One of those occasions when such time is forced upon us is queueing. I was reminded of this as I waited to take my seat on a south-bound aircraft out of Edinburgh. Ahead, unseen people were no doubt fumbling to retrieve the boarding cards they had tucked away after making their way through the gate. I waited. We all waited. We all waited quite a while. I found myself reading a notice on the wall beside me.

Quite who, I asked those around me, was this aimed at? Presumably any dog padding alone down the rubberised ramp would not be expected to look up and take notice. Was it then a warning to pilots and cabin crew to leave their hounds behind? A reminder to dog-handlers that their drug-sniffers would be denied access to the aircraft? Or did it suggest that cats and hamsters, sheep even, might proceed, dogs only being banned? I envisaged an orderly line of non-human couples making its way forward with Noah and Mrs Noah sternly pointing any canine back: “Back! Back! You are not my dog,” in tones similar to those I use to any cat which optimistically tries to follow me home.

Anyway, such harmless whimsies help to pass the time and I might have forgotten all about it had I not, shortly after landing at Gatwick, found myself facing another ‘welcome’ notice addressed to the unaccompanied but literate travelling canine.

Make tracks home, it reads, the easiest way to and from Gatwick is by train.

But I being human, and off to the land of Cave Canem, turned left not right, thus postponing my opportunity to see whether dogs are any more skilled than I am at finding the way from baggage reclaim to platform.

My mother liked writing poetry. This strand travelled down her mother’s side of the family. Frisking family papers as one sometimes does while looking for such essential documents as birth and death certificates (of ancestors) I came across a set of poems by one of Mother’s great-uncles: Truth’s Victory (over ‘slavish superstition’s chain’), Morning Song (where ‘Mankind will reach the loftiest height, victorious o’er these realms of night’), and A Reverie which looks forward to the ‘Spirit world of glad reunion’. Mother’s mother tended to faery.

My mother enjoyed playing with words.

What has all this to do with Christmas? Among her typescripts is a poem written some thirty or more years ago on the more enjoyable side of Christmas shopping. She is travelling back from Glasgow to Troon at the end of the day.

Nine Shopping Days till Christmas
Dusky train sways
Glinting rails
Flashing lights
As landscape fails.
Evening papers
Opened wide
Hide each
A city gent
Inside,
Or,
Folded small
On rocking knees
The more alert
With
Cross-words tease.
Shoppers
In their parcels
Peep.
Another head
Jerks into sleep

Oh blissful hour
Caught out of life,
No longer
Shopper
Mother
Wife
All undisturbed
I read in peace
My Christmas present
For a niece.
It done,
I quickly seize another
And skim
The present for my brother.
But scarcely is a third begun,
(A Christmas present for my son)
Than all along the railway track
Squares of light
Illume the black.
And there
Inside each lighted square
I see a stay-at-home
Prepare
Each to the taste of her bread-winner
Supper,
High tea
Or high class dinner.
Homely fare, Eggs,
Finnan haddock,
Or wine-drenched
A la Fanny Cradock.
With basket, bags and package
I struggle to my feet,
Reality floods coldly back–
What
Are we
Going
To
Eat?
There’s enough to feed an army
To judge just by my looks.
What did I buy in Glasgow?
Books. Books. Books.
Books.
Books.

The publication of her childhood memories (Tak’ Tent o’ Time: Memories of a Post-Edwardian Edinburgh Childhood) gave my mother a great deal of pleasure. She particularly relished the words which appear on the verso of the title-page ‘The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work’. She had planned to publish her poetry next but never got round to it. This poem is also copyright Elaine Mary Wilson.

Oiyyyyyyyy! mwoiyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Outside the cats pleaded. Sorry cats, fresh air is good, day-time is for playing out. Inside, the sunflowers ducked their heads and turned in on themselves. Cats in. Ah rain. Book or fresh air?

So out to taste the rain (plus resurgent orange companion). Perhaps as far as the post box (Go, home, cat!) why does it feel so end of the yearish already?

At the top of the road I pause outside Hellers. Display of buns and cupcakes, and scones, both fruit and cheese. Scones are a Scottish speciality. And I have a thing about cheese scones. I am very picky about them and exceedingly suspicious of those that have grated cheese on top. I prefer my cheese throughout the dough and too many ‘hand-bakers’ of those with cheese on top have not bothered with the fine grating and rub in with the fingers stage of the process. So I went in and had a coffee, and a scone which came with pickle. So excellent that I had to buy another to take home.

But I am not the only one in the household who finds paper bags irresistable.

Sorry, cat, that one is mine! Humans, when you go to google for a recipe, make sure you choose one which has grated cheese throughout. The Heller one also had a touch of herbs, as well as grated cheese on top.

