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My little ones in Edinburgh. Sprocket with his Pictish warrior paint (in texta, luckily washable), Littlest (AKA Hoggles) with the 'Hairy Coo' (or Highland Cow) hat and Poppet with her 'magic amulet' (just out of view).

We're in London now, just about to bring in the New Year. My Beloved and Littlest and I have spent the day wandering around the British Museum and Bloomsbury while the older two are at the Zoo with The Grands.

So Happy New Year everyone! May 2015 bring you all love, joy, health and happiness!

Joining with Jodi for the very last portraits of my wee ones for 2014.

Here's to all the promise and possibility and those amazing moments of magic for 2015...

Cold-Climate-Christmas

I started Christmas day early with a walk up Calton Hill with my sis-in-law. We left later than usual - just at sunrise, and by the time we reached the top of the hill the world was light and we had the most glorious views across Edinburgh, up Prince's Street, across to the Castle and the great bulk of Arthur's seat, and to our back the glassy blue-silver glow of the Firth of Forth with the soft rolling green land of the Kingdom of Fife behind it.
The Poppet threw the most almighty tempest as we sat in St Mary's cathedral and we left ignominiously. I've promised myself that next year I'll do better by the children, because really with all the turmoil, change and sickness this year a few tempests (even at very inopportune moments) are the least to be expected.
Lunch was a feast, a bounty of plenty, thought over (not by me - we were very spoilt) for months, and afterwards Beloved and I slipped out with Littlest for a walk in the crisp chill air and the deserted grey streets.
We made our way to the foot of the castle, our red nosed, red cheeked babe peering around inquisitively, then I went on a 'character' walk to show Beloved the square where my character, Jeannie, lived in 1801.
Christmas trees glowed from so many windows, sharing good cheer and illuminating the already darkening world. (It was going on four in the afternoon.) I imagined a world lit by candle-light and fire light.
Jeannie would not have seen Christmas trees, (a later innovation) but each house (or window?) would have born a candle to welcome the Christ Child in whatever form he might take.
My recent brush with a coal mine fire made me wonder at the fog in the air due to all the chimneys smoking. (Note to self - peat? coal? wood?)
And my Beloved and I held hands and walked together through the Christmas tree and light bedecked streets and felt very, very blessed. 

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Littlest- being held by Nana in her ergo. All rugged up in winter warms.

Sprocket - still a little chesty and sleepy. By the Christmas lights in Jenners.

Poppet - By the Christmas lights in Jenners.

We are now approaching wellness and our time in Edinburgh is turning delightfully dreamlike. Beloved's mum, sister & a good family friend have arrived bringing lashings of food, drink, good cheer and extra hands to herd the kids. The city continues to fill me with constant heart palpitations at the sheer beauty - the castle on the skyline… be still my heart! We met yesterday with my cousin's family and it was so so lovely seeing her and the little ones and watch our little ones play together! (Our girls share a love of pink, plastic ponies in pastels and bling)

It is possible that Father Christmas has been hitting the Edinburgh op-shops pretty hard in cahoots with his/my sister-in-law. Edinburgh op-shops are brilliant! (Also the gorgeous one-world shop under St John's.) Father Christmas only has a stop off on the Royal Mile now for Hairy Coo's (Cows) and a little bit of tartan stuff and I think he's done. (He didn't do any shopping in Australia so he's been a bit busy…)

Joining with Jodi from Scotland for a portrait of my little ones every most weeks in 2014. 

Small Moments (from Edinburgh)

Small moments from Edinburgh as we approach Christmas. I haven't been able to take many photos (for me!) - Littlest in her carrier and holding Poppet's hand and the bag on my back all decrease my camera mobility - but reinforcements have arrived so I'm hoping to capture some of the amazing street-scapes, cathedrals and castles soon.

We are all slowly on the mend so will also start journeying further afield. Yesterday my girls and I ventured to the Georgian house while Sprocket slept off the cold and jet lag. De-touring to an op-shop for some Christmas ornaments we arrived to find… it closed for the season! The shop was open in the basement however so my feet trod the same big paving stones as the servant girls and I entered the way they would have when running their messages. Which is, truthfully, the way I suspect I would have entered if I'd been alive back in the far away!

For lunch the girls and I again ventured out and walked up to my favourite cafe - Henderson's under St John's Cathedral at the foot of the castle (and I was all gusty sighs as I remembered walking past it every day on the way to work back in the day.) We met my darling God-mama and it was so lovely catching up after such a long time. The oceans in between do make things very difficult!

(I am now a few days behind here… and I apologise for the mass of photos… but Edinburgh…! I walk around with my head constantly craning around looking up down and around again!) 

Where My Characters Walk...

My babe carried warm on my chest, rugged up in faux fur and wool, my little girl's gloved hand in my gloved hand, and my boy tripping on ahead, we walk through the winter town.

