day 3

Now Playing: S on his handheld American football game.

March 20, 2008. We all woke up early today, up by six-thirty, dressed, ate breakfast, and fixed lunches. Then we walked down to Europa to catch the bus to Dublin. The day was grey and cloudy, long low rollers of cloud streaming down over Cave Hill. We got the eight o'clock bus. The ride took three hours: long, dull, and rather uncomfortable since the bus was too warm. S and I were both queasy. We drove through Banbridge and Newry, and across the border, where the bus was stopped by the gardai. They're on a manhunt right now, so they asked everyone for id before letting us continue on the way: through endless green fields, little tumbled farmsteads, hedges running crooked and crossways everywhere, tiny villages, pubs and shopping centres and churches.

The bus stopped at Dublin Airport, then went on. We went through the Docklands, which are bustling with construction. Forests of cranes hanging over quickly-rising state-of-the-art buildings, webbings of glass and steel blossoming from concrete ground. The bus left us at Dublin Busaras, bustling with lines of people waiting to board, and we walked from there to O'Connell Street. Crowds of people, of course--my lasting impression of Dublin is of people, hurrying everywhere. Dubliners singly, and little knots of tourists together. All kinds of languages, French, Dutch, Russian, and dialects of English from Great Britain and America.

We boarded a city sightseeing bus, one of the open-top buses, for a tour around the city. We ate our lunch on the bus. A man happened to sit down beside S who was from Texas (his accent left me without a doubt), and he immediately began to discuss OSU football with S while the bus left its stop and trundled through the crowded streets. Past the Millenium Spire, shining in the thinly-falling mizzle; across the River Liffey; and to the stop at Trinity.

We got off at Trinity and walked through the dark dirty archway into the courtyard. Full of people. I was munching a pear from lunch, the sweet juice filling my mouth as we dandered across the courtyard. We went to the library to see the Book of Kells exhibition. Through the giftshop, then into the exhibition itself. The dimly-lit honeycomb of displays was crowded with people. We looked at ogham stones, Gospel books, Ethiopian carrying cases, video displays about book-making. I read over little poems and riddles about writing printed on the walls, savoring the strong alliteration of translated Old English and the sweet interlaced rhymes of Irish.

At last we reached the inner room, the books themselves: the Book of Kells in two volumes, the Book of Armagh, and another volume. The Book of Kells was open today to a passage from Luke and to the portrait of St. John, with the initial of his Gospel. I bent over the beautiful outspread pages, studying the intricate painting, the gold leaf and bright colors intertwined. Like the interweavings of a dream, ever more detailed, the patterns leading the eye inward further and further to be lost in leaves and faces and sinuous woven bodies.

After the Books, we climbed the stairs to the Long Room. More people in here than the time when I visited it before: the silence of the room was diminished, though the great wooden vault hanging above the crowds of people preserved its aloofness, its complete silence. Shelves and racks of brown-backed books marching down either side, and the eyeless white busts of dead authors and philosophers, and the old wooden bog harp mutely preserved in its glass case.

We went downstairs into the crowd and noise and heat of the gift shop. Then we went outside and took pictures of the buildings, and got back on the bus finally. We rode the bus around, past all the sights, until we got to St. Patrick's Cathedral, and there we got off. The cathedral is another Norman building, though more on Gothic lines than Christchurch, longer and leaner. Still square, though, still the squat blank walls, the clerestory line blocked with stone. Most of the windows had no stained glass, though at the ends of the cruciform shape of the cathedral, the greatest windows were stained: pictures from St. Patrick's life mostly. The floor underfoot was tiled in patterns with red, orange, green, and brown, carefully glazed and tessellated.

On the aisles down either side of the nave were monuments to various past deans of the cathedral, to lords and ladies, to soldiers who had fallen in war. The grave of Jonathan Swift was there. Dusty flags hung from the walls above the monuments, some of them black and war-torn, so burned that their insignias could no longer be read. Most of them, though, were simply faded, the reds, blues, and golds crumbling into dust. The choir stalls at the front of the cathedral still had the banners of the Knights of St. Patrick's hanging above them, together with the ceremonial helms and swords.

We walked around, looking at all the curios preserved in the cathedral: the door that had been hacked through by two warring parties when the leader of one risked his arm to make a truce; the Huguenot bell; the eagle-winged lectern; the pulpit with its statues of the Apostles; the stone statues standing over graves.

After awhile, we got back on the bus, and rode it around to the end of its circuit, past the Guiness brewery, Kilmainham Gaol, Phoneix Park, the National Museum, the Hugh Lane Gallery, and Parnell Street. At the end, we got off the bus. S wanted to go back to Belfast, so we went to the bus station to catch the four o'clock bus.

We had half-an-hour, so we sat and waited in the station. Pigeons walked around under the benches where we sat, their heads bobbing back and forth. At last our bus began to board. It was very crowded, completely full up. S and I sat side-by-side. He listened to the "Myst" soundtrack on his MP3 player, and I read The Return of the King, through the glorious chapters about the last battles and the cracks of doom. The city gave way to green fields, and the green fields gave way to the dark misty slopes of the Mournes. The sun was setting, and clouds were flowing down over the steep heaths and moors.

The bus got caught in a traffic jam in the foothills of the Mournes, outside Newry. We sat and sat as the bus inched forward. I stared out the window at the dark slopes going darker as night fell, at the dim peaks behind the ridged hills. At last we reached Newry and crawled through it, then drove more quickly to Belfast. It was still another hour, though. The moon rose over tree-crowned ridges and green fields, staring palely through thin clouds.

Back in Belfast, we walked back to RH. The wind was bitterly cold and strong, whipping my hair over my face. I made sweet-and-sour chicken for us for dinner. It was eight-thirty by the time we were sitting down to eat. After dinner, M and I sat with Daphne in the common room for awhile, helping her procrastinate. Then we went upstairs, took showers, and went to bed.

days 1 and 2

Now Playing: Snow Patrol, "Chasing Cars".

March 18, 2008. Woke up alert even before my alarm went off at six o’clock. I dressed, did my devotions, ate a quick breakfast, then walked down to Europa. It was sprinkling, but to the west over Cave Hill, a rainbow shimmered against the dark clouds. I took the bus to the airport. At the airport, I waited and waited…. The plane M and S were on was delayed fifteen minutes, and of course then they had to go through customs, etc. But at last I saw them coming up the sterile corridor through the international arrivals door, and it was good to see them again, familiar. M a bit greyer, S a lot taller. We walked out to the bus stop and took the bus back to Belfast. M chatted away: all about people in Stillwater, about how the family is doing, about the things we saw out the window as we passed from green Antrim countryside to outskirts to the centre of Belfast, about people in the church, and so on. From the bus station we trundled to RH. The way seemed endless, hauling the suitcases along the rutted uneven pavement. In RH, I fixed lunch for them at about half eleven in the kitchen.

While I was fixing lunch, Daphne came in, and as we were going up the stairs after lunch, we ran into Daphne, Rachel, Catherine, and Amy, and ended up talking to them on the landing for awhile. Rachel regaled us with the account of her adventures yesterday, keeping all of us laughing; Catherine and Amy joked about going to Victoria Square, and Rachel warned them jokingly to stay away from the buttons. After they went on about their afternoon’s affairs, M, S, and I walked to Tesco to get groceries. Then I took them on a tour of Queen’s and the Gardens: down Elmwood Avenue, past the church houses, the colorful doors, The Parlor, and Elmwood Centre where the Ulster Orchestra practices; past the Student Union, across the street, past the winged war memorial and through the doors of the Lanyon Building, where the great stained glass window shone down at us with Courage, Wisdom, Alma Mater, Temperance, and Justice. Then out onto the quad, where a saucer magnolia tree and two bush-sized star magnolias were blooming with elegant poise; under the colonnade, past the library and tower, along University Square, and down facing Union College, where a wedding party was being photographed on the grand stairs out front.

Then past behind the School of Music and Seamus Heaney library, and into the grounds of the Gardens by the side gate I always take to the gym. We walked along that way. Kids were playing soccer on the green lawn, and robins sang in the trees. We walked down around up past the rose gardens, pruned back and bare, then up past the lush bed of daffodils shining like a galaxy on the south-facing slope of the hill, and into the Tropical Ravine. Quiet in there: the endless green silence of leaf on leaf, still patterns of fronds and fiddleheads against the water-stained glass ceiling, cycads and palms, bananas and guavas, bromeliads and pitcher plants growing in a riotously patterned green brocade. Down to the fish ponds where orange koi glowed like comets in the black water under the duckweed, under archways of Spanish moss, smelling the tropical scents—camellia flowering in bushes.

Then outside into the chill again, and over to the Palm House. Here we found the wing full of bulbs, pots arranged theatrically to make long straight arenas of yellow and cream climbing above magenta and pink cyclamens. S and I smelled the cyclamens, a cleanly sweet smell. We walked around in that House for awhile, looking at the strange dry weather plants, cactuses and palms. Then back outside. We walked down to the city centre, but M was tired before we reached Castlecourt or the Cathedral, so we turned and walked back up to RH. In RH, I fixed a cup of tea for M, and we sat and talked. At about six o’clock I went down to the kitchen to fix curry for tea. When I came back upstairs, both of them were asleep. M woke when I opened the door, though. They helped me bring the food upstairs, and the three of us ate in our room. When we finished, M helped with the dishes. She, S, and I were getting ready to fish the ice cream out of the freezer when Ian came in. We talked with him for awhile. After he went out, we had dessert. Then I ran down to the common room to ask Phil to borrow a DVD for S to watch. Phil accommodated us with quite a selection. S chose Ocean’s Eleven, and he, M, and I spent the evening watching that.

March 19, 2008. M and S were both asleep at eight forty-five when I woke up. I collected my Bible and journal and crept downstairs to the common room, where I sat with my back to my heater and did my devotions. God was very good this morning, and gave me peace there, even as I prayed for it, with His rich promises. Liz came into the room to vaccuum at about half nine, so I went back upstairs. S was sitting in the bay window, reading, but M was still asleep. She slept until ten o'clock. The three of us ate breakfast, then picked ourselves up and walked to the bus stop at City Hospital. We took the bus into the city centre, and from there took a double-decker bus up the Antrim Road.

