I spotted it in the Scotsman along with lots of other nostalgia loving adults if the queue at the Pleasance for Trumptonshire Tales with Brian Cant was anything to go by. A delicious lunch first at David Bann’s extraordinary vegetarian restaurant with a yummy espresso cocktail, then an hour an a half of pure joy as Brian Cant and Phil Jupitus give a talk show, performance and showings from Camberwick Green, including Windy Millar drinking cider to excess, Trumpton and Chigley.
Paused to pick up a map of Sicily for Stuart, gazed in awe at the naked woman wearing a billboard reading ‘Locked Out Of The Art College’ then it was battling Edinburgh traffic to visit the splendid Richard Long exhibtion at the Modern Art Gallery. With River Forth mud splattered on walls. photos of previous walks and nature sculptures, and an impressive amount of granite in rectangles and circles and crosses we ambled gently through the exhibit, before emerging to the landform in green which looks remarkably like TellyTubby Land (as a mother and her kids had noticed) – so from Trumptonshire to Tellytubbyland all in one afternoon.
To complete the childish experience we visited Debbie who has given birth to the wonderful Dulcie and wet the baby’s head with a nice bottle of bubbly, toured Simon’s impressive new Latvian wood office. Dropped into the Allanton Inn, unsurprisingly at Allanton, but no space for dinner, however, in true Windy Miller fashion I polished off a pint of cloudy cider and picked up a leaflet on the food we weren’t having before falling asleep in the car on the way back, missing the Coldstream Civic week highlights.
The weekend panned out with gutbusting being delayed due to Dez enjoying a long lie in, followed by a clifftop walk at St Abbs – originally the plan was to walk to Fast Castle but our second car pickup fell through. It was bracing with great geological formations and we escaped the rain which typically arrived when we planned to fly. We returned via hte Indian in Jedburgh which following hte morning trend of noone turning up – all the Indian staff were outside as the boss had not turned up. We had a welcome pint in the Spreadeagle Hotel and sniffed around the NightJar which was also closed before toddling down the high street to see the Indians had managed to be let in to allow us to enjoy their tempting fare.
Sunday was the Curling Club car treasure hunt and in child mode again we romped around the Borders with a set of obscure and ambiguous clues. Apart from missing out filling in 10 points of questions (which we did rather well in when they let us do it) 5 of us in the All Road managed to navigate and find each of the tasks and returned to win the welcoming prize of a bottle of wine for each of us, although we came close to divorce at one point. We stayed up to drink the prize and watch the meteors (of which there was somewhat less than the advertised 100 meteors per hour). Not too sure what all the wine has done for my blood cholesterol tests but the phlebotomist took her sample the next day.
