#scotland
Swimming in pools and lochs
We've had a lot of peace. We're spending a lot of evenings in the pool, where only twenty people are allowed at a time and only swimming in a clockwise loop. We've been taking sick days when we feel worn out. I've been reading a little more. Emma has planted the raised bed at the end of the garden with bulbs that are supposed to sleep over the winter and erupt in spring. She forgot to check they were the right way up, but faith and bad statistics tell us about half of them will grow okay. Tom got back...
Scraps from the Isle of Mull
A few weeks ago I went camping in Scotland. Below are some scraps I wrote down while I was on the Isle of Mull. There are significant magnetic anomalies around the islands of St. Kilda. The name St. Kilda is an oddity: there is no such saint. One theory is that it comes from “sunt kelda”, Norse for sweet wellwater. Another is that it is a corruption of the local pronunciation of the island name Hirta. The local accent has a guttural /h/ sound that could sound like /k/ and an /l/ for /r/ swap. Machair is a fertile and...
Tom arrives
It's been a good week. We came back from Scotland and spent a week relaxing at home around my birthday. Then Tom arrived in Heathrow having run the gauntlet of the travel restrictions imposed by the Indian government, UK government, and the various airlines. He's been decompressing here for a week or so, and making us incredible amounts of food and drink in the meantime. It's good to have your habits disrupted. Yesterday Tom and some friends spent most of the day in our garden. There's a project to build a raised bed at the end of the garden, but...
On Skye, Nursing Home Deaths Expose a Covid-19 Scandal
— On a Scottish Isle, Nursing Home Deaths Expose a Covid-19 Scandal, Benjamin Mueller in The New York Times
