Meeting Margaret in Perth

We went on a road trip to Perth today to meet up with Margaret who is house-hunting in Scotland just now. Such are the vagaries of our social life that this was our only opportunity to see her before she goes back to the USA. Margaret is staying in Broughty Ferry so she also had a journey to meet us in the Fair City. All went smoothly, although the journey was enlivened by a scam phone call which luckily we realised was not legitimate.* We listened to several episodes of The Rest is History in the car as well as some music, and we met Margaret in the centre of Perth. 

Perth is a city that I don’t know well, my visits there have always been fleeting so I don’t really have a feel for it. We headed for the recently re-developed museum and had lunch in a café close by. It was great to see Margaret and we had a good catch up before heading into the museum. It was interesting and Margaret and I were both impressed by a Celtic cross that was lit up in different moving colours which emphasised the depth of its patterns. There were lots of artefacts and information from the history of Perthshire going back thousands of years, the highlight of which was the Stone of Destiny. James and I have actually seen it before, when it was in Edinburgh Castle, but its new home seems like a worthy setting. It is displayed in its own room where a short film about its story is projected around the wall to give a sort of immersive experience. 

We had coffee in the museum coffee shop (very nice) and more chat, until it was time for us to head north again. We bade Margaret a fond farewell; hopefully it won’t be too long until we see her again. We got back to Ullapool at exactly 8 p.m. and had supper with the kitties. 

* A scammer phoned me pretending to be my bank’s fraud department and asked me about my recent transactions. There was something a bit off about him; he told me that someone has been trying to take money out of my account but then asked how many accounts I had and how much money was in each of them, and said that he would help me to “secure” the money in my account. At this point we got cut off because there was no signal, so at James’ suggestion we pulled into a lay-by and phoned the fraud department. Sure enough they had not contacted us. I hadn’t given the man much information but I had given details of some of my recent transactions, so my card has been stopped and I will have to await a new one. There seem to be a lot of scams going about.