On Saturday I didn’t open the shop. Fortunately, I had arranged for someone else to!
The reason being that earlier in the year my brother had given me a birthday present of a helicopter flight for two and our slot had finally arrived! 
The helipad was tucked away in a corner of Ingliston near the airport and not that easy to track down, but at around 11.00 or so we finally took off for a tour up the river Forth and the towns and villages on the southern shore up to about Linlithgow and back down to the two bridges, Cramond and views of Edinburgh and the Pentlands. I let Madeleine sit in the front beside the pilot because I knew sh’ed make good use of the photographic opportunities from the better frontal views it provided. I had a left side window seat beside the other 4 passengers in the rear compartment. I had great views, even though the weather was a bit overcast, and took a bunch of pretty average pictures. Which is why M got the good seat! I haven’t really used a camera for years and had been practising a bit beforehand so I knew which buttons to press but the practice pictures turned out a lot better than the ones taken on the day…
Later we had coffee with our chaffeur for the day, M’s aunt Audrey who we then treated to lunch up at Greens Hotel in Kinross, which was a bit disappointing, and after a drive north through the autumnal trees of Glen Farg – decades since I’ve been through the Glen, rather than sticking to the motorway – we strolled round Branklyn Gardens and then had coffee and cake at a small French (well, Breton, actually, I’m told) restaurant in central Perth.
Audrey bid us farewell and we checked into the New County Hotel for the night, which was fine but not outstanding… the evening was occupied having a drink or two and going to see Stardust. Very enjoyable, but a bit too long.
On Sunday morning my sister met us as we read the papers in the hotel lounge and we drove up to the Hermitage just beyond Dunkeld and strolled about there, seeing the refurbished Ossian’s Folly – a little building with a balcony jutting out over the river just where salmon try to leap upstream at some very frothy waterfalls. It was the season for them to try to jump, but the river was pretty full and I think most of them had sensibly figured it wasn’t a good day to try. Oh, well. One of my earlier skirmishes with photography produced a picture of a leaping salmon right here, taken from the balcony; maybe I should did it out of wherever it might be…
On then, to the Loch of the Lowes – very scenic but the viewing centre and hides all seemed locked up – and back to Dunkeld & Birnam to the Beatrix Potter Center for a very light lunch, a look at an exhibition (nothing to do with BP), and a look around the shop, where I bought myself a smart little bag!
Then back to Perth via some very nice backroads near the Tay, going via Caputh, Stanley and Luncarty and back to my sister’s for coffee! Then a disasterous attempt to get a bus back to Edinburgh resulting in failing to get a bus, going for a meal with my sister while we waited for a direct train due quite a bit later, and then being put on a bus anyway at the station because of unannounced reasons…grrr. I had checked earlier in the week and there weren’t meant to be any problems affecting this train. Anyway, the bus left Perth about 15 minutes after the train it replaced should have, hared down the M80 and got to Waverley just when the train would have been due in! A local bus straight home, some wine to help unwind, and so finished a fairly fun-filled, hectic (in a mellow sort of way) weekend.
And the shop had a fairly good day, too!
