Days Past

Saturday

We discovered our car wouldn't be out of the shop until Wednesday, so Mr. W ordered a rental car to be delivered Saturday morning. We drove forty miles to the town of Wick and spent the afternoon at Tesco(the UK version of Wal-mart) buying staples for the barren manse cupboards. We bought Scottish made cheese, fresh fish, and Scottish honey, among other things.

After lunch I made my first purchase with British pounds: Walking boots. They were originally 50 pounds(bear in mind I exchanged my American dollars for 1 pound=$1.76), but were on sale for 17, which is still more than I've ever paid for footwear before. They seem sturdy and I'm sure I will put them to good use.

Saturday evening we had a church service to prepare for communion on Sunday. This church only takes communion twice a year, so it was nice we were able to be here for a communion Sunday. The speaker was a recent seminary graduate and associate pastor at Rosskeen. He was a very good speaker and other than being sleepy I enjoyed the sermon.


Sunday

We woke up to find someone had planted half a dozen garden gnomes on our garden wall during the night. No one from church knew anything about them, so we surmised a inebriated rascal had filched them and left them on our wall as a joke. Some of the small gardens here have dozens of gnomes and ceramic animals in them. In the end Mr. James from church called the PC(police constable?) and he took them away to the lock-up. We hope they will find their way home.

We had one Church service at 11am and one at 5pm: a total of three services in twenty-four hours. They were all hour long services, though. I'm used to having all three services at once. The church here is fairly small, perhaps fifteen people, and all of them easily over forty. We sang psalms without accompaniment. We had wine for communion, which I expected, but it was quite a bit stronger than what I'm used to. The W's and I all managed not to allow strangled coughs to escape from our mouths. There aren't any children there, and the services are so quiet. Everyone can hear every little noise. There's certainly no ambiance. I missed the crying babies back home(and yes, of course I missed everyone else as well).


We had tea and biscuits after service on Saturday, lunch after service on Sunday(three courses: soup, salads, and desserts), and tea with cakes after Sunday evening service. I thought I might get thinner in Scotland because I'm not doing the baking, but apparently not. I'll have to fast before I leave so I can fit in the airplane seats on the way back.

We walked to the cemetery (I was wearing my new boots) and it was absolutely freezing. The temperatures here are above freezing, but there was a very strong wind and when it's not sunny it's easy to get chilled. We watched the weather and hopefully this week it will warm up. I found the forecast rather confusing: chance of rain, strong winds, possible clouds, hopefully sunny, may warm up, possible rain, more possible rain, more wind, chance of clouds, and on and on.

Snowdrops.

Day Four

I have been learning about jet-lag. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep for a long while, then woke up at 11am after having a dream about spanking someone else's child who really needed it. I've been rather foggy all day.

I exchanged my American dollars for British pounds at the local bank this afternoon, and got a library card for the teeny tiny library. We all visited the local coffee shop for internet service and met the very accommodating owners. We don't have internet yet, though we hope to have it sometime next week. It's sadly crippling not to have internet.


We don't have a car yet either. It's in the shop due to the mandated annual inspection, and apparently needed some welding done. I was told that the salty sea air makes rust an issue here. Helmsdale's a very pleasant place, but there's not much in the way of grocery shopping, so our menu has been limited to the local corner shop and restaurants. I had a scone today at the coffee shop. Very tasty.
 

Views

The view from my ceiling window, if I stand on tiptoe. That's the front lawn.

The scene from my side window. That's the old church, which is now a private property now.

We walked down to the river yesterday, which is just below the manse. Across the river is the cemetery!

The Manse

The manse is probably not what you would think of when I say “Scottish manse.” It's not very old; really all of Helmsdale is not very old compared to other Scottish towns. The decorating is a kind of 1980's style, with turquoise carpets in some rooms, pink in others, and the living room painted green and rust. The light fixtures are an interesting type of pleated fabric covers that remind one of Chinese lanterns. The manse, when we arrived, was practically bare of any furniture. The bedrooms had a bed and a chair. The living room had a chair, a couch, and a TV. Most of the other rooms were completely empty. I gather this house hasn't been lived in for long periods for some years now.

This is me relaxing in my room.

After lunch Mrs. W discovered the garage, which had odds and ends of furniture in it: a few old chairs, one covered in red velvet; some small tables; and a large wooden wardrobe. Obviously it doesn't lead to Narnia, because I'm still here, posting for you all. So we all updated our rooms with various pieces of varied furniture. Now I have a bed, two chairs, and a table.