The day was mostly sunny, white clouds coming down over the sky, long branching wings like swimming dragons. We drove up Shankill Road, dilapidated estates and newly remodeled flats side-by-side. The bus driver obligingly let us off right at the stop at the foot of the lane to the Belfast City Zoo. From there we walked, up the road as it zig-zagged across the face of Cave Hill, the boulders of the hill jutting against the sky above us. Crows were circling over empty air, and as we reached the top, we could look southeast across the Antrim hills, sloping down dotted with yellow furze and criss-crossed with hedges, then crowded with brown roofs of houses, to Belfast Lough. I've never been able to see so far before: the Lough lay flat and blue under the sky, with a few trawlers on it, and on the far horizon, shimmering on the edge of sight, a line of dun and blue hills--the tip of Scotland, perhaps.

We paid at the makeshift zoo entrance (the main entrance is being redone), and walked into the zoo. It was quite a nice middle-sized zoo, strung along the hillside. We walked past an enclosure where white pelicans, swans, geese, and seagulls were paddling on thick green water, and we also passed a variety of ungulates, deer and bucks grazing placidly. We could hear sea lions and found them eventually, passing a pair of spectacled bears on the way. The sea lions were being fed and making a tremendous racket while they were at it: the huge bull male yarked and barked as the keeper tried to get him to obey the whistled commands. There were at least eight sea lions in the big pool, some of them gliding through the water, others sitting on ledges at the water's edge. I always find sea lions mesmerizing: the grace, speed, and fluid power of the animals as they propel themselves through the water, the sinuous curves of their bodies echoing the liquid rhythm of the water as it parts around them.

Penguins were nearby, a colony of very funny-looking little South African penguins with their odd ear tufts, flapping through the water. Walking on, S and I spotted a pair of red pandas curled high in the branches of a tree. M insisted that they were trying to imitate parasitic growths on the tree. They certainly were sound asleep. In the next enclosure we found three or four Barbary lions, regal creatures, half-asleep in the warm sunshine. Smaller than the usual African lions, and more stocky. A little further on we came to a pen where a lion cub and an akita were living together--a sign explained that the cub had had a bad mother and so was being raised with the akita for companionship. While we watched, the two of them started to playfight, the dog nudging the cub, and the cub pawing at the lion. It was ridiculous to watch: the cub, longer from tip to tail than the dog, sprawled on its back like a silly housecat, or creeping along, belly-down, and then pouncing on the dog, while the dog shook itself good-naturedly.

Going on up the hill, we walked past a couple of monkey cages: tamarinds, gorillas, chimpanzees, all with spectacular views southeast. At the top of the hill we found several picnic tables, and since it was already half one, we decided to eat lunch. The wind at the top of the hill was crisp and cold, but we sat in the sun and ate the sandwiches we'd packed. A gloriously splendid male peacock strutted around our table, begging unashamedly. The sun rippled luxuriously over its iridescent feathers, living blues and greens, its tail swishing on the ground like a woman's silk skirts. M tossed the crumbs from her bag of crisps to it.

After lunch, we walked down the hill. We found an enclosure with pygmy marmosets inside--tiny monkeys the size of a man's fist (plus tail), clinging to the wire of their cage, sunning themselves. They made a noise like a colony of tiny birds, cheeping and chirping to each other. One of them had gotten out, and M found a keeper to ask about it--apparently, it's been loose for quite awhile, so delicate that it would require a lot of care to catch.

We saw the gorillas being fed. Their cage was nearby. They sat, strangely human, against the glass inside their house, staring sadly back at us as they munched their celery and carrots. Their long strong arms drooped over their paunchy chests.

We walked on down the hill again, retracing the way we'd been before in order to find the otters. On the way, we went past the sea lions again. Most of them were asleep at the edge of the pool, lying rolled together like brown cigars. One of them was asleep standing up on a ledge near the water. It swayed back and forth, absolutely ridiculous, its eyes shut, a smug self-satisfied smirk on its whiskered face. The sun came out, and it rocked back and forth, so sound asleep that it almost tipped over. It shuffled forward, sniffed, and swayed, all with its eyes shut. M, S, and I stood and laughed at it.

We found the otters just across the way, a pair of small Asian otters. They were tumbling and playing with each other. Down the hill we found an enclosure of prairie dogs--not very well enclosed, as it turned out; they'd burrowed most of their little knoll even outside the walls of their pen. Fat, moth-eaten, and self-confident, grazing the grass. We walked through an aviary where egrets, wood ducks, and exotic pigeons made the air positively feathery: the graceful idealized silhouettes of birds in flight, and the endless bubbling rhythms of bird calls, of egrets crying to each other and pigeons burbling contentedly.

From there we walked around in another loop to see the giraffes and elephants. They were all inside while their enclosures were being cleaned, except for one elephant, which was being trained to stand and raise its trunk. We watched for awhile. Outside the elephant house, we found a pair of meerkats, inquisitive, friendly little beasts. As we stepped into the elephant house, the combination of smells and sounds reminded me strangely vividly of Noah's ark. On the left was a long enclosure full of giraffes. Their hooves brushed and swished in a deep bed of straw on the concrete floor. They were eating, drinking, moving about, strangely graceful--reminding me of sea serpents, somehow, with their long necks. On the right was an enclosure with three elephants. One of them was drinking, slurping water out of a trough and squirting it forcefully into its mouth, then flicking up bundles of hay to eat. At the far end was an enclosure of zebras, stamping and snorting, with a small stall full of ostriches off to one side. We spent awhile in there. Somehow it was relaxing to watch the animals, themselves relaxed, as they ate and simply existed. So many of them, healthy, well-fed, looking back at us. One of the keepers was out walking around, and he stopped to chat with a couple of other keepers--we eavesdropped as he told stories about healing impossible wounds on giraffes' legs and making sure that elephants were properly paired.

It was getting late, half three, and the zoo closed at four. We walked up to see the monkeys--coatis and langurs, then down to try to find the tapir, but it was out-of-sight. So we walked down to the bus stop and took the first bus back to the city centre. We walked around a little bit in the city centre, making a stop by Tesco (the strange one that looks as though it ought to be a Victorian concert hall from the second story, but on the first story is a normal grocery store) and the cathedral. Then we took the bus back to RH.

With M's help, I fixed chicken and mashed potatoes for tea. Andy L. was in the kitchen at the same time, and he and M talked away about Sweden, where they've both been before, and about the Queen, who apparently visited Queen's University today.

M, S, and I had our tea, and afterwards we walked over to Clement's. There was the usual queue of students outside the Union, waiting to get into the bars, but we walked past the bouncers and inside. M and S did seem a bit out-of-place in the coffee shop, but it was good to be there, with the familiar smells and the familiar music. S and I had milkshakes, and M had tea, and we split a couple of cookies, and sat and talked. M talked about people at home and asked endless questions about the history of Ireland; I asked S about his sea monkeys and the prospects of having a goldfish.

When we left the coffee shop at about nine o'clock, the full moon was shining down through a thin veil of yellow cloud. We walked back to RH. S and I took showers while M checked her e-mails and chatted with Logan(on) on my laptop. Then M took a shower. S went to bed, on EMM's airmattress, under a sleeping bag and a couple of blankets. M still tiptoes about, brushing her hair.

so life goes on

Now Playing: Sky Sports on common room TV.

I wrote up yesterday’s entry, etc., this morning. Went to ENL204, chatted with Carmen before class started, and with Professor M after tutorial—he cheerily asked me if I were going home, and said I must be enjoying myself. I went back to the house and spent an hour or so talking with Loganon Skype. I went downstairs for communal lunch at one o’clock. We had soda bread pizzas today. A fair number of people came, some boys for the football match, some girls just to hang out, Beulah, Pamela, and Naomi. Outside, the sunny morning had become an incredibly blustery afternoon. Patches of luminous daffodil-translucent sunshine alternated with nearly horizontal gale-blown rain. The boys had a football match at half two, and Rosemary, Beulah, Naomi, Sarah W., Sarah R., Emmaline, and I went to watch. Joel and Abigail came toward the end.

Standing at the edge of the pitch, watching the match, we were miserable. The wind scoured down over the fields from the northwest: when it wasn’t raining, it lashed our hair over our faces and struck straight through our coats; when it was raining, it drenched the backs of our legs and turned our umbrellas inside out. The boys were playing the Church of Ireland team, which they’d been sure to beat, but they ended up being crushed, 3-0. It was pretty discouraging. The pitch was sodden, the mud stinking, and they were soon plastered on cheeks and arms with smears of grey mud. During halftime, Sarah W., Sarah R., and I sheltered in Emmaline’s car. I was so chilled that I crawled back in again a couple of times. Sarah R. and I spent most of the second half standing pressed side-by-side, shivering. The great dark clouds blew over, and for awhile there was a rainbow spanning the green pitches in an iridescent arc. The available sky was a vivid blue, and a flock of gulls spun and circled over the green grass, white wings flashing in the brief intense sunshine.

After the match, we all crawled back to the house and sheltered in the common room. I was cold right through. I sat in the bay window beside Emmaline, doing my ENL204 homework, while Andy M. helped her with a French translation. She went upstairs to talk on the phone with Alistair; I went into the kitchen to fix tea. I was feeling rather like a limp rag. I went out to buy cheese; when I came back, Emmaline took a look at me, took the cheese, and went into the kitchen to finish making tea, while I went upstairs and slept for half-an-hour. When she called me, I was groggy but feeling better. She had everything sorted downstairs. The two of us ate and chatted. Sarah W. and Heather came in, and we talked with them.

At half seven, Heather, Emmaline, and I drove to Trinity for the last of Pastor D’s three talks. We were late, of course, and of course Emmaline marched up to the front of the church so that she and I could sit beside Catherine Donnelly while she ran the powerpoint presentation. The talk was good. We didn’t stay too long afterward. Emmaline, Heather, and I looked at the bookstalls, and then Emmaline and I drove back to the house. We took a slight detour, but had great fun talking rubbish most of the way about fruit and plans for spring break and the weekend and such.

Back at the house, we ended up in the common room with Steven, Johnny, Ian, Beulah, Rosemary, and Rachel, just sitting around. The TV was on Sky Sports’ match-of-the-day. Beulah was taking people’s blood pressure. Rachel, Rosemary, and Beulah had made tea, and Rachel had a plate of buns for everyone. Emmaline had warmed up a bowl of sweet potato casserole, which she let Rachel try. Beulah explained to Rachel, Emmaline, and me the mysteries of taking blood pressure.

