Dot to dot

It’s exactly a year until Jamie and Kerry’s wedding in New Zealand! I was chatting to Jamie on the phone last night when I suddenly realised it. I got them a wee countdown chalkboard for Christmas, where they can mark how many days until the wedding. They have now moved to Auckland where Kerry already works, and Jamie will start his new job there on Monday. 

Today we set off to London to see Ally and Cat, our journey enlivened by delays on the motorway and booking tickets for Kelvingrove Bandstand while in the queue for security! And then we booked a boat trip on Loch Katrine while we were on the plane, before we took off! (a lovely birthday present to James from Heather and Ewan.) 

Arriving in London we went straight to the National Gallery and had a delicious sandwich lunch in Supporters’ House, before going to see the Neo-impressionist exhibition “Radical Harmonies: From Seurat to Van Gogh.” I was pleased to see it because Heather and Ewan enjoyed it and I thought that I would be too late, however it’s on for one more week. The paintings, whose genre I was taught at school was called “pointillism” * were pleasant, especially from a distance, and I can see that it’s a sort of progression from Impressionism. However it did seem that they were restricting themselves by this method of painting. James said that the paintings were “the occasional triumph over technique” - in other words he thinks that they went to a lot of effort without matching results. I concur with this, although I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition. 

 * Apparently the neo-impressionists hated being called pointillists, probably because they felt that there was much more to their work than dots! 

Home again

It felt like a long journey home from Italy on Saturday, although it all went smoothly and the plane was only a bit late taking off. We had gorgeous snowy views in the bus ride to Innsbruck Airport, and an interesting commentary from the Inghams rep; for example she pointed out the building works for a bypass for the lorries that make the motorway too busy. They will be shuttled underground by train, although the project will not be finished until 2034. Innsbruck airport was very busy and we had to stand in a long queue for passport control, but I have stood in worse queues in the past so I’m not complaining. Once we landed at Edinburgh Airport and said our farewells to Heather and Ewan, it was only a 45 minutes drive to home and a fond reunion with the cats. I had a nice hot bath which made me so sleepy that I dropped off to sleep the minute my head hit the pillow. 
Since the weekend we have had rather dreich weather and have got back into our normal routine including a Children’s Panel training day for me today which required quite a lot of preparation. The training was intense but very practical; such a lot to take in! Our lovely course leader assures us that it will all become like second nature eventually. Tonight we went to another fun quiz night at the Rowantree Inn with Davie and Chanel; we came a respectable fourth. 

Fantastic Holiday

We are relaxing in the hotel lounge this morning, in that strange limbo of waiting for our lunchtime coach to Innsbruck Airport. It is snowing heavily outside and looks very pretty. Thursday was James’ 64th birthday and what a great day he had. He received cards and presents at breakfast as well as some birthday messages, and then set off happily for a long and sunny morning of skiing with Heather and Ewan. We all had a late lunch at the Luigi Gorza Refuge at Porto Vascara way above the village at 2478 metres high. Our table by the window overlooked the stunning Dolomites with the Alps of Austria in the distance. The food was very special as was the company, it was a joyful occasion. After lunch we took photos of the mountains from the terrace, and one of the waiters kindly took some good photos of the four of us. We had a lovely rustic dinner of “local” Val Gardena food, which was great but perhaps a few too many grains and pulses for me, especially after the huge bowl of polenta that I had at lunchtime! My stomach felt very full! The food in the hotel is excellent and I will miss it. 

My knee finally gave out after four (short!) days of skiing, so I amused myself by strolling around the village and having coffees and reading my book (House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende) and enjoying the scenery. Although a bit disappointing, four days isn’t bad and hopefully I have not quite yet reached the end of my skiing years! On the other hand James, Heather and Ewan all skied for an impressive six full days. The weather has been so fantastic, it has been such a good holiday. 

