Betwixt and Between

I did not post in the whole month of November. I had good intentions, but of course we all know where they lead, so that doesn't count for much.  However, I seem to have just spent the last year on a plane, on a bus, on a train, in some rambling old place or in among gorse-covered crags.  Motion, motion, motion!  I practically need a vacation to recover from my vacation.  That said -

folks, I went to SCOTLAND.

Little-bitty me, who has never been anywhere much, has sat on a plane (six, actually) and crossed the Pond and trekked around in a foreign country for ten days.  It is not, admittedly, comparable to Jenny's three months, but it is still a world beyond anything I have ever done before and it was absolutely fantastic.  Except the bit where I caught a cold.  But never mind about that.

We made our headquarters in Glasgow for this trip: a big city, by my reckoning, which is not much of a reckoning at all.  From here we took various modes of transportation to a smattering of sites, or just rambled through Glasgow itself when we wanted a more leisurely day.  We didn't get to see everything we had planned, of course, but our handpicked few were topnotch: Stirling Castle first, then Edinburgh Castle and Arthur's Seat, then Linlithgow Palace.  

 

 

 

It was almost unfortunate that we went to Stirling first: it spoiled us for the rest of the trip.  The castle seems to rise naturally out of the old volcanic rock, and perches splendidly over the town that lies in the valley below.  The day we went was cold, and foggy at first, so that when we stood on the wall in Queen Anne's Garden, we were looking out over a white sea that stretched all the way to the hills on the horizon; William Wallace's monument rose up out of it like an island.  Later on, though, the sun came up and the fog burned off, and then everything was frosty and glorious.  

The castle itself was amazing.  It has been mostly left alone, which is the way my family likes things.  There were very few roped-off places, only a few careless signs informing us that there were "sheer drop offs" ahead and depicting stick people falling off them.  For the Scots, I guess not killing yourself through stupidity is a matter of common sense.  Anyhow, while some of the interior was a bit made-up and stilted, the ramparts and grounds were raw and old.

After Stirling, Edinburgh Castle was a bit of a let-down.  It has been far more commercialized, being in the capital city as it is; there were also a lot more screaming children whose interest was, I suspect, extremely small.  More areas were roped off and the setting itself was less magnificent; tellingly, I was looking for a photo to post and found none of particular interest from the Castle.  We did get to see the Honours of Scotland and the Stone of Scone (we then went home and watched "Stone of Destiny" to get the highly accurate and not at all embellished story of its recovery), but they draw and quarter you if you bring a camera in.

We then scootched four miles or so through the city in a roundabout manner to reach Holyrood Park.  This was the spectacular part of the Edinburgh excursion: the Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat. 

 

The daylight was fading - it gets dark around 3:30 at this time of year - and we aren't athletic, so we didn't make it to the top.  The view we had, though, was spectacular.

 

That night I dreamed about hiding in the gorse.  Combination of Arthur's Seat and Kidnapped, I daresay.

Linlithgow was a world apart from both Stirling and Edinburgh, partially because it was built as a palace and not so much as a fortress, partially because it was pretty thoroughly burned after The Forty-Five.  The floors and the roof are gone, though you can still climb the spiral staircases in the corner towers and walk through the chapel and the royal apartments. 

There seemed to be little of the palace worth seeing when we first entered the courtyard: a fountain, four burnt walls, four burnt towers.  As we moved further in, though, the rooms began to unfold.  Every time we started up a new tower, we had no idea where it would take us; I got completely turned around, and it was dizzying to suddenly find that I had come back down another staircase and was reentering the courtyard from some new angle.  As to that, the staircases themselves were dizzying.  I don't have a very good head for heights (I found that out with greater clarity on this trip), and as all but perhaps two stairways lacked handrails, I practically crawled up with my hand on the outer wall at all times.  I didn't make it to the top; I left it to others to get photos.

See the greenish-blue figure on the bench toward the right?  That's yours truly.  ("I'd stay on firm ground and let them dare away!")

They say the palace is haunted by the ghost of Mary of Guise.  Well, I don't know about that, but if it isn't haunted, then it ought to be.  A ghost would find a very pleasant, if somewhat noisy, home in Linlithgow.

Of course there is more to the trip than these four places.  We did a deal of walking through Glasgow itself, shopping or visiting the Necropolis, and we also ate extremely well.  (If you ever get the chance to go, I strongly advise you to visit Burger Meats Bun: best. hamburgers. ever.)  We packed the vacation full, since ten days is really not long at all when you factor in twenty-four hours for travel to and from, but they were also oddly leisurely.  We saw the sites and still had time for a round game of whist come evening.  Hearts, Mr. Collins - hearts.

I must admit one complaint, however.  We saw a great deal of history and a great deal of scenery, but though I looked, I never did see Alan Breck. 

Well, phooey.