Now Ian and I are sitting in the common room, working on our laptops. There’s a whole flock of people out in the hallway, laughing, talking, and making a huge ruckus.

Johnny wants to be mentioned in this post, so here goes: Currently he and Samuel are watching an incredibly stupid show on Emmaline's laptop here in the common room. As Emmaline said, it's funnier to watch them watching it than to watch it.

Scottish ABCs and pudding party

Scottish ABCs and pudding party

Scottish ABC's

Now Playing: Susie reading aloud to me King Ottokar's Sceptre, a Tintin comic strip adventure by Herge. She's sitting in the huge leather armchair in the living room with a pale purple scarf wrapped around her head.

Arrived safely here in Airdrie last night to visit the Spitlers for the weekend. I slept in Rachel's room at the very top of the house under the steeply-slanting roof, with the skylight looking out toward Glasgow above the bed. This morning I woke up at seven o'clock under the white duvet, with rain rattling on the glass pane above me. I dressed, wrote in my journal, and did my devotions while the rest of the household woke up. We had breakfast, cereal and crumpets, sitting at the table in the expansive kitchen. Crumpets are a new experience to me, despite my months in the U.K.: a round, honeycomb-like pastry, soft, and best served warm so that the butter melts through all the little holes. After we ate breakfast, we threw together packed lunches. While Mr. and Mrs. S took care of things, I sat in the living room with the girls. Sis bounced off the walls; Hannah did Rachel's hair; Rebekah and I inspected the calendars hanging on the living room walls. LOTR, "Dr. Who", and Oklahoma.

Our day began as we set out from Airdrie at about half nine. The Spitlers have a silver almost-minivan car, seating seven. We had to fold up the very back seats for Sis and Rebekah; Hannah, Rachel, and I squeezed into the middle bench. Mrs. S, in the front seat, turned on "Becky", the GPS navigating system, and with Mr. S at the wheel we headed out from Airdrie in the direction of Linlithgow. Since the Spitlers have already visited Linlithgow, our destination was Blackness Castle, beyond Linlithgow on the Firth of Forth.

At Becky's directing, we set out on a maze of country roads. "I love British B roads," Mrs. S groaned as the lanes twisted haphazardly through fields or dived suddenly down little hills. We drove past a grey loch with dark wind-kicked waters, through open moors, where last year's grass bent brown and dun under the wind, then into more tended areas, green fields full of woolly sheep. Through small villages, through Linlithgow itself, and beyond. Blackness Castle wasn't too much further: standing out on a peninsula of land jutting into the Firth, surrounded by broad mudflats. The tide was out. Two sailboats sat stranded, keels cut upright into the bank, brown seaweed around them. It began to rain hard as we pulled into the castle cark park.

The proprietor in the little tourist shop was very cheerful and friendly, and let me in for free since my friends were friends of Scotland (or something like that). He rattled off the history of the castle in a broad Scottish accent. Then we went to explore the castle. Cold rain poured down over us as we crossed the green garth, went through a low deep tunnel, and came out in the castle courtyard. The rock of the cliff-boss on which the castle sits jutted up raggedly through the uneven paving stones, stones gleaming polished grey-green in the rain. We clambered all over the keep, from ground floor to roof, and then all over the main tower, exploring the kitchen, great hall, armories, cellars, dungeons, bedrooms, and storerooms. I found a hole in one of the walls just big enough for me to crawl into. Up and down the narrow spiral staircases, treading carefully on the treacherous foot-smoothed stones. In the massive thick walls we found holes for canons to shoot through, holes bored through walls at least ten feet thick.

We walked around the parapets, the rain sheeting into our faces and trickling over the stones. The tide was coming in, brown water washing deeper and deeper over the seaweed and shining mud beaches. On either side of the castle promontory, deep bays jutted back, and on their far sides were wooded arms flung out from the coast, trees black against the grey sky. On the far side of the firth we could see shipyards, white cranes standing over docks. A big bridge swung in long pointed curves, crossing the water. We went out on the jetty that runs from the castle into the firth. The boards were slippery, and there was a strong sea-smell. The rain pelted us, cold and heavy, and so at last, having made thorough tour of the castle, we went back into the little gift shop to dry off.

After Blackness Castle, Mr. and Mrs. S decided to take us next to Campbell Castle. As we set off again, the rain lifted and the sun came out. Mrs. S produced a bag of toffees in white papery wrappers, and for awhile the car was full of the sound of contented sucking. Our route took us across the flatlands and up into the foothills of the Highlands. Campbell Castle is strikingly situated in a narrow valley, perched like a great grey hawk on the brink of the steep brown fells. Behind it rise the Highlands, height on height, brown shaggy masses like huge brooding animals guarding the margins of a known world.

A narrow road took us halfway up to the castle, and when we stopped in the car park, we had our lunch. The wind came blowing chill and strong over the great hills behind us, and us girls clustered together, shivering in the lee of the car while we ate our sandwiches and crisps. Somehow the penguins we'd brought along seemed appropriate.

After lunch we walked to the castle: down the side of the valley, over a creek running fast and full from the heights above, then up the spur of rock where the castle sits, at the point where two valleys come together. A huge oak tree stood in front of it. The castle gate was rather unimpressive, low and squat. As we entered, the rain lifted and the sun came out, the peculiar dramatic daffodil-brightness of Scottish sunshine after rain, glancing off the wet grey stones. We explored the terraced gardens behind the castle, where saxifrage, snowdrops, arum, and crocuses were beginning to bloom. One of the girls found a little path leading to an overlook in the woods just behind the castle, where we could stand on a wooden platform above the creek from the other valley as it plunged through the steep ravine below.

We climbed all over the castle again, of course. The south wing was roofless, the great hall standing open to the sunshine. But the main tower still had its roof, and in one of the big barrel-vaulted rooms, on the plank floor, Hannah did some of her Irish step dancing, her feet beating the wooden floor so that the whole tower thundered like a great drum. Mr. S took Sis around the castle on a quest to fill out a quiz about the castle's architecture and history, trying to sort out when Mary, Queen of Scots had visited the castle, and what a "loggia" was. Up and down, spiral stairs, halls, bedrooms, latrines. Old wall closets turned into entry areas when the staircases had been moved in the 1600s. Stone faces used as lamp embrasures carved into a ribbed, vaulted ceiling, their flowing hair and beards rippling out to melt into the stone again. Odd pointed windows for archers. Window seats carved into little alcoves under windows deep-set in the walls.

Rachel and I climbed up to the very top, where a walkway ran around the edge of the pointed roof. We could see out into the valley, with the firth shining on the edge of sight. On either side of us the big shoulders of the fells came down steeply, brown backs outflung. Rain was coming down over them again. Climbing down the last flight of spiral stairs, we found ourselves back out in the courtyard. In the sunny porch under the old carved pillars, a man was sitting with his dog. The dog wagged its tail at us, pricking its ears, and then rolling in foolish pleasure on its back in the sun as the man scratched its belly. Mrs. S grinned.

We left the castle as it began to rain again. With map in hand, Mr. S led us on a public path up onto the right (east) shoulder of the fells, in search of some waterfalls. The path was pretty mucky. We climbed through a sheep gate and came under the shelter of a howling fir wood. The wind roared in the trees. We were on the brink of the ravine where the creek jumped, white and grey, through bronze bracken. Beyond the ravine, the hill rose up steeply. Sheep were grazing in the bracken and brown grass. The sky behind was dark and ominous. We decided to turn back as the rain blew down over us.

From Castle Campbell, we drove to Doune Castle, our last stop of the day. The road skirted the edge of the foothills, around Stirling, and right under the big hogback of land where Stirling Castle sits perched. About six miles from Stirling, we found Doune Castle, nestled in a riverbottom with low hills rising around it. Not the most impressive setting, but the castle itself was probably the most fun of all the castles we visited today. Again we went up through a long entrance tunnel under massive walls, with the giftshop tucked into the room where the gate guards would've sat. This castle is made up of a green close surrounded by walls, and it has only one massive building built into the walls themselves. It was the most fun to explore. Rooms and rooms and rooms, one opening out of another. Two or three spiral staircases, with odd half-levels and niches and embrasures. We found a kitchen with an absolutely enormous fireplace, a fireplace the size of a room itself. Above that was a room with brown-and-yellow tiles set in the floor. Then there were halls and halls. In one of them was a big wooden bench intricately carved, dating from the 1600s. Another one of the halls had been restored, and in it were the remainders of a wedding, candles and flowers left behind from earlier in the day. We found all sorts of chambers and rooms and odd crannies. At last the spiral staircase we were following took us out onto the roof, where we could see down over the big walls. Beyond the walls was a band of brown woods, then a town, the church spire poking up through the trees, and beyond that the blue hills, with a windfarm on one of the distant ridges, the white arms of the windmills revolving eerily.

We climbed everywhere. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The castle, like the other two castles, dates from the late 1300s, early 1400s, but it had been partly restored by the Victorians, who had put beautiful diamond-paned glass in many of the windows. The outer walls of the castle, though, were in a state of disrepair, and are being renovated right now, so we weren't allowed to walk along the parapets. Instead, we went back out through the arched gateway, and walked along a path behind the castle. The River Teith ran full and fast beside us, roaring grey rapids foaming under grey trees. In a bend of the river was a ploughed field, dark earth gleaming damp, and behind it more woods, charcoal grey under the sunshine. We spotted rabbits in the undergrowth along the path, and Mrs. S saw a pheasant running ruddy along a fence. The air was sweetly cold, bracing. It felt good to be outside in the sky and wind, in the country, with the trees and water, and the smell of wet earth.

We walked back to the car and started back to Airdrie. On the way, we made a stop at a monument to David Stirling, a statue stuck (somewhat randomly) in the middle of some fields at the side of the road. The view was beautiful. To the north, the foothills of the Highlands, marching away west and east, their huge fells tumbling down to the fields. In the middle they were dark with clouds, and there on the edge of sight we could see the windfarm, the big white spindly windmills turning and turning. To the west, the sun struck through the clouds as it set, flashing on distant fields, gilding them so that they blazed like shook foil, white and silver. To the east, reflecting the sudden sun, the brown faces of the hills were a living, tawny gold against the dark blue sky behind.

