Day 6: painting

 It is really weird trying to recreate someone else’s way of painting, and I’m not sure I’m doing a good job at it, but so long as it echoes it a bit I’ll be happy.

It was a good day, alone in the apartment listening to audio books and painting Castle Fraser. When I got frustrated in the afternoon and was tempted to scrub the whole thing out, I cleaned my brushes and walked up to the museum to have a look at some of the landscape paintings, instead. 

Help

Talk to me about those trees, Giles

Feeling more like I was on track, I went down to the shops and picked up something to make for dinner and a few more tubes of paint, cutting through the churchyard to read the headstones. So many dead women and babies. A wife, 38, who died in childbed and was laid to rest with her infant daughter, who died 2 days later. A wife and husband, buried with their 14 children lost in infancy. Every grave held the bones of babies and mothers. I thought about that woman who died in childbirth at 38, and had been “rightly loved”. There were no other children named. Had they been married a long time, and always hoped for a baby? Were they excited when she became pregnant so late, or did they know it was a death sentence? Did she hold her baby before she died? Did her husband have to make the choice to save her or the baby, only to lose them both? Did she tell him to do it? Every grave is a story, and I felt sorry for the stones that had become eroded and lost their names.

To stop myself from ruining my progress as the light faded, I left the painting alone and started sketching a few “personalities” until the man got back from Loch Ness.

I am feeling a bit better now that I’m not power-walking through a cold. Resting and drinking tea works, huh.

Another painting day today, with more breaks to visit the shops if I feel like it. Walking out onto a street lined with cathedrals and bell towers is never not wonderful. 

Day 5: Fraser Castle

We did the accidental Outlander tour of the Fraser and Lord Lovat estate yesterday, after 2 miles of walking through rolling pastoral land because the map app lied and said the bus stop was closer than it was.

It was a beautiful walk, even if I was on cold meds (UK cold meds are adorably mild compared to the meth in a bottle we sell in the US). 

We caught our breath over tea and scones, which came with a little packet of clotted cream and a tiny pot of jam. I made love eyes at the little bookshop in the courtyard and felt happy for all the people who could come tend the castle grounds for a living. What a life that would be.

The castle tour was centered on the towers, with about 5 stories of rooms and libraries up tightly winding staircases. 

Realizing there are practically no pictures of me on this trip, I’m trying

We walked into the field behind the castle to find the site of another James Giles painting from 1858. One of the ladies of the castle had removed the cow pond and cut down a lot of trees a few years later, but we found traces of where they were. 

In the afternoon we walked back, rode the bus to Aberdeen, and went to an Indian restaurant for our best meal of the trip so far. The owner of the flat sent an electrician to reattach the heater to the wall after it fell off and scared the hell out of us the other day, so we let him in and then warmed up the apartment for bedtime.

Today the man is off to Inverness. I baked a few frozen pain au chocolat to send him off (why do we not have frozen croissants at home?!), I have a pot of tea and a couple Murderbot audio books, and I am ready to get cooking on this painting. 

If I can decide which one to start with.

Day 4: Brig o Balgownie

Getting sicker. You know what’s good for that? Walking 10 miles looking for statues and bridges. Got to get all this done before the body collapses completely.

Early in the morning, we walked along the docks down to Footdee, where Francis Richardson painted Pocra Quay.

I’m not super excited about this view, but it’s doable, in terms of reproducing in a painting.

We sat down for tea and split a donut at Greggs, then hopped a bus to the university. The modern buildings and dorms were as depressing as anywhere, but the campus by the old part of town next to the river was goddamn magical. There were fairy rings of wildflowers and rough stone roads with cottages covered in ivy. The walk through Seaton Park to find the Wallace monument and the bridge of Balgownie followed a footpath through trees and wild garlic. 

The walk was not so successful in terms of finding a site to paint, because the monument was under repair and fenced off, and the foliage around the bridge has grown so you can no longer see anything but branches from the place the artist stood. Took pictures for my report anyway.