The Old College Try

pinterest

I know I've been doing an absolutely despicable job at this whole blogging thing.  I don't think it's all college: I could probably eke out time to write if I applied enough willpower to it, and actually had things to write about.  But you see, I haven't been writing much, so there isn't anything to say about that; I don't want to turn the blog over to "the college experience"; and I'm always afraid I'm going to bore people if I simply post updates.  But the latter is what this post, at least, is going to be.  As for future posts - you tell me!  What would you like to read about?  I can't promise I'll be able to comply, but it's good to have ideas and parameters.

In the meantime, since today and tomorrow are my Fall Break, I figured I should put in an appearance in between paragraphs of a response paper on the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

university

I know some of you are more interested in this college business than others.  I also realized the other day that I have never actually said why I'm going to college at all.  Those of you who know my sister, Jenny, know that she opted out: my family doesn't put an overwhelming emphasis on college.  College is a means to an end.  If you have certain goals in mind, it is necessary to jump through the academic hoops; if you have other goals in mind, college is more of a hindrance than a help (and an expensive hindrance, at that!). 

For myself, I'd like a good foundation in history and especially in historical research.  I don't know at this point whether I will turn that toward nonfiction some day, but whether I do or not, the processes are things I feel I need to learn as I progress with my writing.  Of course there are less enjoyable aspects of college to endure, but fortunately I tend toward an academic, nuts-and-bolts sort of mind that can, I think, crank along despite that.  It's overwhelming when I stop and think that I've got four years of this, so I try not to think about it. I've got through the first part of the first semester, at any rate!

reading

"I never let my schooling interfere with my education."  Unfortunately I've got to say that it has a little: my pleasure reading has dropped off sadly.  The last book I finished was The Hounds of the Morrigan, which, although a rather fat fantasy, probably oughtn't to have taken me an entire month (in a perfect world).  But oh well: it was a relaxing, fairly mindless read, most remarkable for its original, often highly absurd cast.  Any author who can make a troop of earwigs or a family of spiders sound cute should get points, I say.

There has been quite a range of required reading in my classes, and some particularly interesting ones in the history course.  Unfortunately the dictates of time and the syllabus make it necessary to move on to the next book before finishing the last one; so, for instance, I've read four-and-a-half chapters out of six in a history of book-making technology, about five chapters in The Ottoman Age of Exploration, and most of The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre.  The movement is necessary, but does rather give me mental whiplash and makes my reading in general seem fractured.  I don't like not finishing books.  Even if I don't like the book, I like finishing the book.

For lighter reading, I've been picking out Sherlock Holmes short stories and applying myself with greatest earnestness to Knights of the Sea, an account of the battle between the HMS Boxer and the USS Enterprise (hey! that's my ship!) during the War of 1812.  It is interesting, although I wish the author wouldn't define words in the footnotes.  I understand some people don't know what, say, "broadside" means, but I do feel a glossary works better; it feels less as though the author is imparting some great knowledge to a less educated audience.  But again, it's the "lucky little Enterprise"!  I feel a certain pride when I glance through the pages and see all the fights it won, or when I see a portrait and think, "Ah ha!  I know you!"

writing

Well, not writing exactly, but literary efforts in general.  I have been sending out a few queries here and there for Tempus Regina - even gotten a few rejections, hurrah hurrah.  (Also got a rejection on query for The White Sail's Shaking that I submitted five months ago.  Um...thanks?)  As I was telling someone recently, it is a little bit difficult to convey all the disparate elements in a cohesive, if not necessarily sane, way.  So often time-travel is used simply as a ploy, and somehow I have to show that no, wait, I really do know what I'm doing!

At the moment, I am working more on lowering wordcount.  It helps to have several different files, each of a separate draft, so that I know whatever I take out is still there: I can, if need be, add it in again.  In essence, it allows me to feel that the parts I've cut really are there in the overarching story; they just haven't been revealed to the reader.  Like colleges cutting costs (I'm sorry - everything does come back to college in the end, doesn't it?), I'm trying to avoid "sticker shock" by pitching a too-large novel.  Somehow agents don't seem impressed when I protest that for goodness sake, it's not as if it's War and Peace!

the miscellaneous

I want you all to know that I got that word right on only the second try.  That's pretty good for me.  I think to my dying day I will be unable to spell it properly the first time.  That and "mischievous" (took me about three tries).

Fall is just about here, I think.  We're planning on apple-picking today, which is one sure sign; and I got a pumpkin latte from Starbuck's last week, and that's another.  Even on the warmer days, I break out the long sleeves in a kind of defiant protest.  I will enjoy autumn weather, confound it, even if the autumn weather isn't here to enjoy!

My family and I are working slowly toward getting our passports together for a trip to Glasgow over Thanksgiving next month.  Two out of three have arrived, and we are hopeful that, Lord willing, come late-November we'll be standing on Scottish soil and preparing to do some trekking (via car and train: my father raised his eyebrows in true Mr. Bennet fashion at the suggestion of cycling). I am absolutely terrified of the idea of flying, but am very excited at the idea of getting over to Scotland and maybe getting to scoot all the way down to York.  Perhaps see Bosworth Field. Good nerdy stuff like that.

"BRRRRITISH...BICYCLES!"