After re-arranging the furniture we walked down to the beach. It's a short walk, and we enjoyed picking up rocks and a few small seashells. Then we had fish and chips for dinner.

A Wee Bit of Travel

Starting with the plane ride: I was as comfortable as one can be in economy class breathing recycled air while turbulence shook the plane like jello on a card table. Really, it's painful to see how people have to squeeze themselves into the tiny airplane seats, and I don't think some of them could even fit into the miniscule cupboard they call a bathroom. Anyway, my flights went through without any problems, and after eight hours in the air I arrived at London Heathrow airport at 7am London time, 1am Nebraska time.




Customs also went smoothly, though the customs officer made me nervous, asking questions like I was out to destroy the UK. But they let me in in the end. Providentially I saw my bag going by as soon as I stepped out of customs. I am ashamed to say that from this point on even with only a backpack and thirty pound bag, walking was very painful. Then I had the adventure of figuring out I was in terminal 3, and I needed to get to terminal 5, and that was my first ride on the public transport system.



At Terminal 5 I met up with my hosts, the W family. At this point(3am NE time) things were getting a bit foggy for me, so I should have been relaxing, but I couldn't figure out if it was 9am or 10am and that made me worry about missing my friends and then what would I do? But it turned out it was 9am and they arrived right on time. We hauled our collective luggage back to the railway and zipped over to Paddington Station. We wrestled our bags to an authentic London taxi with an authentic London taxi driver(he looked like an action movie assassin, as all London taxi drivers should), and after being strategically crammed in subsequently drove backwards in the London way to King's Cross station. We dragged our bags inside and left on time at 12:30 London time.



Thus commenced our eight hour train ride to Inverness, Scotland. I am so very thankful we were in first class. We all dozed a bit. We arrived on time at the Inverness station to be picked up by friends of my friends for the almost two hour drive to Helmsdale. At this point we were all fried, and we went to bed promptly upon arrival(10pm-ish Scotland time, 3pm-ish Ne time) at our manse(i.e. Parsonage).
 

First sunset in Scotland, taken from the train.

Departure

Disclaimer: I am not absolutely saying I will finish reading these books while I'm away. I'm just taking them, that's all.

Well, I'm leaving today. For Scotland. My suitcase is full to the brim, mostly full of clothing. It's around thirty pounds, well under the fifty pound limit, but still plenty heavy for me to carry. I also had several last-minute purchases to squeeze in, such as a pink travel umbrella, an electric outlet adapter, and a bar of chocolate(70% cocoa!). 

Friends have been asking me, "So, what are you going to do in Scotland?" And I feel kind of bad that I'm not going to do anything. Do meaning, of course, something of a higher purpose like missionary work or a job or a training conference, etc. But I remind myself that this is perhaps my one chance to experience this different culture and see the sights, and how many people can just live in Scotland with few responsibilities(for example, children) for six weeks on $2000(dowries are wonderful things, ha ha!)? So, everyone, just know I am not going for any higher exalted purpose other than experiencing a different lifestyle, and if I can do that Coram Deo, that will be enough.

One week until Departure

I caught a cold last week, my first one this winter. Not at all pleasant, but I'm glad it came now and not any later, because I'm leaving for Scotland in a week.

I had a bit of a scare with my passport last week. I received a letter from the passport agency in New Hampshire that was handling my application, saying my signature as unacceptable since it was printed. This a little less than three weeks before I leave. And I don't write in cursive, so it was my natural signature. But I rushed to re-send my application papers and paid $14 to overnight my passport, because it was doubtful that my new application could be processed fast enough. But the net workday when I called the agency, they told me my passport had already been sent, the day after I received the letter telling me to re-apply! Glass half full: so glad I got my passport and can still go. Glass half empty: A weekend of worry and $14 down the drain because of government inefficiencies.

Our dog Calvin was hit by a car a few weeks ago. He had a bad habit of chasing cars, so even though it wasn't very nice of the person to come and tell us, Calvin was the one to blame. We had Calvin for a little over a year. I think we paid $20 for him because he was a lab-border collie mix, though you couldn't tell it: he looked like a border collie. We were all sad to lose him. The boys buried him with a brief eulogy: "He was a good dog." At least they understand the life span of  farm animals. People who treat their pets as children are a bit off-balance, it seems to me. I am vehemently against ever owning pets of my own, unless they serve some practical purpose.