Arriving in Scotland

Friends have asked for quick notes on the trip as it occurs, and have said it's okay if those notes are short and unformed. They will be!

I flew British Airways from Denver to London/Heathrow to Edinburgh. I left Monday and arrived Tuesday and I think (but am not entirely sure) that it is now Wednesday morning. My computer says it is, and I adjusted the time and date after I got here, so it's probably right.

London was experiencing some fog, so the Denver/Heathrow flight was ever-so-slightly delayed, which meant I missed the connection to Edinburgh. The Border Agency process was quite quick and painless, but the preceding effort of getting booked onto another flight and acquiring a new boarding pass took, I think, two hours, even with the kind intervention of a British Airways employee who took me under his wing and let me use his mobile (cell) phone to call my friends here and alert them to the problem and also rebooked my flight through the same device, which saved me probably an hour in another line. It still took about two hours to get through the sequence of lines that followed that.

When I got to the terminal, I spent a lot of time watching this sign:

And seeing this:

My original flight was at 13:40. The rebooked one was at 15:40. (And delayed. The Edinburgh flight shown in the first photo as scheduled for 16:35 left before ours did.)

When I arrived, I attempted various methods of contacting the friends who would be meeting me. The best technique ended up being (1) e-mail to friend back in US and (2) she texts them on her mobile (cell) phone. (My e-mails direct to those friends ended up being refused by the server, for reasons never clear.)

When I arrived at their house, it was clear that I was in the right place. First, it is lovely and there are good dogs. Second, there was this sitting next to my bed:

William Wallace's figure is especially impressive (he's the redhead in the middle, and several of my family members have carried his names up through the centuries). I could also knit a Highland coo, a Nessie, or a somewhat mischievous-looking sheep. 

Or a whole flock.

Although I believe that I'd change the yarn specs. Instead of polyester for the fleece and a wool/microfibre/cashmere blend for the faces and legs, I'd be inclined to use, oh, why not a Suffolk for the body? (since these surely appear to be Suffolk sheep) and perhaps a very dark Soay for the heads and legs—or Black Welsh Mountain, or Balwen, or Zwartbles, or a black Ouessant, or, for a softer result, a nice black Shetland. For the body, to get that fluffy effect for which the synthetic yarn was likely chosen, I'd need to play around with some different stitch patterns. But that could be amusing. Until I'm over jetlag, though, these will all just stay in the fanciful thoughts department while I enjoy the book and the imaginary knitting.

Today is a splendidly dreich day, one I think will be excellent for not doing much other than recalibrating my mental and physical clocks. (I think it is not quite usual to use "splendid" and "dreich" in such close association, but I think the combination works right now.)

(Yes, those are drops of water dripping from the upper edge of the window through which I took the photo.)

I think tea is in order. I know where there is some.