Brig O’ Balgownie, by Algernon Talmage

Nailed it

The Wallace Tower, downtown Aberdeen 

Actually I could still work with this. (The tower was relocated by Marks and Spencers when they bought the building because they didn’t want it destroyed.)

We rode back into town, had lunch at Nandos, and then I summoned all my audacity to stand discreetly by a wall and take sneaky pictures of shoppers as they walked by so I could paint a modern version of James Giles’ personality studies.

Today the congestion has creeped down into my chest. It’s going to be another walk back to Boots to get cough & cold medicine before this thing really gets a grip on me, but I’m almost ready to settle into the room and paint for a couple days anyway. If the meds do their job (we hid all the potpourri and fragrance oils the host had tucked all over the flat, and opened the windows; it feels like this is just allergies + cold weather, but that can still turn into a chest or sinus infection) today will be one last trip out to see Fraser Castle, then Mike is on his own for a few days while I work one of these sites up into the beginnings of a painting. He’s thinking about riding up to Inverness to get a tattoo. If he gets one on his back right before a 22 hour flight, I will laugh and laugh. We head back on Friday.

Day 3: Stonehaven and Dunnottar Castle

I bought an entire pharmacy of anti-sinusitis drugs, nasal spray, and vitamin C lozenges at Boots before we grabbed steak pies and hopped on the bus to Stonehaven. The cold wind makes noses run like faucets, but it’s not going to take us down that easily.

Stonehaven is a beautiful bayside village. We had three sites to find along a 2-mile stretch, and we found them all:

 A Stormy Day, John Muirhead (1864-1927)

Stonehaven Harbor, William Arthur Laurie Carrick (1879-1964)

Dunnottar Castle, George Reid (1841-1913)

It was beautiful. The coastal path led up from Stonehaven, over hillsides covered with sheep and cows, along a cliff, and all the way up to the ruins. I sat in the grass and sketched the view, then we climbed the stairs to explore the castle.

The walk back to town worked up a sweat and an appetite, so we stopped at a seaside restaurant for mussels, meats, beer, and cider. On the way to the bus stop, I bought a handmade silver pendant by a local artist. 

My watch says I walked 10 miles, 40 flights of stairs, and lapped my exercise ring 4 times. I had better sleep the sleep of the bone-tired tonight.

Day 2: Fyvie Castle

 We bought a week’s bus pass to anywhere and caught a double-decker into the countryside, sitting upstairs in the front windows to see everything. It was lambing season, and the hills were covered in new babies. Also, I saw a badger! It was a dead. And a river otter! Also dead. But I’ve never seen one of either before, so it still counts.

Fyvie Castle was beautiful, and half of it is still a private residence today. The tour guide told interesting stories about the badly behaved people who have lived there since the 1200s; getting drunk and racing horses and donkeys up the 10-foot stone staircase, murdering their wives when they didn’t get sons, owners insisting on being buried in the walls, and the badly abused dwarf who grew up with patronizing rich people like a pet and became a warrior with a custom suit of armor after surviving being thrown against starving animals for sport (there is a small book called “Lord Minimus” written about his life, which I will have to read).

We took a chance and walked down onto the Laird’s land to try to find the site of James Giles’ painting, and discovered a lot of clues about how it was made, and what was embellished for art’s sake. I fell over a mossy log and took a spill into a patch of wild daffodils. Embarrassing.

In the evening we bundled up in warmer clothes and walked to a Thai restaurant for dinner, which was very fancy and acceptably tasty. It’s probably hard to get all the right ingredients in the land of sheep and puffins, but they did okay.

My legs are very angry about suddenly being made to walk 10 miles a day, and they had better stfu because today we’re walking a coastal path from Stonehaven to Castle Dunnottar, which should not have changed much at all in 200 years. Our throats are trying to get sore, and that will not be tolerated either. It had better be the weather and not travel plague. We will stock up on decongestants and ibuprofen today.

