The Good Conversation

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

The Beloved Cousin rings. This is always a banner moment. Our schedules circle round each other and often by the time the evening comes we are speechless. We send each other plaintive emails saying must catch up, or long to know news. Then three weeks have gone by and we don’t know where the time went.

So when I pick up the telephone and it is she, rather than someone trying to sell me double glazing (it’s such a cliché but people really do do it) I shout with delight. Then she tells me stories so funny that I shout with laughter. I can’t do that nice genteel ladylike ha ha; I bellow with mirth like a mad colonel out of PG Wodehouse. (Actually, did he even have any colonels? I’m sure some honking majors at least.) Then she tells me things which shock me on her behalf, so I roar Oh, no. Then she tells me something so interesting that I shriek I don’t believe it, like Victor Meldrew on speed.

Then I speak to her for at least twenty minutes of the horse. She really is a very wonderful and patient person.

After a while, I hear a questing voice in the background. It is my four-year-old cousin. She comes on the line.

‘Hello, Tania,’ she says, very clearly, determination strong in her tone. She is a very determined small person indeed. ‘When are you coming to stay?’

I tell her the end of the summer. She is not sure it is soon enough, but she lets it go.

‘And are you bringing the Pigeon?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I most certainly am.’

She gives a little sigh. It has a dying fall, like a White Russian countess remembering the days before she had to drive a taxi in Paris in 1919.

‘Oh,’ she says, swooningly. ‘I love your dog.’

She is FOUR. She has not seen me or the dog for almost five months. How does she even remember? When she says things like that it fills me with amazement and delight.

The grown-up cousin and I talk and laugh some more, and make plans. We love making plans. I put the telephone down, restored.

In the amber evening sun, I go up to do the horse. I walk round the field with her at my shoulder and then stand with her a bit, and do the love. Oh, oh, oh, the love; it grows deeper every day. I’m not even sure how such a thing is possible, but it is.

The family are about. I see The World Traveller, beautiful in her summer frock. She is taking marshmallows in for the children. I hear the shrieks of delight as the bounty is produced. The Landlord appears, back from Perthshire, which is where he has been. We lean on the gate and talk for twenty minutes. He, too, makes me shout with laughter.

He is one of those ones who does not speak a dull sentence. Sometimes I forget what a miracle this is; I get spoilt by the good conversation and think that everyone can do it. In fact, it is one of the greatest luxuries in the world, like having a Michelin restaurant on your front door where you can eat for free every night. I always think I do not take anything for granted, and then I realise that I do, all the time.

I have such deadline fever now that I do not know what my name is. But I have people around me who can make me bellow like a laughing major, and who may divert my mind, and make me interested, even in the midst of crazed preoccupation. That is a great piece of good fortune, and I’m never going to take it for granted again.

And they listen sweetly to my horse stories.

 

Quick evening pictures:

 

The Pigeon and I had a most excellent game of ball. Doesn’t she look like she is having a splendid time?:

FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. And still with all the vim and elan of a three-year-old:

The hill, bluest blue, still glimmering with dancing light at six in the evening:

The Haar

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I was planning to write a post which just went: THEY’VE ARRIVED. I had it all laid out in my head. There would be a picture of the three children with their arms in the air, in wild excitement. The dog would be jumping about. It would be perfect.

At four-thirty, the Beloved Cousin rings.

‘WHERE ARE YOU?’ I shout, expecting her to say, ‘Just past Garlogie.’

‘Edinburgh,’ she says.

There is a pause. I can literally feel my brain being unable to process this information. I have been galloping about doing domestic things: there has been the making of a soda bread, the arranging of flowers, the plumping of beds. The man from John Lewis even arrived with two beautiful new goose and duck pillows. Last night, I had a sudden panic, decided my old pillows were too, well, old, got on the internet, ordered some heavenly new ones (half price in the sale), and less than 24 hours later, there they were on the doorstep.

‘The man from John Lewis,’ I declare to the kind fellow who brought them. ‘You are a miracle.’

But Edinburgh? It’s a hundred and twenty miles south. I attempt to pummel my brain into action.

‘I don’t understand,’ I say, lamely, to the stranded cousin.

There had been weather, apparently. The aeroplane had circled around and around Aberdeen, and then given up, and gone back to Edinburgh.

We discuss possible solutions; the hiring of a car, the taking of a train.

In the end, we think the train. We worry the cousin might become lost over the Cairn O’Mount. And it can be a three hour drive, if you don’t know the road.

‘Here’s a taxi now,’ she says. 'Haymarket or Waverley?’ she asks me.

‘Haymarket,’ I say.

‘Oh you poor thing,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘We’re keeping very calm,’ she says.

We hang up.

For a while, I actually think it is a joke. I think the clever godson put her up to it, that it is a mighty and elaborate tease, and that at any moment they shall call back and say:

‘Ha, ha, we’re just passing Raemoir.’

Then I look at the BAA website and it says, ominously, in capital letters: CONTACT AIRLINE.

Bugger, I think.

I call the Brother-in-law.

‘Have you got anyone coming in tonight?’ I say.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘A venerable old gentleman.’

‘They are diverting the flights,’ I say. ‘I thought you should know.’

I still can’t work out what weather could be so dramatic as to stop an aeroplane, with all its state of the art technology. Lightning strikes? Fire and flood?

‘It’s weather,’ I say. ‘Although I can’t think what.’

‘The haar,’ he says.

‘Oh, of course,’ I say. ‘The haar.’

The haar is a wild, rolling fog which rushes in off the North Sea and envelops the city in minutes. It is a coastal phenomenon. We are thirty miles inland, and it can be bright sun here, and then you get to Aberdeen and you can’t see the hand in front of your face.

‘Poor old gentleman,’ I say. ‘I hope he will be all right.’

So now I sit, in the low weather, in my for-once tidy house, everything polished and gleaming and ready for guests, thinking of the four relatives on the train. They won’t even be able to see the sea, I think, on account of the haar. It’s normally a glittering blue view, but not today. I hope they have something nice to eat, I think. I hope the Cousin has a nice little dram of something, to cheer herself up.

 

Here, for a change, are some interior shots:

The house, before the Grand Tidy:

And after a little elbow grease:

(Notice rather plaintive Pigeon face. This is because I have been packing up the car with things for the charity shop, and she thinks I am packing to go away. So she is giving me the Disney eyes.)

Actually, what makes me laugh, is that there is not that much difference in the Before and After shots. It’s still a bit of a crazy muddle. I don’t quite know how I accumulated so much stuff. But I love my things, and feel lucky to have them, even if it does mean that my house is a bit antic. I do sometimes dream of those calm white rooms that the Scandinavians do so well. My Danish blood is clearly not quite strong enough.

But at least there are some pretty flowers in a vase, and all from my own garden, which feels like a bit of a miracle:

And when the dear guests finally arrive after their marathon journey, this is the face they shall see:

This is from yesterday morning, smiling her head off, because she has not yet seen the things going into the motor.

And here, somewhere lost in all that murk, hides the hill:

I suppose no one ever came to Scotland for the weather.