Standing at the monument, gazing over the fields, I saw some stones out in the middle of one of them. "Want to come with?" I called to Hannah and Sis, and they trotted after me. The three of us went out to investigate. We went up a track and then out into the fields themselves, the fresh earth clinging to our shoes as we ran (as lightly as we could) over the new wheat. We ended up in the middle of the field on a sliver of ground left unploughed. Here years and years of grass grew tangled around three standing stones set up in a row. Orange lichen grew on their grey polls. We poked around among them. Standing stones, tilted at odd angles, perhaps, but standing stones nonetheless, jutting facelessly out of the dark earth. The cold wind started to bring tears to our eyes, and then we ran back to join the others.

We drove back to Airdrie. I was surprised at how quickly the drive went past. Back in the house, Mrs. S and Rachel made tea and hot chocolate. Us girls sat at the kitchen table with Mrs. S, who gave Rebekah a Lyle's Golden Syrup cake, which she divided into pieces for everyone. We sat sipping our hot drinks and savoring the sweet sticky cake, which reminded me of molasses. Rachel read the motto on the wrapper, "Out of the eater came something sweet," a quote from Judges.

After we had our snack, Mrs. S and Rachel started work on supper. I helped set the table. Sis was incredibly hyper, so I chased her into the living room, and she and I had a roaringly fun tickle fight, squealing and giggling, until we flopped onto the big leather sofa with a Tintin comic book. I sprawled on the sofa beside her and read over her shoulder, helping her with the big words, until Rachel called us to the table.

Mrs. S had fixed hamburgers and chips (French fries to you) for tea (or supper, whichever you prefer). We discussed hostels and traveling on the Continent. Also, the day's adventures. Mr. S pointed out that we'd gone in alphabetical order today: from Airdrie to Blackness to Campbell to Doune. For dessert, chocolate swiss roll and Mackie's strawberry ice cream. Then Mr. S led us in family worship. We sang Psalm 90, and closed in prayer. After family worship, I washed the dishes, Rachel dried, and Mrs. S put away the food. Rachel told me about the classes she took at OSU last semester.

Then Mr. and Mrs. S made a trip to Tesco. Rachel started to put her sisters through the shower, and loaned me her laptop to keep me occupied meanwhile. Sis was reading to me while I checked my e-mails, until it was her turn in the shower. I sit curled up on the faded velveteen loveseat. Mr. and Mrs. S are back now. Sis is reading an Asterix comic book to herself, turning over the brightly-colored pages. The house with its high ceilings is cold, and the rooms have a certain bareness to them, the bareness of a house temporarily lived in--only a few books on the mantelpiece; a couple of calendars instead of pictures on the walls; rather less than the usual homey clutter on furniture and floors; boxes stowed neatly in corners. I'm pleasantly tired from the day out, still a bit cold and damp, but soon it'll be my turn in the hot shower....

God be with you all, and to all a good-night.

March 3, 2008

Today I was so tired that I had a huge fight on my hands to stay awake during ENG314. We were studying the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle today and how it's a tool for propaganda. I rather dislike how English professors always put a negative spin on anything one studies, and how they feel compelled to show the "dark side" of all literature by arguing for all sorts of strange ulterior motives in the authorship. After class, I practically sleepwalked over to the gym and went running, which woke me up. I took a shower, made myself lunch, and ate it sitting in the common room with Rachel, Emmaline, Phil, and Steven.

At about three o'clock, Emmaline and I went into the kitchen to start work on tea for tonight. She was fixing orange-and-lemon glazed chicken and sweet potatoes. I helped by washing and slicing the sweet potatoes, and by washing the mountains of dishes in the sink. Rachel ended up coming in and helping with the dishes-washing, and sitting and chatting with us. The afternoon sunshine slanted comfortably through the window past the stark brick walls outside. As the sauce for the chicken bubbled on the stove, the wonderful smell of oranges and ginger started to fill the kitchen, with the sweet smell from the boiling sweet potatoes. Emmaline managed to finish throwing things together just before she had to leave for her four o'clock class.

I went upstairs and did my reading for ENG314, then came back downstairs to preheat the oven (Daphne and Rachel were just starting work on their apple-and-strawberry crumble, which was their Christmas present to me, from vouchers they'd made for everyone back at Christmastime), then back upstairs to practice my flute. Catherine stopped in, and we chatted. She talked about as fast as a cassette recorder on fast forward, giving me a double speed version of her weekend before disappearing upstairs to study. I put the chicken and potatoes in the oven, then forgot myself for a blissful half-hour while I practiced Bach.

When I ran downstairs at half five for tea, I found the kitchen full of people. Phil was there with his two American friends, female college students, who are over visiting on spring break. Joel and Emma were talking about Airdrie in a corner; Rachel and Daphne were supervising their crumble (which was swimming in juice); Andy L. was moving through the crowd trying to fix his tea; Emmaline was watching the cooking of frozen vegetables in a large pot with a fork brandished in one hand.

Catherine, Emmaline, Rachel, Daphne, and I sat down to tea in the kitchen, very delicious. At seven o'clock, I went to CU with Rosemary, Rachel, Daphne, and Lizzie. The sky overhead was deep, deep blue, with the stars shining far and faint in it. Tonight the meeting was the next-to-last in a series of evangelistic talks aimed at answering basic questions about Christianity. The theme was, "God, which one are you?", and was a study of world religions held in the PFC classroom building. The speaker was alright, though he presented so much information that it was rather overwhelming. He sprinkled jokes in occasionally that made everyone laugh: "Christianity is a group of nobodies, who met a Somebody, so that we could all become buddies." "I just want to hug him," Rachel giggled beside me.

We stayed for about forty-five minutes after the meeting finished. Rachel and Rosemary were busy talking to friends who they only see at CU. Beulah came over and chatted with us about formal dresses and the pudding party she's hosting next week. As we were leaving, the speaker came up to us and asked us to tell him what we thought of the talk. Rachel and Rosemary were chatting when a man came up with a question for the speaker. "Sorry to interrupt, girls! Yeah, yeah, run away now, when the American's come!" he laughed in an unmistakeable accent. I felt my face burning as we turned away, Rosemary snickering behind me. "Sometimes I find Americans the most annoying people in the world," I whispered to her as we left the auditorium.

At Renwick, we had Bible study at nine-thirty. A fairly good number of people tonight, between fifteen and twenty. Phil's friends came. Matthew led the study, which was about the armor of God at the end of Ephesians. He did an excellent job. As an aside: He illustrated the belt of truth by telling us that "truth" comes from the Greek word "trulos" because whenever Greek soldiers were in battle, and had gotten spread out among the enemy at the height of battle, they'd shout, "Trulos! Trulos!" to each other and reunite in formation so that they could renew their attack. Everyone gaped at him. "I just made that up," he said, and we all started to laugh--though it meant that later, when he pulled out the illustration of the Roman tortoise formation to explain the shield of faith, Andy M. asked, "Did you make that up, too?" "No, but that's how you should be thinking, testing everything I say to make sure it's true," Matthew replied quickly.

We had prayer times after the study as usual. In our group, which consisted of Emmaline, myself, Daphne, Catherine, Samuel, and Sarah W., we talked about the parts of Ephesians we liked best. Samuel made the excellent point that though Ephesians is full of absolutely immense challenges to the Christian, we have the assurance marked out in such detail at the end of chapter 6 that God has equipped us with all that we need to meet these challenges.

After the prayer time, everyone sat around talking. I talked to Matthew. We actually ended up having quite an interesting conversation: We talked about California, where his dad went on sabbatical one year; about The Chronicles of Narnia, which he's re-reading before Prince Caspian comes out in cinemas this spring; about "ancient literature" (he seems to be of the opinion that I've read all the ancient literature there is). It was good fun to talk about The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid since he's read most of them and likes them.

Finally, at little after midnight, people started to leave. I got myself ready for bed, but Emmaline and I stayed up again, talking....

yesterday

First things first: It's time to wish a very happy White Rabbit Day to everyone!

And I don't think pictures of studying would be very interesting, so that's why most pictures are of socializing. :o)

Now Playing: Bach, Sonata in B minor, BWV 1030, "Andante". Performed by Jean-Pierre Rampal.

February 29, 2008.

This morning was incredibly windy. All yesterday and last night the wind had been blowing, and this morning there was no change, except that the day was more overcast. I walked to ENG309 at ten o'clock. Today we were studying Aelfric and the process of translating the Bible into English, which actually began long before Wycliffe or Tyndale. Aelfric, the primary Bible translator, and King Alfred were both concerned with putting the Bible into the vernacular so that ordinary people could have access to its truths and live accordingly. Aelfric was, perhaps, overcareful since he was always very concerned that the Bible would fall into the wrong hands and be misinterpreted. He didn't trust lay people much at all, though it's easy to see why he thought that no one except the learned clergy could understand the Bible properly: all his sermons are detailed, complex exegetical analyses of Biblical texts in which everything (Christ's crossing the sea in a boat, names, bread, the sea, etc.) has a typological, spiritual reference and nothing is allowed to exist on the purely literal level.

After class, I went to the gym and ran. Or rather, spent twenty minutes running, then fifteen on the bike, then fifteen rowing, until I was heartily bored of the place. But I felt a lot better after having given myself a thorough workout. I went back to Renwick, showered, and was fixing pasta-n'-sauce for lunch when Emmaline came back from her own outing to the gym, flushed and with her hair flying everywhere. As we were sitting and eating lunch, Luke McCollum and his mother walked in unexpectedly. Luke had been in Belfast for a pre-enrollment interview at Stranmillis College. While he went upstairs to change out of his suit, his mother sat and grilled Emmaline with questions about living in Renwick.

After they left, Emmaline and I sat in the common room with Daphne. Samuel and his friend John came in, and Andy L., and Matthew, eventually. Emmaline, Daphne, and I looked at cinema listings on the internet, and Daphne played Dido music videos on YouTube to try to drown out the music Samuel and John were playing on Samuel's laptop across the room.

