat of
the Dukes of Argyll, heads of the Campbell clan. Paul
bought our tickets but refused to go in because it was
Campbell. We, on the other hand, went in and were bowled
over by the beauty and wealth of the castle, in sad
contrast to the poor old spavined McAllister seat. It
made a beautiful end to a beautiful day, the latest in a
week of them. Poor darling Paul was legally committed to
buying our dinner ("farewell dinner with guide") so we
all dressed up a little including him in full clan
regalia (he'd been in a kilt all week) and met in the
hotel bar, then the dining room for a fun dinner - for
us, anyway. Paul has had the facility to act like he's
having fun while he may be secretly counting the hours
until he's shed of us. We part tomorrow.
Tuesday 23 August 2005
Glasgow Airport
As I lay awake this morning waiting for it to be time to
get up, I thought of my summer ending. In this cold
climate it's hard to remember it's still summer in
Texas, and probably 100 degrees. As all the faces of my
summer reeled kaleidoscopically by, the faces of Port
Aransas and now the faces of Scotland, I was grateful
for the opportunity to know more than one place. We have
been in villages so microscopic it is inconceivable to
think what one would do in them, yet we're atavistically
drawn to them, or maybe just
literarily. Now we must return to our own lives after
this brief sojourn into others.In a cold rain we walked
after breakfast next door to see the old Inveraray Jail,
a prize-winning museum. Skipping the torture parts, we
started out in a courtroom peopled with startlingly
lifelike figures in the dock, in the jury box and at the
counsel table. Voices emanated from them as first a
cattle rustler then a lunatic murderer were sentenced.
It was eerie, and impressive.Then we toured the old
cells and the new (1849) cells and tried to think of the
men, women and children we weren't, the ones who had
populated this jail. It would have had a definite
deterrent effect if one ever got out of it and
considered recidivism.On the road again - it had rained
on us every third day, approximately - we headed in the
general direction of Glasgow, our end point, but we had
the whole day ahead of us. We stopped in Helensburgh, a
beautiful exurb of the city out on the Firth of Clyde,
there to tour "Hill House", a house designed inside and
out by Charles Rennie Macintosh, the famous Art Nouveau
architect of the belle époque. When we found it we
discovered it didn't open for another hour and a half,
so we went into the business district and found a
Chinese restaurant (my request).Full of Chinese food, we
returned to Hill House and spent 1 ½ hours poring over
every little aspect of it. Notwithstanding how we
previously felt about Art Nouveau, the house was
enchanting and intriguing. I told the other ladies that
the serendipity of getting to see it resulted from their
all having been late to breakfast and late to be ready
to leave. With nothing to do but wait for them, I had
read the Baedeker's and found Hill House for our days
activity.We drove on into Glasgow, which is an
architectural jewel. There we left Elliott on George
Square to cat around and get to the airport on her own.
We ogled the architecture from the windows of the van,
then sadly were taken to the airport by our dear Paul
and dumped to overnight at the Holiday Inn Express with
sweet farewells and promises to write. Paul was a jewel
himself.
Thursday 25 August 2005
Minneapolis Airport
We should have been in our own beds at home in San
Antonio last night but alas, we didn't make it. Air
traffic control problems made us miss a connection and
we wound up here in Minneapolis at what was after
midnight Scotland time, too tired to go on and with no
connections. We're flying home this morning in dirty
clothes. We have no idea where our bags are.As I lay
waiting for the alarm to go off at 4:00 this morning, I
thought of all the Scottish clan names we'd been exposed
to on this trip. It was a roll call of American names.
America's greatest export is the dollar (and until the
current Administration, hope), but these little
countries, Scotland, Ireland and England, exported their
people for all kinds of sad reasons and they built the
U.S.A. for us. White Anglo-Saxons may be passé now and
will inevitably lose their demographic hegemony to more
fecund breeders but we can thank little empty Scotland
for a hell of a lot of American social history. Moi
included.
MANY THANKS TADDY FOR THE DIARY, WE HOPE
EVERYONE HAD A PLEASANT READ AND GAINED SOME OF THE
ATMOSPHERE OF THIS TOUR. From my point of view, it
was a great tour, also. it's nice to be escorting four
lovely girls about my own country!
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