Is this the time to introduce a note of warning gleaned from my recent trip to San Gimignano where Taddeo di Bartol0 depicted, all too graphicly, the hellish fate which awaits gluttons? No faffing about with nicey, nicey and positive reinforcement in the late 14th century.

But one cheese scone can’t be that bad….. so, enjoy!

I found that seated arcading on my most recent visit, a shaded place on the Piazza del Duomo where the genuine inhabitants of the town sit (now on stackable chairs) to watch the spectacle which daily tourists provide.

On my second visit, in August, towers, views and some wonderful ice-cream were what I remembered, together with an increasingly determined discussion with two guardians of the Duomo who barred my entry to the church. ‘Only for private prayer’, they said. I knew nothing about the inside but I resented being excluded. I was finally admitted to pray, closely escorted into the empty building by one of the attendants. My furtive glances convinced me that this was a building I wanted to see more of. Hence my most recent four night stay in the town. A return trip well worth making.

San Gimignano is a tourist magnet with the usual tourist souvenirs. Group after foreign group is bussed to the peripheral carparks and crocodiled through arched gateways, up paved streets and into the two central piazzas (and also the Duomo which, under the eye of the same guardians, is generally open to tourists). Young Italians, however, many with buggies and many with dogs also crowded into the Piazza del Duomo to meet, chat and relax.

That was a surprise and I spent a happy hour eating roast chestnuts and watching them.

Lots of sun. Lots of colours and textures. Which was good as I was one of a group who were trying our hands (with our hands) to convey the atmosphere in yarn. Sounds a bit odd, rather a reverse alchemy, aspiring to transform air and light and colour and foreign substance into a hand-woven tapestry. But it felt good and indeed appropriate to be in a land of ancient stories engaged in an occupation which dates back through time. Hunched over my tiny loom, raising high my warps to pull through my wefts I could feel a faint affinity with Odysseus’ wife as she worked through the heat of the day. And at the end of the day, even if by then I pictured myself as a bent old crone with a spindle, I had something to show for my efforts. With no unwanted suitors lurking behind that island in the bay eager for me to complete my work, my day ended with the satisfaction of  knotting off not the necessity of surreptitious unravelling.

What a difference the warmth and brightness of a place by the sea makes. My first attempt at hand woven tapestry had been on an island off the west coast of Scotland last autumn. I am prepared to believe that the weather we had that week may not be typical…

Inspired by the raw beauty of the weather-beaten landscape, and fuelled by a steady diet of soup and cheese and pickle sandwiches for lunch, my first works were not really such as to lift the spirits in retrospect

but with the sun! and the clear light and the wondrous salads and the kind tuition, formal and informal, and (let us not be too precious about this) the occasional light refreshment, ‘ook! Still not sure what to do with the wee things but they were pleasing to do and, to me at least, pleasing to contemplate and to touch. Sensual as well as visual.

on the edge

seascape

hard pressed rock

on the quay

In the house of my Belfast grandmother, diminutive, determined, teacher mother of five sons and still believing that boys were best (big plates and second helpings for my father and brother and guess who did not have to help with the washing up) the bathroom on the half landing looked normal until you reached a hand for the paper. Rather than the then prevalent skimpy half water-repellent (totally human-repelling)  Izel, Grandmother favoured small squares of newsprint. Lacking then an interest in public affairs I shuddered. Now I have an image of her sitting in the kitchen alongside the sisters who lived with her in old age, resolutely folding and tearing up sheet after sheet of newspaper. In my mind she and they are wearing the small feltish hats which seemed to accompany them everywhere, balanced on the sausage rolls of their grey, netted hair. In silence? Humming bits of Gilbert and Sullivan? the flowers which bloom in the spring, tra-la, have nothing to do with the case? who now knows.

My first experience of  the difference between home and away was being confronted by one of my classmates on a school trip to Paris. We were clustered in the dormitory of a boys’ lycee. She emerged from a screened cubicle in the corner. She said nothing as the next in the queue entered and pulled the door behind her. Then into the silence she announced that there was just a hole, no seat. To go, or not to go, is often a realistic question but we were there for a week. It was a discombobulating experience. It was probably due to contemplating the lurking horror that I, later that evening, discovered that in getting changed for a visit to the ballet I had forgotten to remove my heavy travelling skirt from beneath my summer frock.

The apartment where I stayed in Kefalonia was one of those which, while comfortably appointed, sheltered an ominous white bin and a notice banning the dropping of paper into the lavatory bowl. With one’s mind turning to holiday delights anticipated or remembered, habit sometimes takes over and I found myself (Oh sod it!!!) pushing down the handle with fingers crossed, eyes closed in supplication to whichever god might be kind. It is like riding a bike, driving a car, human becomes robot.

