176 years ...three chaps

Our trip to Edinburgh is over already, but it was so full of highlights that it feels a bit like looking at the sun ... 

This morning we checked out of the hotel, no longer quiet but filled, it felt, in every cranny by rugby supporters from both sides of the forthcoming Calcutta Cup match so that breakfast felt as if we were having it in the middle of a railway station. Or something. However, we were impressed with the refurbished Holiday Inn and made sure we told them on our way out.

Not, however, to go home, but to head to #1 son's house for lunch - lunch that my daughter-in-law had turned into a wonderfully crazy celebration of all three birthdays celebrated by the men in my life in the first two months of the year. In a dining room decorated with what a friend of mine inspirationally dubbed "head bunting" (look at the first photo above) featuring both sons and Himself, the birthday boys, two grandsons (the girls were absent - Anna streaming with the cold and Catriona at the Conservatoire) and three wives marked 176 years with a massive paella (second photo) and fizz both alcoholic and non, moving on to three individual and differently-flavoured birthday cakes also decorated with head-shots (there were head badges for the chaps too). The cakes each had a firework on top ...

This was followed by a trip out to the garden for the firing of three cannon (well - more like blunderbuss size) filled with strips of coloured paper - great hilarity as James wrestled with the first, rather recalcitrant one. Apparently it just dissolves. And by the time we left we had party bags as well as food parcels to take home - and strict orders to be on our way by 3pm to avoid not only the rugby crowds (the party was actually in Murrayfield, so we saw hundreds converging on foot) but also the traffic emerging later from the Rangers/Hearts match in Glasgow. 

The trip home was speedy and efficient despite our having eaten so much, and we were rewarded with the sight of our own snowy hills as we headed west (extra photo) while trying to follow the first half of the rugby on the radio. (We made it home for the second half, on the telly - magic!) I've had such a lovely time; I hate having to say goodbye every time we leave, but cannot avoid the reality of other lives being lived to the full. 

Final confession: when I hear the crowd singing the second verse of Flower of Scotland, when the pipes stop and the singing goes on, I always feel a big emotional surge at the words but we will still rise up/ and be a nation again.


There. Every time. Win or lose.