On Ice

The Christmas spirit very nearly escaped from the Dower House this morning, but a meltdown was avoided by a walk through town to the newly refurbished Scottish Portrait Gallery in Queen Street.

I stand accused by his Lordship of being a Philistine as far as galleries go, a charge to which I plead guilty. In particular I used to find the said gallery dark and cloistered, albeit with a rather nice coffee room.
However two years of renovations have transformed the gloomy interior to a bright and open space which is welcoming rather than forbidding.

With directions from daughter #1, we managed to locate the plinth with the carving of the keeper, James Holloway, on his motor bike, done by son-in-law.
But with other affairs to attend to we could only have a cursory look round, but we will be back.

The skating rink in Princes Street gardens is pocket sized compared to the one in Budapest that I blipped last Sunday, but was beginning to get busy with the kind of skaters who looked as though they were rather glad that the surrounding barriers were within the distance of a quick grab if they fell.

So now we are home with the hatches battened down for Christmas Eve in front of the television. Our stockings will no doubt be optimistically placed on the settee tonight, just in case, but I suspect that the only things to go in will be our feet tomorrow.