Empty Seats

Whatever tourists are stravaiging around Edinburgh today, they seem reluctant to park their behinds on any of those memorial benches lining the paths in Princes Street Gardens.
In the summer months there is hardly space for a self respecting pigeon to garner a crumb amongst the hoards of ice cream licking, sandwich gobbling visitors and office workers taking time out on these backside repositories.

Today they lie empty and unloved, overlooking the swathe of newly tilled earth ready to be re-grassed after the battering from the Christmas market.
The missing tourists may well be seated on the tour buses lining Waverley Bridge in the background, and seeing the city from the comfort of being under cover, although there are always the stalwarts wrapped from head to foot in woollies who elect to sit upstairs in the fresh air of the roofless part of the bus.

The visit from the daughters and grandchildren went well yesterday.
An knitting order was taken for a cardigan, my slightly too big purple shoes were snapped up, the two soon to be 5 year olds ate their lunch and behaved impeccably and the girls made me laugh.... a lot!
Even his Lordship bade a hearty hello to the assembled gathering on his return from the hills. I couldn't ask for more.