Day 1: Aberdeen Art Gallery

Our clothes were still wet in the morning. I went to get the ironing board and discovered an electric clothes drying rack, so we sat around in towels drinking tea while our jeans dried like beef jerky. I watched a pair of nesting seagulls outside the window. 

“Bring back good sticks!”

Finally dressed, we walked down to the shops when they opened and ate steak pies at Greggs, bought new underwear and warmer outfits, picked up groceries, and then dropped off our bags and walked up to the museum. By day, the city was filled with shoppers and cafes and street musicians. A young man with a guitar was singing “Chasing Cars”, made better with his soft sweet accent, and I fished out a pound coin to drop in his case.

The museum was beautiful. I got my nose right up to a huge Waterhouse painting and looked at all the brush strokes, studied the Scottish landscapes and portraiture, and Mike left me alone to work while he sat in on a performance by the college choir that broke his heart with the high notes.

With sore feet, we sat down in a bookstore cafe and drank cups of chai that were served in china cups piled with foam and dusted in cocoa and cinnamon. I bought a Scottish art history book and some funny children’s books for my mother, Mike got three paperback mysteries set locally. We walked through an alleyway and found ourselves at Provost Skene’s house, so we took the free tour through the historic building and I almost broke a lamp when I tripped over it staring at the ceiling.

Before dinner, we bundled up against the evening wind and walked out to Mercat Cross to find one of the painting sites. We ran around the courtyard for half an hour, trying to figure out the positions of the original buildings with all the new architecture added on, and realized the well house statue was in completely the wrong place. Over cider and shepherds pie at a pub in an old cathedral, we found a small historic article explaining that the well statue had been relocated twice in the centuries after the painting had been made, along with a story about a massacre of rude teenagers who had made fun of some drunk soldiers posted at the barracks near the well. Mike was excited to find the next painting sites and see what had changed. I wrote notes in my sketchbook until I was about to fall asleep mid-sentence.

Our bags arrived (the airport driver laughed about how often he has to deliver bags to this apartment building in particular, confirming my suspicions that it is a little bit cursed), and we crashed with exhaustion onto the bed wearing clean pajamas. The cities here go quiet after the shops close at 6pm, with no traffic noise at night and just the most dedicated drunks left to hoot when the pubs close at midnight. Everyone is home and sleeping. It seems like such a better arrangement than our cities that bustle and honk all night. 

Tomorrow: a bus ride to the countryside to visit Fyvie Castle.

Still day 0?

*updated*

When I said I would edit for updates in that last post, I forgot that I don’t have cell service on airplanes or in the UK. It is WiFi only for me. Every trip outside will be a step back in time, nobody can find me. 

I can’t sleep on planes, but I can halfway doze with an audiobook in my ears and my hoodie pulled tight over my face like a cozy sphincter. When light cracked under the window after only 4 hours of night, I pulled up the shade far enough to press my face to the plexiglass and watch the sunrise. Far down below, the flat carpet of clouds broke open over snowy mountains and crackled glaciers in the pink light. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. Until the person behind me hissed to shut the damn shade.

Being trapped by the window on a 9-hour night flight means you pee when the person in the aisle seat wakes up to pee. I went to the rear toilets and saw a crew member open a door disguised as a cabinet, revealing a spiral staircase that led up into the top of the aircraft. A small sticker on the door said there were sleeping bunks for 8 up there. Went back to my seat feeling like I’d caught someone coming out of a secret revolving bookcase. 

By breakfast I was too hungry to eat, which is bad planning on the part of the human body. Took one bite of eggy bagel and felt sick. Handed it to Mike, who needs about 3000 calories a day and had been going through our stash of protein bars like an opossum. Someone in the back of the plane was having a worse time than I was with the blood sugars and passed out on descent, so we all had to clear the aisle for paramedics to get through before disembarking at Heathrow. I sat by our next gate and drank a bottle of orange juice while watching people plug in their phones at a free charging kiosk and then just walk away from them. And then I watched as nobody stole the phones. That was nice.