I went upstairs to study eventually. Emmaline came in and out, taking care of laundry (sniff test!), showering, etc. I read my ENG309 homework for next week and worked on tying off loose ends: e-mailing people at TU about housing and dining for next year, filling out Mortar Board and GO Team forms, etc. Emmaline eventually settled down to read Janette Oke on the sofa cushions in the window. Outside, it grew dark and started to rain.

Emmaline and I finally decided to go out and drive to Tesco for groceries (and ice cream :o). Emmaline dropped me off at Tesco, and she went to find a petrol station. Then, when we got back to Renwick and were unpacking the groceries, realized that we'd both forgotten to buy ice cream. So Emmaline bounced out to find some and to buy ketchup (which Renwick always seems to be out of), leaving me to amuse myself by making an absolute mess in the kitchen, trying to make pancakes. I had my mother's recipe and knew how it ought to have turned out. Problem was that I neither had a griddle nor cooking spray, and, as I soon discovered, making pancakes in an oiled saucepan on the stove is a nasty greasy smoky business. "It's a bit atmospheric in here," was my comment when Emmaline came back. "The smoke's all the way up the house," she told me, which left me no choice but either to laugh or to cry, so I chose the former, and opened all the windows.

Eventually we settled down in the common room with a rather strange looking set of pancakes and various toppings (maple syrup, raspberry jam, etc.) to go on them. We watched Spider-man 2, which Emmaline hasn't seen, and were thoroughly enjoying ourselves when Rosemary rang. She came by to use the internet, and so joined our little party in the common room. After the movie, we had ice cream and donuts, shared with Rosemary. Between occasional bursts of good-natured wrestling with Emmaline, I brought down my laptop and checked train, bus, and museum timetables for my family's visit in March, while Rosemary sat calmly with her computer, laughing at the pair of us and giving me advice about buses to Dublin.

Rosemary left at about midnight, when Emmaline and I went up to bed. She went right to sleep, but I stayed up for awhile, looking out at the stars.

some pictures

spring

lots of language and lots of dishes

Now Playing: Coldplay, "Don't Panic".

Despite all the work we'd gone to yesterday to get our room warmed up, it was still freezing this morning. Ah, well. Emmaline bolted down a bowlful of frosted rice krispies and warm milk (!) before dashing off to her French class. I spent the morning reading A History of the English Language and then going to ENL204 lecture and tutorial. The aforementioned textbook for this class fascinates me: in particular, the lists of words, which tell you when the words were taken into English and why. It's amazing to see the immediate connection between history and language. Reading through the lists of words taken from church Latin, Viking pirates, Norman conquerors, and Flemish tradesmen, one begins to find a sense of the vast richness of the English language. In particular, the number of synonyms: English may appear to have a hugely superfluous vocabulary, but each set of words that seems to mean the same thing is actually a constellation of various shades of meaning, each word with its own set of connotations. For instance, if I were to "ask" for something, that would be quite different from "pleading", "begging", "demanding", or "requiring".

After class, I went back to Renwick, where I found a beautiful little parcel waiting for me on the hall table from Mrs. Parnell and Mary. With her usual artistic care, Mrs. Parnell had drawn colorful flowers on the outside of the package, and inside I found two beautifully made little cards, one from Mrs. Parnell and one from Mary, accompanying a pair of tightly-knit aqua socks. My delight at the creativity of the cards made me immediately want to make something of my own, but unfortunately my repertoire of crafty materials is reduced to whatever colored papers Emmaline happens to have on her shelf and the brush pens I bought at Tesco last fall.

I helped Rachel fix communal lunch this afternoon. She had to be somewhere at one o'clock, so our efforts were frantic, to say the least. Her sister, Lindsey, was visiting, and pitched in along with Daphne, Catherine, Emma, and Linsey. We grilled sausages and had buns ("baps"), onions, and cheese to go along. There weren't many people at lunch today, despite the fact that the boys had a football match this afternoon. I sat between Linsey and Heather and talked with them, Heather chirping away merrily about her classes.

After lunch, Emmaline went to choir. I holed up in my room and talked to Logan on Skype for an hour or so. I hadn't done that in awhile and was treated to an enormous surprise, in the shape of his new beard--! I finished reading the two chapters in the ENL204 textbook, then browsed the news on Google, which was so depressing that I got out my flute and practiced for awhile. I love practicing: concentrating on the circle of sound, not having to think outside that frame of reference, simply listening to each note and seeking to tune it as truly as possible. I'm working on learning Bach Sonata BWV1030, the leaps challenging me because of my lack of practice.

Emmaline came back from choir, and I put my flute away while she was in the room. We studied staidely for awhile, until Sarah W. rang, and I, looking out the window, saw her and Charlotte standing across the street. I opened the window and had a conversation with them while Emmaline wriggled into shorts, and then the three of them went off to the gym. Resigning myself to staying behind, I managed to get about half my homework done. Dusk fell outside, a pale full moon shining like a lidded eye behind thin clouds.

At about five-thirty I went downstairs to start making tea. Emma was in the kitchen as I scrubbed and diced potatoes for mashed potatoes. Soon she went out, though, and I was left alone, humming Psalms to myself as I washed dishes and kept an eye on the boiling potatoes. Emmaline and I had mashed potatoes, sausages, and vegetables for tea--she had had to go by Centra to buy milk, and had bought a couple of little smoothies at the same time, a raspberry-cranberry and a mango-orange, to add some excitement to the meal. Rachel, Daphne, and Charlotte ate with us, keeping Emmaline and me laughing.

After tea, Emmaline and I sat up in our room and "studied". I finished my homework, put new pictures up on my bulletin board, etc., while Emmaline worked on a French translation. At nine o'clock, Pastor and Mrs. McKay, from Shaftesbury Square RPC, came up to Renwick to have a chat with the students. Pastor McKay is the Renwick chaplain, so he gave us a short talk inviting us to come to him whenever we have questions and encouraging us to stay for church on Sabbaths. Mrs. McKay had brought two amazing cakes, chocolate and lemon cheesecake, and we stood around in the kitchen eating and talking. The McKays are kind people, cordial, with warm humor. They stayed for an hour or so. We washed the dishes and put them away, to Mrs. McKay's amazement.

After they left, Andy M., Andy L., Samuel, Rachel, Emmaline, and I stayed in the kitchen, chatting for an hour: Rachel tried to convince us that physics, not math, is the "fabric of the universe"; we talked about why the speed of light is always the same; we told funny stories about circuses, gymnastics, and silly tricks we'd played as children; we laughed about hiking and getting lost in the mountains. We talked about politics, too, and the control of the media. It was great fun just to relax for awhile, without the constant brunt of sarcasm, to tell funny stories and realize just how much we have in common.

The talk ended when Andy M. went up to bed at eleven o'clock. Emmaline and I went back to our room. We read John Cleese's "Letter to America", laughing hilariously. She's attempting to finish her French translation and discussing feminism with me at the same time...!

Good night, or good morning, whichever it is by now.

I may regret this

Here's an amusing link, thanks to my aunt, having to do with people's use of language. Though I'm not really sure the U.K. would want to be associated with the U.S. at all these days.... (Apologies for any slightly off-color humor.)

http://starrgazr.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/john-cleeses-letter-to-america/

And in reply to two anonymous comments:

I wouldn't want to build a bridge even if you paid me.

Caedmon was an Old English cowherd (though his name is Welsh, so maybe he's not as Old English as some people would like to think) who wouldn't sing at feasts because he didn't have any skill with singing or playing the harp. In Bede's account, the story goes that one night when it was coming time for Caedmon's turn to sing at a feast, he crept out of the hall and went to take care of the cattle, which was his job. After he'd seen to his work, he lay down in the barn and went to sleep. But while he was asleep, he had a vision that someone came to him, called him by name, and commanded him to sing. He replied that he didn't know how to sing, or what to sing, and the man told him that he should sing about creation. So Caedmon sang a few lines of Old English poetry praising God for creation, and that was supposedly the first Christian Old English poetry. After his dream, Caedmon discovered that he had somehow miraculously acquired the gift of poetry. He joined a monastery, and though he couldn't read, he had other people read to him. When he had heard the Biblical narratives read aloud, he meditated on them and then turned them in to poetry.

silliness, anyone?

Now Playing: Skype conversations with Peter and Sarah/Laura.

The room was so incredibly cold when we woke up this morning that it was hardly even funny. Emmaline woke up to do her devotions and then crawled back to take refuge under her duvet while I sat bundled in a coccoon of jumpers and a blanket at my desk. When we went downstairs to get breakfast, the kitchen was actually warmer than our room, which is strange since it's usually the coldest place in the house.

At ten o'clock I had ENG314, Literature, Art, and Culture of the Anglo-Saxons. We finished discussing Bede's Ecclesiastical History today. It is interesting (wait, no, I'll find another word, Peter)--it is curious how much Bede refers to Biblical sources and how Biblical characters find resonances throughout his stories of saints and kings. Even the story of Caedmon is reminiscent both of the calling of Samuel and of the nativity, where the Word of God was born out of nothing in a stable. Finding Biblical echoes is one of the professor's favorite activities, anyway, so that's what I learned all about today.

After class, as usual, I went running, except that for some strange reason I had bad leg cramps today and had to spend my half-hour on the stationary bike instead of the treadmill, which wasn't nearly as satisfying or challenging. Walking back through the Botanic Gardens was lovely, the sun shining on a cold day. The crocus buds are as big as a child's fists, waxy white and purple.

Back in Renwick, I found Daphne and Catherine on the stairs, getting ready to go out to lunch. There was a rather sickening rancid smell in the stairwell: apparently, the product of another loving gift from the all-male Daphne Fan Club. Someone had put raw meat in her cupboard over the weekend, and it had gone all grey and gross.

They two went out to lunch, and I took a shower, the only time I've been warm all weekend. Then I had lunch myself, PB&J, a little tangerine, and a penguin, with tea, because for some reason you always have to drink tea with penguins.

And now I'm talking with Sarah on Skype, and Laura is talking in the background. My sister certainly hasn't gotten any more serious since I left...! Close-ups of guinea pigs and cats in the video, and of Sarah's mouth being duct-taped. Wow. Whispering to Sarah so that Laura won't hear, even though Laura is thousands of miles away... good fun.

