Entry for 20 October 2012:
Over the past 6 weeks I’ve been extremely busy dealing with
the move from Jordanhill and various work crises, on top of the usual things,
and also being behind from all the time I missed between May and August. I’ve never really caught up, and things keep
piling up. All of us are feeling
overwhelmed and that includes me.
Meanwhile, I’m doing my best to keep sane and healthy, which means that
a lot of things aren’t getting done when they should. At times it really does feel like a crazy
life, and it’s been hard to keep up with things like blogs.
One thing that hasn’t been sacrificed is our Saturday
Adventures, of which we’ve had quite a few since early September. Glasgow Open Doors day in mid-September was
great for scoping out interesting churches and places in the Blytheswood area
in the west side of Glasgow city centre.
In late September, we visited Crichton Castle, south of Edinburgh, and
then Inverarary Castle, in Argyle, both of them getting ready to close for the
season.
A high point was a trip to Falkland Palace in Fife the first
Saturday in October. This was another of
the favourite haunts of the Stewart royalty in the 16th century,
really a hunting lodge, restored in the 19th century and still
inhabited by the current Keeper. The
little village of Falkland is lovely and I was particularly taken by the lovely
Catholic chapel in the Palace and the larger than life-size wicker figure of
Mary Queen of Scots with her favourite falcon, near a tree labyrinth in the orchard
below the palace. However, the most
amazing thing was discovering on the grounds of the palace the oldest extant
Real (or Royal) Tennis court, the original form of tennis, with lots of wacky
rules, like having to serve the ball so that it bounces off the roof of the
observer stand! Apparently, this was all
the rage with the nobility in 16th century Europe.
Last weekend, we went to the European-UK SPR meeting in
Porto, Portugal. This was my make-up SPR
conference, since I’d missed the international SPR in Virginia Beach in late
June, so I was very glad to go. It was
very well-organized and in a great site, the Portuguese College of Physicians;
and Diane and I had a very good time, and ate a lot of fish while we were
there. The European-UK conferences are
smaller than the big international SPR meetings, but have quite a lot of
diversity. This year I heard quite a few
presentations by different groups of Psychodrama researchers, who have taken up
various of the suggestions I gave them when I met with them Edinburgh several
years ago. They bring a lot of creativity
and energy to their research, and are doing very interesting research,
including a couple of new randomized controlled trials.
This week I’ve been trying to recover form the Portugal trip
while managing a very heavy teaching load.
Exhausting! Nevertheless, we
managed a drive out to Kilwinning (= St. Finnian, the teacher or St. Columba)
today, where we visited the ruins of Kilwinning Abbey, dating back to the 13th
century. The village of Kilwinning is a
bit depressing, but the ruins are lovely.
After that we went to Eglinton Country Park, which contains the ruins
the Eglinton Castle, the site of the last major medieval tournament in the UK,
which took place in 1839. Like
Kilwinning Abbey and its village, the Eglinton castle and its estate fell on
hard times and only a few bits have been restored. The theme of the day seems to have been an
autumnal one: faded glory, decay and deterioration, but we’ve had plenty of
chances to see signs of life over the past 6 weeks!