But things were worse in Japan where I went with a group a few years ago following a pilgrimage trail round shrines on the southern island of Shikoku. If you were fortunate, the public loos would have a cubicle at the end of the line marked ‘western style’ for which the females in the group waited restively. But even in the relative privacy of your hotel bedroom you were at risk. As a group we were inclined to value history, to respect the traditions of others, that after all was why we had signed up for this excursion. Some hotels were western (beds at a normal height, no tatami mats and a sporting chance of not having miso soup for breakfast). Others, including a monastery high up in the snows, had lavatory slippers…

Not so bad, if you were on your own, to forget the ritual: enter; take off own shoes (leave on rack); put on hotel slip-ons to pad across the tatami mat. The private facility was generally situated beside the entry door… so, cross mat, remove slip-ons (replace in rack), put on lavatory slippers, proceed to goal, and then reverse the procedure. In the monastery and more traditional lodgings there were shared facilities. You made your way along the corridor in your bedroom slip-ons, bypassing the opportunity to share a wooden bathtub roughly the size of a large chest freezer with five of your travelling companions, to the communal area of washbasins and loos. Okay. Out of room shoes, into lavatory slippers, act and perform in reverse. As you went back to the bedroom you would meet people scuttling shiftily barefoot with those garish red slippers in hand. More shamingly, some of the correctly shod would point accusingly at your own feet. Evil polluter, turn again.

Not all Japanese cludgies were traditional however. This was the most scarey.

 Inside of the lid of a switched-on model. Can you read the notice?

IMPORTANT SAFEGUARDS

Always follow the safety precautions

WARNING

• DO NOT splash water or hot water on the product and/or power box (This may cause fire or electric shock)

• To avoid low-temperature-burns, turn off the warm seat switch when the product is used by the very young or the elderly, those who are incapacitated

• etc

• etc

Gardez loo! You have been warned!

Is a concern with lavatories a girl thing? I have no idea but my mother wrote of her childhood in the ’10s and ’20s of the last century:

‘Travelling on those bygone trains was not all bliss. Above all loomed the worry as to whether it would be a corridor train. Infinitely better to have a train lavatory than not, even if you were jerked about as the train fled through twisting glens trying vainly to follow maternal instructions not to touch the seat. This sanitary preoccupation made the reserved compartment good sense. A potty could be concealed in the hand luggage…’ (Tak’ Tent o’ Time: Memories of a Post-Edwardian Edinburgh Childhood, by Elaine Mary Wilson, p21)

As children we travelled with a potty too, a small blue metal object, but it was a precaution lest the raw carrots eaten, the dangling chain from the bumper, and Callard and Bowser Butterscotch failed to ward off travel sickness as the family made its way by car down through those twisting glens and over the ‘liable to subsidence’ roads of Fife to the ferry at Queensferry. For us otherwise, the shrubless wastes of Rannoch Moor and nettly ditches.

They say ‘east, west, home’s best’. Sometimes it is.

The kitchen is also where I have to go in the first week back in order to fill the washing machine with the contents of those miscellaneous, slightly niffy, poly bags which pad out the corners of my suitcase. Enough on that.

No matter how organised I try to be before setting off, there is also a point where a decision has to be made about the food in the fridge. The pasta will keep. Also the garlic. Perhaps the cheese. Remains of the bread and a pack of rasps to the freezer. Lettuce to the bin. Also the optimistically purchased pack of tofu. I can take the strawberries and the avocado with me to eat on route. But potatoes, some not quite new to me carrots and the remains of  a large tub of yogurt? Leave in the fridge…

Holiday was gorgeous, glorious, full of colour and sunshine and wine and warmth. Good fresh food too, prepared by an imaginative artist.

So back, and to the kitchen – and soup, necessary for an Edinburgh June and shaped by the culinary dregs in the fridge: potatoes, onions, dodgy carrots, a chilli, lots of garlic, all chopped small. But also shaped by the Kefalonian inspiration of choosing colours, thinking about textures and shapes, and fresh, fresh herbs, and olive oil. So add a tin of borlotti beans, some fresh chopped tomato, a bayleaf, oregano and rosemary from the garden. Quite a creation and it tasted good. I went away to make mini tapestries and explore a new place, and I’m back in the kitchen inspired by all that and by my travelling companions. It was good to go.

It is all too easy to laze with a book in a sunny south-facing room. Hours can pass, days, piling into months and years. Well it is one way to spend a life with work demands and family fled. However, the females on my father’s side were singularly long-lived, great-grandmother died at 101, grandmother in her 90s, a great-aunt at 113, I have some way to go. Really I should keep the books for later and seize the day. So ‘arise and go now’ is a nudge. Even if sometimes all it comes down to is arising and going to the computer, and writing something others may read… And that means I must get out and find things to write about. Say something worth saying. Connect…