Last week on Valentine's Day someone in the house left little presents on everyone's doors, each present with a Bible verse to go along. I happen to have an inkling as to who the someone was, and they happened to have told me what each person got and why:

Rachel, in Room 1, received a candle, with the verse about letting your light shine before men because of her interest in outreach.

Ian, in Room 2, received a pint glass because he's always disgusted with how small the cups are in Renwick. Matthew got a toy car because he got his driver's license last fall.

Linsey, in Room 3, was given a cup with little people on it that twist around so that they all have different outfits on.

Emmaline got a Tigger mug, and I was given a journal. Now those two gifts I do not understand at all.... *grin*

Phil was given a clock with footballs on it, since obviously football is one of his top pursuits. Andy M. was given a teapot--certain people in the house have remarked on the fact that he always makes his tea in a teapot instead of straight in the cup, the way the rest of us uncivilized folk do.

Deborah and Emma were both given items that had their Disney characters on them: Deborah had a Snow White photo album, and Emma a Cinderella pen.

Andy L., in Room 7, was given a set of egg cups since he eats lots of boiled eggs, and Samuel was given balloons. Whoever decided that one wasn't too bright since water balloons have been known to be dropped from the window of Room 7 on unsuspecting passers-by in the street.

Catherine was given a bear on a keyring, for cuteness' sake, I suppose, and, the funniest of all, some joker decided that Daphne needed a bottle of blond hair dye to help her cure her case of ginger-ness. Why the same person didn't decide to give me the same thing, I'm not sure.

So that was our Valentine's Day excitement.

Well, thank you all for reading.

confession

Now Playing: Loreena McKennitt, An Ancient Muse. Track 4, "Caravanserai".

One of the things that Emmaline and I are fond of complaining about to each other is how much people make generalizations that are entirely untrue. Today I found myself doing just that, and found myself in turn being contradicted, as usually happens when I start making sweeping statements.

So, the generalization that bit the dust today: "No one reads this blog." Most of you have heard me say that at some point, and I think it's high time for a standing apology. If I mean by "no one" that the entire population of the planet doesn't read it, that's correct. But I don't think I'd really like that. It would be very strange to know that the FBI or President Bush or (as a nod to politics here) Queen Elizabeth or Gordon Brown were interested in the details of my life. I'm quite thankful for those who do read (especially if they leave comments *grin*).

Anyway, the occasion for this apology is a case in point, and proves not only that generalizations are silly but also that Google has such powers of digging up the very deepest depths of the internet that I'm beginning to be very suspicious of it.

The long and short of the whole business is that a certain member of Renwick House looked up their name on Google and was unfortunate enough to stumble across this treasure trove of knowledge (read: sarcasm). As Emmaline and I were chatting after lunch this afternoon, she told me that thanks to this particular friend of ours, everyone in Renwick now knows that I have a blog, and reads it, too. It would seem that they've been whiling away all those early mornings in the common room when I've been innocently asleep by reading this and commenting on my descriptions of them.

Ha. My life just got more interesting.

So from here on out, no more generalizations about blogging, and if any of you hear me making them, you have permission to kick me (gently, please).

Incidentally, the whole thing started this afternoon when Emmaline was trying to take a nap before her tutorial. A truck with a backhoe extension mounted on the back pulled up outside our window just as she was dropping off and started to make a racket, so I leaned out the window and described it to her. When I turned round, I discovered that she was grinning at me. "It's so obvious you're an English major whenever you talk or describe something, just like when Charlotte gets going about food," she said.

I grin right back in complete agreement and say: If the world were all English majors, or all Food Nutrition, Health, and Safety majors, or even all Maths majors, it would be a boring place. So long live our differences, though I'll try to tone down my vocabulary for everyone else so as to use only words of one syllable.

Wow. That's going to work well.

It's actually sunny here today. And mild. Walking through the gardens was pure bliss yesterday, with the mild sunshine coming through the trees, which are beginning to bud. Daffodils and snowdrops, and on one green lea under a young maple tree a shimmering spread of crocuses damp with the morning's mist.

Well, I've got the Venerable Bede sitting beside me on my bed, waiting to be read. He's got about a hundred more pages of English ecclesiastical history waiting to be crammed into my brain. Lovely. I just finished the best bit, about Caedmon, the first known English poet. From here on out it's all synods and saints (like the alliteration there?).

Hum.

This is much more interesting. Exhausted hyperness, anyone? I haven't even finished writing all the e-mails I have to answer. But I had a great time at lunch watching Daphne and Rachel play off each other. Their dancing abilities are pretty spectacular, let me tell you.

And since they're probably going to read this and laugh hysterically at me, I think I'll stop here for now.

and life goes on....

Now Playing: Brahms, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in B Flat. Track 1, Allegro non Troppo.

When Emmaline and I went downstairs for breakfast, we found Ian and Emma in the kitchen, and a tremendous mess on the floor, the remainders of an even bigger mess of sugar and rice, with which a certain group of boys had had a food fight the night before. Going into the common room to eat my cereal, I found Daphne attempting to check her e-mail (the internet has been terribly slow this week) in a defaced room: the long curtains had all been tied into a series of tight knots; the thank-you poster on the bulletin board had been changed into a spank-you poster; the odds and ends of mail left on the hall table had all been opened. It really was quite sad, especially when Rachel came in and saw the pranks that had been pulled and was both distressed and disgusted. It's not a very good witness to the cleaner, who's not a Christian, or even to the other Christians in the house. But if the boys are banned, then they just have the glow of notoriety of being banned from Renwick, which doesn't change anything....

Last night I went to the first study abroad dinner of the semester. Emmaline told me before I left to amuse myself by imagining all the things she'd do and by building pyramids with the salt packets in honor of herself and Philip. Unfortunately, they didn't have any salt packets, but imagining what Emmaline would've done to try to make conversation with such a foreign (literally and spiritually) group of people was rather amusing. A new crop of American students, pretty much the same as the last group. (And Fiona wanted to know why I didn't want to go on the Dublin weekend again!) The conversation revolved around the differences between American football and rugby, and the superbowl. Ian should've been there: He was comically disappointed when he found out that I have absolutely no interest in the superbowl (except perhaps as a weird cultural phenomenon) and reprooved me for being an American without any knowledge of American football.

Yesterday I went and checked out The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and as a result yesterday afternoon wrote two poems. Strange: It would appear necessary for me to be reading poetry in order to write the stuff. Not sure why that is, especially since the stuff I was reading yesterday was mostly of a very depressing nature (Pound, Lawrence, and Browning). After the dinner last night, I came back to Renwick only to find Linsey and Catherine watching a rather shady movie in the common room. So I curled up in Room 4 and read from "Lothlorien" to "The Great River". Those chapters, together with "Three Is Company", "In the House of Tom Bombadil", and "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit" are probably my most favorite in the trilogy. Tolkien's art of creating a beautiful world, close but distant, is stunning.

Just to add a bit of excitement to our life, the shower broke this morning while Emmaline was using it. I meant to tell Rachel, but after seeing the mess the house was in, didn't have the heart. Hopefully some sturdy duct tape will do the trick.

As far as the weather goes, it's actually sunny today. We'll see how long that lasts. Like the internet connection: you never can tell....

It's February, so...

... WHITE RABBITS are leaping everywhere!

semester 2, day 3

Now Playing: Disney Robin Hood DVD (on Emmaline's DVD player, which has been installed in the common room).

This is absolutely hilarious: Twelve college students sitting around a room, cracking up over an ancient Disney film. "Oh, this is the best part!" *giggle giggle* "Haha! This is great!" *laugh laugh* "Hee hee! I haven't seen this since I was a kid!" *chuckle chuckle* (Most of the giggling and chuckling done by the boys...!)

Class at ten o'clock today: History of the English Language, team taught by the same professors who took Discovering Old English last semester. It's not a huge class, between twenty and thirty people. For tutorial, immediately after, I have the same professor who taught the Beowulf class, an eccentric blend of strictness and friendliness.

After class, I went running. I had to walk through the Botanic Gardens to get to the gym, the first time I'd been there since exams. Walking past the damp beds, I saw, to my surprise, long green spears of daffodils poking up through the wet leaves, and snowdrops on long white curving stems blooming under the dark bushes.

I walked back to Renwick, stopping to post a couple of letters on the way. Everyone was in the common room for communal lunch, but I took a shower, came down eventually, and ate an orange, sitting and listening to everyone talk.

This afternoon, Emmaline, Rachel, Naomi, Pamela, Rosemary, and I went to the Renwick boys' football match. (Anna, you'll be pleased to know that the Renwick football "kit" is black and lime green.) The match today was against RP pastors and students at the seminary. The six of us stood on the sidelines for two hours or so, watching the game. It was freezing cold. A strong northwest wind swept over the muddy grass. At first the teams were evenly matched, but the Renwick boys finally got a goal, and it went on from there. The match ended 4-0. I could not get warm when we were finally back at Renwick. Everyone else sat around the common room, talking, but I crawled upstairs and sat with my back to the heater, reading the ENL204 textbook.

At six o'clock, everyone in Renwick, with the exception of Deborah, who's on teaching placement, and Ian, who had a rugby match, went out to tea. We walked down to Benedict's, a nice restaurant on the way in toward the city centre. Rachel described the restaurant as being rather like a ship inside, and the description somewhat suits, if you think of a ship along the lines of the Titanic: a long curving staircase, heavy wooden panelling, ornate Gothic carvings on wooden screens, elegant floral designs painted on the ceilings, etc. We were seated at a long table and served by a garrulous waiter.

Back in Renwick, we decided to watch this DVD, Robin Hood. Quite funny, watching the boys watch it, and listening to Emmaline sing along with every song.

spring semester, day 1

Now Playing: Coldplay, "Clocks".

I have to admit that today wasn't exactly the best day of my life. Emmaline's alarm clock went off at six o'clock this morning. The phrase "bright and early" doesn't exactly apply since it was pitch black and cloudy outside, all last night's glorious stars covered by clouds coming up from the southwest.