I ooh and aah as my children ask why we had to come to The Cold Place. 

I point out the Christmas trees in the windows, the ones outside shops, their lights gleaming against the dark. The houses surrounding us are all nineteenth century and stone, on occasions the street we cross is cobblestones. When we find a Cathedral staring down at us, (St Mary's?) it's stained glass windows illuminated from within, the kids yell about 'the castle' and I have to explain that grand and big as it is, it's not a castle. 

This is where my characters walk. I see them in my head as I walk. I hear their voices as a constant running commentary. Unfortunately, they are bickering, just as Beloved and I would be if we weren't running on zero hours sleep. 

I look down at one of the little basement courtyards and there is a small, brilliantly green fern surrounded by moss growing on one of the stone steps leading down and I can see - see so clearly the toad hero from my story sitting glaring from beneath it. The kids pull me on, wanting to be somewhere, anywhere* worthy of the long flight, but I'm still smiling as we hurry on. 

It took me awhile to work out the precise time and setting I wanted for my retelling of the frog prince.  I  narrowed it down to Scotland when I was fifteen and then took twenty years to fine tune the where and when.

Staying in Edinburgh now, close to the New Town where I've situated my heroine's house, everything confirms my choice. Things are clarified, changed, reinforced, the tactile detail, the scents and sounds and minituae are coming into focus. 

The high ceilings that are such a feature of the house we are staying in, and of the New Town in general, mean my plans to have a plus sized heroine are scuppered. With such a serious amount of steps I do not see how it would be possible for her to have an ounce of fat on her, and that's not even taking her daily stroll to the fish market beneath the bridge and up Calton Hill to bleach the clothes and over to the old town to see her sisters. I think if anything she'd be verging on the sinewy and she can definitely eat whatever she chooses and then some and struggle to gain. 

The size of the rooms is both a surprise and an interesting glimpse into the mind of the wealthy of the nineteenth century - these people preferred the look of the thing to all practicalities of warmth or ease - heat just flees up into the high ceiling and running up and down the stairs (particularly carrying a seven month old) is getting old…

Jeannie could walk fifty miles and not break a sweat. Heck, I think she could run fifty miles and not notice. Myself on the other hand...

Today, tomorrow, soon, we visit The Georgian House and I am so looking forward to truly stepping within a house similar to the one Jeannie and her father lived in, to admiring the copper pots on the fire stove, to seeing with my own eyes what her bedroom was likely to look at in 3d, not just photos. Of course, I've visited it before, but so many years ago I don't want to count them.

Sights, sounds, smells… add a touch of trauma and after a long break I'm writing again. Ideas return… a troll comes marching through my story, stolid and slow of speech, well meaning but guaranteed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, made worse because he says so little, glimmers of Christmas-in-the-long-ago come to life…

It is so good, so very good to be writing again. (Even if it is in the small hours of the morning when I would dearly love to be sleeping if only certain little munchkins would go the bleep to sleep.)

*I suspect the Christmas market, ice skating and carousel rides which we hope to go to later today will more than live up to their hopes. As they've been up since 2.30 am (again) though, I'm a little wary of taking them out on the town… I foresee tears… lots and lots of tears. And possible tantrums of the lying-on-the-ground-kicking-legs-and-screaming variety. Possibly by me. No sleep is not pretty in kids or adults. C'est la vie. I'm sure it's good for the soul. Somehow. Character building. Though not the pleasant making-up-a-character-for-a-story-kind.

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Sprocket - talking with Poppet on Princes Street, Edinburgh. An early walk on our first morning in Scotland.

Littlest - the dearest smile - Amsterdam airport. She was the best traveller of any of us, and the only one with any smiles left by the end of the 36 hours.

Poppet - Poor darling, the travel's been rough on her. Looking out of the window as we go on a mission in search of food and towels.

We're in Scotland now - jetlagged, sick and so bone weary we can hardly walk. It was a brutal flight. Antibiotics still haven't dealt with my mastitis, my Beloved also had some bug just before we took flight and catching up on things in his home town left him majorly sleep deprived even before we left. The kids are waking at weird and wonderful times in the night deciding it's morning. The first night it was 11, but they went back to sleep, last night it was 2.30, but they didn't go back to sleep. Beloved stayed with them in the lounge while I fed Littlest all.night.long.

I think I could write a book on how not to travel.
Anyway, Edinburgh is beautiful. The castle is stunning and the snow on the nearby mountains never fails to make me catch my breath. I love the way the light falls on the stone, the history, the memories, bitter sweet and happy. I love the Christmas lights in boughs and door arches, the gorgeously painted carousel at the Christmas markets. There is no sign of snow yet, but we live in hope.

Please Lord, let there be Peace (and a white Christmas).