Our old friends George Wills and Joy Norton spent last weekend with us. I met up with them at Euston Station on Thursday night. We were all just a bit older and grayer than we’d been when we’d last seen each other in Melbourne, Australia, in 1999, but it was wonderful to see them again, and also brought back fond recollections of the memorable six weeks we’d spent there.
Over the next three days, we caught up with each other as we watched the royal wedding together; went to Hill House in Helensburgh (signature Charles Rennie MacIntosh house); walked through the West End by way of the Royal Botanic Garden; helped George buy a mandolin at a music store at Kelvinbridge; did a mini-tour of Provand’s Lordship House, St. Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art and Glasgow Cathedral; had dinner at our favourite Scottish restaurant, The Sisters – Jordanhill; and watched Dr. Who together. Finally, we spent a day traipsing around the Kilmartin Valley, revisiting burial cairns, standing stones, stone circles, and rock carvings. Joy and George managed to locate a henge that we’d missed on our previous visit; and on our way out of the valley we hiked up to the Achnabreck rock carving site, consisting of a large collection of cup and ring carvings, some looking uncannily like primitive Cretan-style labyrinths.
So it was that, with some sadness and quite a bit of exhaustion, we walked Joy and George down to the Hyndland Train station on Monday morning to see them off back down to London. We’d had a lovely visit and revisited many of our favourite Scottish places. I don’t know when I’ll see them next but I’m hoping we’ll be back to Australia again before too many years have passed.
No comments:
Post a Comment