We both got dressed and went about the business of getting ready to take the seven-twenty train to Belfast. Eating a hurried breakfast (cereal for me, pecan pie for Emmaline), choosing some DVDs to take, hauling our suitcases downstairs, and piling everything into the car. Mrs. M drove us to the train station. We were just in time to catch the train, which was early, dragging ourselves, limb-weary, into the seats, with our bags and baggage. Emmaline finished the Janette Oke novel she had been reading over break and then fell asleep, while I settled happily into The Lord of the Rings. While the sun rose over the small steep hills, over the crooked hedges and the sudden hummocks and barrows, over the fields of sheep and the towns with their stiff white houses, I went from the Ford of Bruinen to the last grey evening in Rivendell, and left the Company on the threshold of Elrond's house as the train pulled into City Hospital.

Emmaline and I trundled ourselves to Renwick through sidewalks crowded with students going to the first classes of the semester. In the hour between our arrival and my first class, I managed to unpack and put most things away. My first class was at ten o'clock in University Square. It turned out to be in the back classroom on the ground floor, the one painted pale blue and white inside. This is the class on Literature, Art, and Culture of the Anglo-Saxons. Unfortunately, I wasn't much impressed by the first lecture. Our lecturer is Professor H., who did most of the lectures for Discovering Old English. The class doesn't promise much discussion, though I know I shouldn't make my judgment based on the first day, when no one has read anything. He lectured for two straight hours, sitting rotundly on a chair with his legs stuck out on either side, Humpty-Dumpty style. He does know his stuff, though. And he's very fond of puns. Our first text is Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, and as he advised us which text to buy, he said with a mischievous smile, "If you buy them all, you'll have a whole string of beads!" Referring to Canute, the Danish king who ruled England in 1030, he said, "But he's not king yet, since it's only 10:20." It does add some amusement to the lecture, I must say.

After the lecture, I discovered that the day, which had begun sunny, had become grimly overcast, though the clouds, despite their attempt to make the return to the gloom of December, couldn't obscure the slight warm wildness in the air, a foreshadowing of spring. I walked down to No Alibis bookstore on Botanic Avenue to buy textbooks. The usual hodgepodge scatter of shady mystery novels on the shelves and textbooks piled in neat alphabetical piles in the centre. The proprietor was smoothly friendly, in a way that slightly disturbs me. With my new books (two of which are "real" textbooks for the History of the English Language class), I walked back to Renwick, and discovered, to my delight a package slip awaiting me. Before rushing off to collect it, though, I put in a load of laundry, and on the way through the kitchen was regaled by Ian (unusually communicative) with a ridiculous story about how, in his blood-drawing lab this morning, half the class, composed of dentists and doctors, fainted, and the ambulance had to be called.

I practically bounced down to the post office to pick up my parcel, and waltzed back to Renwick to open it in the room. Sitting down, I opened the box, exclaiming to myself over all the little treasures. I ate one of the rather squashed cookies, and relished the familiar taste, which immediately took me back to biking home on hot summer nights and bowls of ice cream eaten before bed.

I tidied things up, and then went downstairs to scrounge up some lunch. Emmaline had brought four friends back from her math tutorial, two of whom I didn't know. I sat down with them, to finish off the tomato soup and bread while listening to them discuss their lecturers.

After lunch, Emmaline and I went to Tesco to buy groceries. So the two of us went. On the way back, Emmaline ran into at least three people she knew and stopped to chat with them. In Renwick, we unpacked things, and I spent the afternoon fiddling around. One of Emmaline's friends, Esther, came over briefly--a pleasant, softspoken girl. At five o'clock, I started to fix supper, chili tonight. Chatted with Andy L., also unusually communicative. Daphne and Catherine burst in and put on girly music, teasing Andy L., who teased them right back. Catherine dried dishes while Daphne chopped vegetables for fajitas. Emmaline, Catherine, and I had chili for supper.

After supper, washed the dishes, etc. Emmaline and I went late to CU tonight, at seven-thirty. CU was unusually uninviting. The message consisted mostly of anecdotes, and the upstairs room, despite being fairly crowded, was freezing cold. Afterward, everyone mingled, talking to friends they hadn't seen since the start of December.

Back in Renwick, Emmaline, Charlotte, Sarah W., Michaela, and I sat in the kitchen. Emmaline heated up a pizza, and Michaela made delicious hot chocolate in her careful, deliberate way. Emmaline, Charlotte, and Sarah W. laughed and talked busily.

pictures at long last

Inter-semester Break

to-do list

Now Playing: "Diagnoses Murder", a mystery TV show with Dick VanDyke. Happens to be one of Emmaline's favorite shows....

For the two weeks' break, we had quite a list of things to do, including

Visiting Downhill Castle, which we did last week. An 1800s mansion, ruins positioned strikingly on top of cliffs looking north over the sea. It's in a sheep field now, open to the wind and rain.

Singing Handel's "Messiah" with a motley choir of two hundred fifty people drawn from across Northern Ireland. We only had two rehearsals, one Saturday morning and one Saturday afternoon, with the performance Saturday evening. Still, the choruses sounded absolutely gorgeous, reverberating in the big church where we were performing.

Hiking the Glens of Antrim, specifically Glenariff Forest Park. Two awesome waterfalls, swollen with rain, thundering down over black rocks. Also, Glenarm Castle, which has a falconry, though it was closed because of the winter. The drive to the glens was starkly beautiful, along steep cliffs, through small villages where steep-keeled sailboats were dry-docked in little harbors.

Touring Tyrone Crystal factory, where we saw glasses being hand-blown. The master blowers took the bead of glass out of the furnace, twisting and blowing into the blow-hole until a bubble formed, then twisting continually as the glass was lowered into an applewood mould in a wooden bucket full of water. Still twisting, the blower let the glass fit the shape of the mould, and as he did so, a moyle, a mushroom-shaped formation, congealed on top. This had to be sawed off, and the edges of the glass smoothed, before the glass was marked and cut in the frost-elaborate patterns famous of crystal.

Exploring Ulster American Folk Park, a living history museum telling the story of immigration from Northern Ireland (ports such as Londonderry) to America. This and the above two were done with Catherine and Emmaline and involved a lot of driving over the past few days, bumping and tripping over narrow country roads with all their odd jogs and hummocks.

Watching movies, such as The Parent Trap (and lots of others: Spider-man 1, Fantastic Four 1 and 2, etc.).

About half of which we haven't done: me teaching Emmaline how to play Milles Bornes, which she has because it's a French game but doesn't know how to play; putting together T-shirts for the girls in the group who went to Paris; painting big strips of wallpaper on the blank side to hang as posters in our room; planning games for Glenmanus RPC's annual congregational meeting in a couple of weeks (their meeting consists of a fellowship meal, then the meeting, then games and a talent show--!).

But there have been plenty of new things along the way that I wasn't expecting:

Milking, as mentioned in the last post.

Rice pudding at lunch today. Hadn't had it before--a fluffy, milky concoction, sweet and bland, tastier when mixed with raspberry jam.

That lovely walk down to the beach last week. Went down to the beach again this past Sabbath with Emmaline, Erin, and Alistair. This time, the East Strand, on the other side of the broad curve of the bay where Portstewart Strand is. We scrambled up a big sand dune--or rather, Alistair and Erin did; Emmaline and I pulled each other up, and then dragged each other down again, laughing and getting completely filthy with sand.

Right now Emmaline is working on one of the things on our list, the games. We'd thought of playing a game in which you took pictures of familiar people and cut out a nose or an ear and tried to get everyone to guess to whom it belonged. So she's scanning old congregational pictures into her computer, showing me some of them along the way. Always amusing to see how friends have changed.

All-in-all, a good two weeks. After this: School, anyone?

Yesterday the three of us decided that two of us (Emmaline and I) are quite happy just to be hanging out around here, enjoying the release from the pressures of school and city life, whereas Catherine desperately misses Renwick and is eager to fix supper for all the girls and play pranks on all the guys (!).

Anyway, ready or not, classes start on Monday.

moo

(1/21/08)

This afternoon Mr. M needed Emmaline to help with the milking, so I tagged along. Before we went out to the milking parlor, we had to suit up--Reuben's plastic leggings and boots and an enormous jacket for me, and a dark blue boiler suit and Nathanael's boots for Emmaline. The afternoon was grey, and the day's heavy rain lay in mucky pools on the concrete. Emmaline stepped into the dairy to turn on the milking machines, and then she and I went next door into the parlor.

Mr. M has a Lithuanian boy working for him, a ruddy blond young guy who barely understands English. The first group of cows came in, and we set to work. Before the milking machines go on, all the cows' teats have to be dipped in disinfectant, then wiped. So I set to work on that while the others came along behind, putting on the milking machines. It wasn't exactly the cleanest job in the world. One has to yank on the cows' mucky tails with one hand in order to get them to stand still while one's other hand is busy.

While the parlor was full, Mr. M and his helper went out to feed the calves while Emmaline and I stood waiting for the cows to be done milking. The pipes and tubes churned and swished overhead and on either side. The mucky black-and-white rumps stood lined up at shoulder-height on either side while we stood down on the walkway running between the milking machines. In the holding pen behind us, at the other end of the walkway, other cows stood waiting, their huge inquisitive heads peering down into the walkway, steam blowing from their nostrils as though they had been a crowd of benign dragons. When one group of cows was done, they had to be cleaned again, then chased out. Shouting usually did the job, reaching up through the bars and contraptions to slap their filthy gritty legs and rumps. Then the gates had to be shut and another lot shouted in, and the same thing done again. The floor was slippery with spilled milk and water, and the cows' hooves clopped and slopped on the mucky floor.

After a couple of rounds, Mr. M sent Emmaline and me out to feed one of the calves with a big bottle of milk. We went out of the parlor and round into the barn behind. There were three pens of cows here--a pen of young frisky heifers, a pen with a couple of calving cows, and a pen with some old cows, their hides greyed with years. Emmaline and I climbed into the pen with the two calving cows and attempted to feed the newly-born calf. Its hide was still wet, its fur feathery, red afterbirth still clinging to its legs. It tried to get up, but unsuccessfully. While Emmaline tried to feed it, I climbed up a ladder onto the hayloft and started to throw straw down into the pens. Great prickly handfuls, sweet memory of summer, cascading down onto the black-and-white backs below. The heifers kicked up their legs and galloped round their pen, churning up the fresh straw. Emmaline, giving the calf a rest, took the big handfuls I threw down and scattered them around the pen, a shining golden whirlwind around her black head. Between the three pens we used up the better part of a bale, covering the old muck with a deep layer of fresh straw. Then we tried to feed the calf again, but it was too silly and young to know what it was doing, so we let it go.