Dead on our feet, we made it to Aberdeen, but our luggage did not. The bags took a different flight and were a day behind us, so there was less to haul on the bus. A very drunk man got on and started alternately hugging people and screaming about fighting in Ukraine until he got thrown off. Two more drunks were sitting on the stoop of our flat and gave us a bit of shit when they heard our accents, but let us step around them to unlock the door. The elevator was tiny and dark, and rumbled up 3 flights so slowly we laughed and said the rats in charge of hauling the elevator pulleys were doing their best.

The rental smells like cigarettes, there is a bouquet of dead flowers, old mismatched pillow cases on the bed, and rotting food in the fridge. We were dying laughing at every fresh horror.

After taking turns showering (the shower caddy fell on my head and the shower stall flooded because the drain was broken, but there were half-used bottles of shampoo in the cupboard), we smelled how rank our only clothes were and realized our toiletries were in our checked bags. Put the stinky clothes back on, wore them to a crowded pub for burgers, and then stopped at Tesco Express to pick up laundry soap, toothpaste, deodorant, and a phone charger. While checking out, one of the front doors of the store fell off its frame and crashed onto the floor. The employees propped it back up. We walked back to the flat, weaving around drunks and getting a hard eye from some of the youngest and brokest-looking ones, and I was glad I was wearing my crappy old Led Zeppelin hoodie and worn out purse, swinging a Tesco bag. 

Back at the flat, we stuffed all our clothes in the washer before realizing there was no dryer. We did not hang the wet clothes over the heater vents to dry, but hung them over chairs, because the last thing this day needed was for us to start a fire while dressed in towels in 40 degree weather.

So Aberdeen is in shambles, but it is home to a good art museum and a lot of historic sites painted by the best Scottish artists. We just have to fight the seagulls and drunks for our breakfast sausage rolls and we’ll be on our way.

Painting trip Day 0

Well, if I have forgotten anything, they have stores in Aberdeen. I fished out all our pound notes and UK coins, packed both my long-sleeved shirts, secured my passport, threw the kids out at school an hour early, got dropped off at the airport by sister-in-law, and now it is nonstop to the Pacific Northwest for a dinner layover. (Dinner is a protein bar, because I am not paying $20 for a hamburger. I have already been extorted for a Diet Pepsi.)

Boring carpets at HNL

Incidentally, there is a non-zero chance that I may get detained or deported on the way back, because my passport shows my place of birth (Newfoundland) and I have no actual proof I’m American. ADVENTURE.

(I am posting this now and will  edit it with updates until I’m over Greenland and confused about what day it is.)

Easter 2025

We were down to one kid for Easter morning, with the boy flying home from the robotics world championships in Texas. We dyed a couple of eggs each, making a huge mess of them with the foamy slop dye kit we decided to try. Surprise: swirling every color into something like shaving cream and then moshing your eggs around in it creates purple-brown mud. 

Leif came home just before dinner and dumped a suitcase full of beef jerky and Trader Joe’s candy onto the floor, then played Beethoven vigorously for 2 hours while everyone sat around playing card games and eating grasshopper pie. Gavin FaceTimed before he went to work, and we dashed him a steak and a pile of Insomniac cookies so he’d have something nice for the holiday. My mother and I lurked in the studio to talk about art, books, and cottages in Nova Scotia, and she made off with a mini painting and a pile of plastic dinosaur skeletons for her library. 

Good holiday, even though my stomach has been in knots about the trip. Which is TOMORROW. 

Photo dump (blurry me in pajamas at the end because I realized there were no pictures of me):

She’s outgrown the bunny lore, but still got us up at 5am

After posing like a gremlin for every other picture

Leif, barely conscious but holding out to play piano after being on a trip for a week 

Chris playing ‘taco cat goat cheese pizza’

“Don’t look at the camera, act natural”

Mom in her cute ribbon shirt

The painting she took home; a tiny master copy of a painting she saw in the Sydney museum that reminder her of me. (Been learning Blender to make these little frames)

Showing off my polar bear flannels