Scotland I am in you

I’d like to start out saying a huge thank you to you all for your thoughts and support during Igor’s illness and death. It really meant a lot. It’s one of those times that reminds you that there’s still good people out there.

It was a tough experience. He was my little CSI buddy. Most evenings I’d dim the lights and he’d come up for a cuddle and an episode of CSI or Doctor Who. We once tried out watching X-Factor but he did not like that. He spent the entire time curled up in a ball hissing. He was a hedgehog of fine taste. I once left some cucumber in his food bowl and the next morning I found it tossed next to it with just the bite marks from where he bit into it to remove the offending green bit. Chicken and ham was his favourites. I left a few bits of chicken as a test and a friend was telling me that surely there was no way he’d eat that. It was gobbled up by morning.

The Mothership went with me to collect the body as we’d chosen a home funeral. Now that was a story all by itself. The vet had packed him up nicely in some cloth or something so he was presentable. I must admit part of me was still holding on to hope that they’d made a mistake and we’d gotten someone’s guinea pig home and we’d get a call saying he was fine, there’d been a mistake. We went to my place and needing a spade I went to the garage room that contains the shared garden tools of the block. Now what did I find? A plastic shovel! Not a tiny kids’ one, but a live sized actual shovel made of plastic. Who thought of that one? After two attempts at digging I gave up and found my gardening trowel. That worked much better. We decided to put him under the big bush with the yellow flowers which meant that not only was I trying to dig a hole deep enough I would also randomly get poked in the face and eye by the bush. But in the end we got a hole that was as good as it was going to get with our skills and he had a nice funeral. We even put a pile of big rocks on top just to be sure he didn’t resurrect or got dug up by cats.

I was moping around at home when during the daily chat with the mothership, she mentioned that there had been a talk in the bank of Los Parentos and they wanted to help with a ticket to Scotland so I could get comforted by my man. I think she was worried I wouldn’t be eating so it was a win-win. So I booked a ticket, this time flying over Frankfurt an airport I’ve never been to before. I of course got the plane with all the kids on the flight to Frankfurt. The ones who sit on opposite sides of the aisle screaming at each other and having fits over who gets to look out of which windows. Sometimes opening windows in an airplane would be a nice feature. The next plane was half an hour delayed and I got to spend 20 minutes sitting next to a guy with a serious frog in his throat that he just couldn’t get rid off. Luckily for me he left for Dublin and I was sitting there thinking “Ireland you’re on your own!”. I did make it in the end, as did my luggage.

Leggy had a day off work so we decided to go see something new. We ended up visiting a 13th-century castle version of Barbie’s Malibu dream home. There was a big pond and the weater wasn’t bad so we went for a walk around. We got to enjoy nature, got close to majestic killing machine aka swans and snagged a lot of pictures. Some who may be more interesting for more than just the trees but Leggy will have to deal with that. After all the fresh air and petting of dogs being walked we thought a bit of civilisation would be in order. Now we didn’t really find that, we found Asda. Not hating on Asda here, I rather liked that shop. Not in my all time top 10 of shopping places but they had some pretty good deals. We were a bit hungry after having watched all the yummy ducks swimming around so we thought hey why not try out the cafe. Now that wasn’t the best decision. Actually it was pretty horrific. If the 70’s and an asylum ever met this would be the place. The people were very friendly and proof that even though you wear the world’s biggest hearing aid or you’re a few sandwiches short of a picnic and semi deaf you can still work, but when you’re told 5-6 minutes on the burger and it turns out that may have been the time it took the half deaf woman to deepfry the patty before blowtorching the thing, your patience start to wear. And for some reason she kept insisting that Leggy was the one wanting the burger and that I was the one who’d ordered the chicken, we switched plates after she’d left. That the cutlery then wasn’t completely clean or the seats, table or pretty much anything else now that was a bit of a no go that made you start to wonder if you’d just sat down in a salmonella death trap. So I did what any slightly weird person would do, I laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. I’ve never tried anything like it and I’ve eaten in several different shop cafés. But hey the chips were pretty good.