upon arrival

Hmmm. Peebles are a funny sort of places. The first time we were here a couple of years ago the place was heaving with codger. It was the middle of March so non-residents were a little thin on the ground and those that were around must have just been avoiding the town centre; there are schools and workplaces in the town so there are obviously some people below retirement age somewhere. Maybe the town centre was just the place where the more elderly hung out at the weekend whilst the youngsters are maybe all off gashing their legs at Glentress or have taken the public omnibus to otherwhere. Anyway, today when we arrived there was quite a respectable mixing of demographics in the town centre, supermarket car park, little grassy bit next to the river and in the park. There were still plenty of stick-thin-legged old women around (frowning disapprovingly at a parked car I walked past on my way to the shop) and shufflecoughtastic man-elderlies (sitting on a bench pointing at things) but they weren't as overwhelming as before (and this is from someone whose childhood home was in a street containing four granny farms less than fifty metres apart in a village packed to the post office with pensioners and considers a high street full of blue rinses almost normal).

In case anyone thinks me weird for coming to Peebles for an holiday barely fourteen months into my thirties I should point out that one of the 'benefits' provided at my work is access to a few flats and cottages in Peebles for a rapidly increasing but still relatively cheap cost for one week a year if you're lucky with the dates you pick.
Not done anything particularly holdayish yet. Set off about an hour after we originally intended after a fight with the bike rack (Nicky's bike has a double downtube (curved at the seatpost end) rather than a proper crossbar so has to be mounted upside-down) with a quick retighten of all the straps after they were shaken loose on the cobbles outside the flat. Saw lots and lots of excellently blipertunity trees on the way here to which I hope I shall return one day if I am not knocked off the road on the way by someone driving back from Glentress without first using up their excess adrenaline. It was slightly hairy passing some of them in the car with the combination of my bike sticking out a foot further than the car's width, the cars passing in the other direction with the same problem and Nicky's occasionally incautious driving style. Might look at finding something to fit on the roof instead, especially given the setup time of the boot-mounted rack thing; the only problem I envisage would be the utter paranoia resulting from the transported bicycles (should they still even be attached) being competely invisible from within the car.

The thing which struck me about the bridge-sign is how subscribe and underwrite are effectively the same term yet have evolved different meanings.

I expect there's a reason somewhere but I left my dictionary of etymology at home.