Bah!
If I hadn’t stuffed up something to do with the camera, I could have posted some relevant pics either here on the shop blog… as it is, they’ve all gone awol between the camera and the computer. Grr. A couple of them were even quite good, imo.
Rhinos hiding behind bushes and so on! Ducks.
Anyway, Happy New Year!
Last month it was eskimos, this month it was hot Namibian desert.
The Geographic talk was given by a bloke who runs safaris and wildlife encounter trips up in the N. of Namibia, almost on the Angolan border and he had some stunning close-up slides of leopards, lions, sand dunes, etc. which he’s accumulated over years. He was a good speaker, too, which helps! And then it was back outside into the chill.
Next month it’s back to the chill zone again – down to South Georgia. Not sure what aspect of it the talk’ll be about, though – penguins, reindeer, ex-whaling, albatrosses, the Shackleton connection… all of the above maybe!? Hopefully it won’t be below freezing when we come out!
Outside it just seems to get colder and colder – I’ve even had to stop wedging the shop door open, which is something I try to avoid in the run-up to Christmas. A lot more people seem willing to come through an open door than push open a closed one… I’ve even had people pushing their faces right up against the glass of the door, rather than just come in. It must look scary inside, I guess!
Christmas reading, if I end up with any time, will probably include the third Captain ‘Black Jack’ Geary adventure for light nonsense, the latest Owly story, and maybe finishing the latest Turtledove (Opening Atlantis) or more re-reading of KSR’s Years of Rice and Salt. I recently re-read the beginning and really liked it (again!)
Which reminds me I should look up what his next project is. I was a bit iffy about Forty Signs of Rain, but Fifty Degrees Below was good and then Sixty Days and Counting finished off the trilogy really well. They should be on the re-read list as well…
Madeleine and I were down at the Botanic gardens yesterday; they’ve started a major upgrade of their facilities at the West Gate (the one by Inverleith Park) and closed – indeed, demolished – the shop, etc…
A temporary shop has been erected at the East Gate in the grounds of the Regis Keeper’s private garden. Or at least that’s what it used to be years ago. I don’t think the Keeper still lives in the house anymore.
Years ago I knew the son of the then Keeper, and spent many happy times playing there – and not just in the large, private garden, but also, via a subtle gap in one of the hedges round on the North side (behind where the Scottish trail is now beside the rock garden) in the main Gardens themselves. Great fun! I checked and the gap is still there, although you’re not actually meant to have access to where it is.
Latterly, they moved and I can’t remember if that was because his father changed jobs, or was policy on the part of the governing body of the Gardens, so I’m not sure just when the Keeper gave up his extremely nice perk!
Anyway, visiting the shop and the outside area for selling plants was the first time I had been in the private garden for decades! And, apart from the general shape, I didn’t recognise it at all!
Oh, well.