Back into the parlor we went to help with the last couple rounds of cows. I climbed the steps into the holding pen with a piece of PVC piping and used it to shoo the next batch of cows into the parlor. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" "Up, up, up, up! C'mon, girls!" Mr. M shouted, calling the finished group back out into the barns while I jostled and whacked the next group into the parlor. While the last group finished milking, Emmaline and I hung up the milking machines, like so many four-legged spiders, neatly on the little shelves in the parlor. When the last group had been shouted into the barns again, Emmaline turned on a power hose and gave me the job of washing down the parlor, spraying the muck and spilled milk into one of the drains.

At last Mr. M told us we were free to go. Stepping outside, I took a deep breath. The very last of the sunset was reddening on the western horizon, beyond the house. Overhead the stars were very crisp and clear in a deep blue sky, and the full moon shone down through clouds turned bright pink by the very last of the far sunset. To the east, the lights of Coleraine shone very gold in the black folds of the land.

Emmaline and I went inside and washed up, scrubbing the muck off our hands and faces. My hands still smell like cows--a sneezy smell, not exactly unpleasant. We stripped off our suits and went into the house for supper.

sea and sun

Now Playing: The Postal Service, "Such Great Heights". (Courtesy Philip. Seems appropriate, somehow. Whenever I listen to this song, and to Nick Drake's "River Man", I listen to them over and over again....)

First things first: another poem up on Through A Glass Darkly, at last. Keep in mind, when reading it, the transience of human life.

This morning I woke up in the McCollums' house to the sounds of Erin, Eleanor, Nathanael, and Reuben getting ready to go to school. Familiar household sounds--pots and pans clattering, doors banging, feet hurrying up and down the stairs, voices shouting and replying. Emmaline's alarm went off beside me, and she turned it off but stayed half-asleep until I elbowed her (as requested the night before), and she woke up with a chuckle. While she took a shower, I dressed, then went downstairs. Mrs. M was just going out to drop the girls off at school. I had a bowl of cereal, sitting alone in the empty kitchen. Outside the day was still dark and cloudy, as though morning had forgotten to come, or was running late as well. I meandered around the house, standing by windows in hallways, watching dawn come slowly in the east beyond the sycamore trees. Steel grey-blue clouds moving away southeastward, leaving behind a periwinkle sky.

I loitered in the kitchen while Emmaline grabbed her breakfast and discussed plans with Mr. M, who was eating his breakfast after the morning milking. Emmaline left at nine-thirty or so, to spend the day with Alistair: he was given a flight lesson for his birthday, so he'd invited her to come along for the half-hour flight, and then to spend the day. After she left, I chatted with Mr. and Mrs. M some, then moseyed upstairs to sit on Emmaline's bed and study Philippians 2. Philippians is proving to be a difficult book to profit from, more so than Ephesians, which had immediate relevance when I first began to study it. I know that I need the messages of Philippians about Christ's love on my behalf and how I ought to reflect Him in my treatment of others; also, the messages about peace in Christ concerning prayer and contentment, which I desperately need during this season of life as I move constantly from place to place. Nonetheless, I find this epistle more disconnected than Ephesians, which in some ways makes it harder to "get into". (Nickel Creek, "Nickel Creek", Track 1, "Ode to a Butterfly" now--perfectly blissful music.)

Anyhow, at about ten-thirty, I pulled on my sturdy trainers, my pashmina and gloves, and coat, and set off alone to walk down to Portsteward Strand, as the main beach nearby is called. A good three-mile walk, at least. The house was quiet and empty as I left it, sitting behind me in the sunshine. The sun was thinly veiled by clouds, and the morning still had a wintry chill to it, though the cold was more bracing than unbearable. I walked down Islandtasserty Road, over the bridge where the road leaps above the railroad line that runs between Londonderry and Belfast. I crossed the Coleraine Road, and went up the Agherton Road. A couple of houses at the start of the road, where big dogs barked irritably at me, but after that, the familiar network of small fields, punctuated only here and there by houses. British robins twittered at me from hawthorn hedgerows; crows pecked at the rich brown furrows of a ploughed field; a tortoiseshell cat eyed me yellowly from under a fence. The grass at the edge of the road was wet, and the black road gleamed blue, slick with water.

I went up the Agherton Road as far as I could, to the roundabout by the graveyards, where a new cemetery lies on the right and an old cemetery with the ruins of a chapel in it on the left, and continued on, up toward Portstewart. Houses now, on either side. New developments--tall white houses, reminding me of the ones in Boulder, Colorado. Behind me on the road I heard the clop of horses' hooves and , glancing over my shoulder, saw a pair of riders coming up behind me. The road fell by degrees toward the town, in two long slopes. More and more houses, smaller semi-detached houses, older ones, closer to the town. Another roundabout, and then down into Portstewart itself, along the Promenade. Past The Anchor pub, and turning off finally by the Catholic priory, where St. Mary's Star of the Sea church faces out over Portstewart harbor, and the priory itself sits on the cliff above, like a white battlemented ship.

I took the cliff walk, running along the cliffs under the priory, and at last to the Strand. Emmaline, Erin, and I had walked along here the last Sabbath I visited them, in the afternoon. That day it was cloudy and the waves were enormous, crashing against the shore with plumes of spume. Today it was sunny, the sun coming out by degrees until the air was quite mild, and the waves were blue-and-white. The path snaked along the cliff, sometimes going up and down slick uneven flights of steps. Grass grew in mats on the cliffs. Below, the waves broke on black outcrops of rock where seagulls and other small seabirds stood on the lees of the rocks.

At one point, I scrambled off the path onto one of the little shelf beaches that come cupped in the cliffs as they fall lower to the sea, toward the Strand. The tide was running high, so I had to dodge the waves that came slithering in as I walked along the little beach. Delight settled on me as I sifted through the beds of shells washed up among the rocks. Great heaps of shells, piled and stirred together, many of them no more than tiny broken fragments, making a sort of dark coarse sand. Here the shells are conical, like barnacle shells, and striped--orange, grey, black, white, and grey-blue. Sometimes there are the twisted snail shells, but most of the shells are these zebra ones. Among them I found pieces of sea glass, green and pale blue and white, scooped and scoured by the waves. Soon I had a handful, and had to climb back onto the path with a pocket that clinked slightly as I walked.

I climbed down to the beach on the flight of stairs, and walked along the beach a little way. Erin and I had walked almost all the way down the beach that Sabbath afternoon, so I didn't feel the need, with the hour-and-a-half walk back to the farm lying before me, to go very far. The firm brown sand shimmered where the waves had made it wet. The waves surging, cresting, and falling, stroke after stroke, the endless sound. The sun shone down on the water and turned it a vivid, living teal, and glanced on the white walls and dark roofs of the Portstewart Promenade, crusting the eastern arm of the bay. To the west, the strand curved away up to the point where Mussendun Temple stands. Beyond that, flecked gold and green in the sunshine, was another headland, and beyond that, more cliffs--Donegall, western Ireland.

Walking back along the cliff walk, I stopped on a bench in the sunshine to rest before marching back to the farm, my back to the warm stone wall, holding back the cliff on which the priory stands. Moving on, somewhat restored, I climbed up through the town again. Voices of people around me: a mother coaxing her toddler up the street; two women greeting each other at the door of a drug store. Not many people out. At the roundabout where the old graveyard is, I took a short detour, scrambled up some grassy steps, and went into the old graveyard. I walked around the ruins of the chapel a bit--not much to see, just wet grassy mounds, thin stone slabs aslant, an old yew tree, a lanky rosebush with one pale waxy bud coming into bloom in the shelter of the stone walls.

It was good to be back on the Agherton Road, out in the country again. Alone under the blue sky. Silence--no wind, and hardly a whisper from the busy Coleraine Road.

The farmyard was as quiet as I'd left it. Young heifers eyed me out the "window" of their winter barn, white eyes rolling in black faces. I went into the house. Mr. and Mrs. M were just sitting down to lunch and welcomed me cordially. We had a thick soup with carrots, barley, lentils, tomatoes, and celery. Mr. and Mrs. M told me a funny story about how Mr. M had gotten lost on a walk in County Armagh while he was attending synod there. After lunch, we sat around the kitchen table, drinking tea out of thick white mugs. Mrs. M was in the midst of trying to put together the church's financial reports for the congregational meeting in a couple of weeks, and detritus of papers, slips, and charts layered the table. Mr. M read classified ads out of an American dairy farming magazine, asking me jokingly if I would like to manage a cheese farm in California for him.

Mrs. M needed some desserts baked for her WMA meeting tonight, so I offered to do it. She got me started in the kitchen. At first I worked on making coffee walnut chocolate cookies (!), but once I'd gotten all the mix into the bowl, the blender refused to do the job--and I remembered that I'd promised to talk with my mother on Skype at three o'clock. Mrs. M took over for me, and I, very apologetic, disappeared upstairs to sit on Emmaline's bed with my laptop. Outside, clouds were coming over again, from the east this time. I heard doors slam downstairs--the others were back from school. I said good-bye to my mother at four o'clock or so, and went downstairs to see what I could do.

Mrs. M had baked scones in the hour since I'd been in the kitchen, and they were still warm. She, Eleanor, and I sat around the kitchen table, eating the warm scones with hazelnut honey Emmaline had bought at the Christmas market in Paris. Eleanor hung around while I made the malteser bars (the cookies were in the oven). She helped mostly by licking the spoon.

When the bars were made, the cookies were ready to come out of the oven, so Mrs. M and I pulled them out and slid them onto cooling racks, where they were sprinkled with powdered sugar. The counter was positively snowy by the time Eleanor and I were done with it. I washed up the dishes I'd used, and crept away to fetch my laptop. Eleanor and Nathanael settled down at the kitchen table to do homework while watching the new Yours, Mine, Ours on the computer in the kitchen. I curled up in the little sitting room by the fire. I'm on one of the leather sofas; Reuben is on the other, playing his PSP, a handheld gaming device. I can hear the clashing and clicking of the "Star Wars" game he's playing, but I've got my Skype headset in so that I can listen to "Nickel Creek", too. The fire crackles and clinks on the hearth--almost the same sound as the sea makes, tumbling shells in the backwash of its waves.