Pink Dolomites

My second and third ski lessons went well in terms of technique, however my knee continued to be very sore. I was not downhearted however, and still had fun and enjoyed the sunshine and snow. The scenery in the Dolomites is just amazing and the mountains above Arabba glowed pink in the sun. James, Heather and Ewan continued touring the area and covering huge distances. Heather showed me their route on the Strava App which is very impressive, there is an option to animate the route so you can see the cursor moving along all of the lifts and pistes that they skied, you can even see the line wiggle down the steeper slopes where more turns were required! Today I took the gondola up to the mid station at Porta Vescova after my ski lesson and had a coffee and croissant surrounded by mountains. It was really warm sitting outside in the sunshine but then the sun moved behind a cliff and it suddenly became very cold! The others arrived back about an hour after me and following some après-ski drinks, Heather and I went to the hotel spa and chatted while relaxing our legs in the jacuzzi before another delicious dinner. 

Sunshine and snow

A much better ski day for me today! I met up with my pleasant ski instructor, Federico, in the morning and we spent two hours on the blue run practising my turns. I felt more confident although my knee still isn’t great. Most of all I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I’m so delighted still to be skiing. Federico is 24 and has a cat called Osvaldo known as Ossie. The weather is fantastic, with sun and blue skies. Meanwhile James, Heather and Ewan skied the Sella Ronda including a stop at the famous woodcarving shop where Heather purchased another hand-carved deer for her collection. To my surprise they got presents for me too. James gave me a cute round-bellied marmot and Heather and Ewan got me a gorgeous little kitten. Both of these were hand-carved in Val Gardena from pine wood, so you can see the grain of the wood. I felt very moved that they all thought of me. Another great evening ensued. 

Return to Arabba

The journey to Arabba went very smoothly yesterday; we flew from Edinburgh to Innsbruck and then had a two and a half hour bus journey to Arabba. Ewan informed us that the last time we were here was six years ago, in 2019. We are back in the same hotel, the Sporthotel, and it’s just as smart and comfortable as I remember, and the bedrooms seem to have been refurbished in new, lighter wood. We were too late for dinner but were served cold platters of food in the bar area. After a celebratory brandy in our room we slept well, although woken at 7 a.m. by very loud church bells! I dropped straight back to sleep and woke in good time for a hearty breakfast. Then;  came the inevitable footering around to walk down to the ski hire shop, leave our skis at the chairlift, back up to the hotel to leave our snow boots and then back down to the chairlift. My skiing started disastrously; despite going down a reasonably easy blue, my right knee was instantly painful and I felt that I could hardly turn to the left. I encouraged the others to ski on while I made my way back to the resort. I managed down ok and decided to go up a wee chairlift that I could see culminated at a short wide blue run. Except that I got into the wrong chairlift and was lifted back up to the top of run 22 again! So down I painfully skied a second time and then went to book myself three individual lessons at the ski school for the next three mornings. I will also buy a knee support because foolishly I didn’t bring one of the couple that I have at home - I say foolishly because I already knew that my right knee has been deteriorating; last week I couldn’t bend it when I was attempting to get out of the bath! And this morning it was very sore when I was pushing my foot into my ski boot. I spent the afternoon in the spa and was impressed to find out that James, Heather and Ewan had skied 32 km today! We had a convivial evening and by the end of dinner we noticed that it was snowing lightly. 

Northern Renaissance Brunch

We left Ullapool on the rainy afternoon of Tuesday 13th January after an excellent fortnight in sun, wind, snow, sleet and rain. The next day was the first session of my (resumed) Children’s Panel training. * It was informative and interesting, and the group I’m training with are all very friendly. When I got home I did the homework from Day 1 straight away because I will be on holiday next week. I will then have a few days to do the preparation for Day 2 which is in a fortnight. I had a busy couple of days of shopping, haircut, packing, and I met up with Sue for brunch in Burnside. I met Sue on my Northern Renaissance Art Course, and it was very nice to see her again; we chatted about lots of things including Krakow and the Marian Altar in St Mary’s Church. I got my results back from the course a few days ago and was delighted to get a “B” with just over 70%. I found doing the essay and visual test to be helpful in consolidating my understanding of the course, the whole experience was great fun. I’m hoping to do another History of Art course later in the year, and it will be interesting to learn about a different art movement, but there will always  be a big part of my heart in the Northern Renaissance! 

* I paused my training in March last year when I was unwell, but was encouraged by my tutors to resume it this year.