1 EAGLETON NOTES: My Few Previous Days

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Wednesday 13 November 2019

My Few Previous Days

This is what my last post was really intended to be about. Much more mundane and requiring no thought whatsoever. My 'average day' tends to involve getting up and abluting and footling about with a mug of hot water and lemon and eating my breakfast of banana, blueberries and muesli (possibly with some Grapenuts) whilst checking emails and so on.

I then try to go for a walk in the woods in the Castle Grounds in Stornoway followed by a coffee in The Woodlands often with friends. Then I'll do what I need to do in Stornoway before home for lunch. The afternoons and evenings are varied well beyond 'average'.

In pictures the following has been part of life on Lewis this last week or so.

Last Saturday my son and daughter-in-law's home village of Grimshader had it's belated Novemver 5th bonfire night:



My son, a very keen cyclist, decided that one of the bikes he had made as a project was perfect for a child seat. Brodie absolutely loves it.


My daily drive into Stornoway involves driving over the 'spine' of the peninsula on which I live. This photo is of a heavy shower right over the top of Stornoway where I was about to walk. As it happens when I started on my walk the rain had disappeared and the sun had emerged.


The autumnal woods in the Castle Grounds were basking in glorious sun.


A couple of days ago I finished baking the last of the six Christmas cakes I've made over the last few weeks. The new oven in the new kitchen has been the best thing I've purchased for a long time.


Talking of the new kitchen I fitted a blind  this week.


This morning's sunrise over the Scottish mainland as seen from my kitchen was a mixed bag of snow showers and brilliant sun:


My garden pond was frozen over which is very rare here just above the sea


Now it is almost time to think of Christmas.


44 comments:

  1. Stunning photos. You live in a beautiful place. It is adorable how father and child have the same smile!

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    1. Maywyn, I am very fortunate to live in a wild and rugged and very beautiful place. Mt grandson is a very smiley, happy child I'm glad to say. His father's not bad either!

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  2. Now that's a great kitchen. I like the table at the end of the counter.

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    1. Red, I'm very pleased with the kitchen. I designed and built my last one 25 years ago but I had this one built with my impending oder age in mind.

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  3. MMM Christmas cake. I was thinking of making one, or maybe a Christmas pudding, or both.

    Love your kitchen.

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    1. Susan, I made my first one in 2000 when I had my heart attack and was confined to barracks so to speak for 6 weeks. I've made 6 of the them each year ever since but have always struggled with baking consistency in my gas oven. Now I have an electric fan oven with consistency of temperature throughout the oven and perfect control.

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  4. Hi Graham, Love the new kitchen, despite the pulled down blind. The castle grounds look lovely in their autumnal beauty. Little Brodie looks very pleased with his mode of transport. He's a proper little cutie, isn't he?

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    1. Thank you Pauline. The pulled down blind has the advantage that, at night, instead of a deep blackness on winter evenings I have light grey. The blind will never need to come down in the summer. Brodie is a proper little cutie but then you'd expect me to say that wouldn't you?

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  5. You have some beautiful photos there, Graham. Your new kitchen is lovely, it must be a joy to work in.

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    1. Hi Margaret. It's good to see you here. I'm pleased with the kitchen. It took a long time for me to design and then to have executed because there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the last one. It was just tired and, when I built it, there were no space-utilising kitchen cupboard pull-out shelves etc. This one is designed for ease of use and useable storage.

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  6. Those Castle Grounds woods look beautiful; just my cup of tea. There must be some interesting mushrooms there! Well done with the cakes; they look superb.

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    1. The woods are beautiful, Cro, but I've never seen any mushrooms there, apart from the occasional tree fungi. However I have to be hones and say I have never foraged for any.

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  7. Graham, this was one of the most pleasant posts I've read for a while. Thank you!
    I am intrigued by one ingredient of your muesli: what are grapenuts? By the way, I've been having blueberries and bananas with my muesli for the past weeks, too; this morning I didn't have any blueberries left and so used a few seedless grapes.
    The end of that rainbow was surely where you were headed! A pot of gold every now and then comes in handy.
    Your kitchen is beautiful!

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    1. Grapenuts (which should, apparently, be hyphenated), Meike, is a cereal with a fascinating history. I've had them for as long as I can remember. You can read about them here. I always keep frozen blueberries in the freezer in case I run out of fresh ones. I just have to remember to take them out of the freezer the night before. We have had a summer and autumn of rainbows but I've never yet found the pot of gold - just puddles. I'm pleased you like the kitchen. I'll post the other half some time.

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    2. Thank you for the link! So grapenuts (or grape-nuts) have nothing at all to do with either grapes or nuts... that is puzzling! The very short list of ingredients makes me rather curious regarding its taste.

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  8. Thank you for the little look into your life. It makes a difference when exchanging comments and blog posts to have a little idea of one another's surroundings and daily life.

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    1. It does, inded, Rachel and it takes a while to build up a picture of someone's life in one's mind.

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    2. You can see, for example, that I'm a little impulsive and tend to press send and then read and find errors.

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  9. What wonderful photographs! Your kitchen, your cakes, your autumnal woods on the castle grounds, your Scottish mainland through the snow showers, your frozen garden pond, your handsome son, your handsome grandson, even your library shelves. But how can there be an entire volume about punctuation?

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    1. Thank you, Bob, for the compliment. As for the entire volume on punctuation I could tell you that there are 24 pages on the use of the comma but only 9 on the apostrophe.

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  10. The kitchen looks lovely GB and it's great to see a photo of Brodie (and Gaz!)

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    1. Thank you, Helen. I should send you more photos of your cousin and his off-spring.

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    2. They would be most welcome, xx

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  11. You have your Christmas decorations up before I do! :o That must be a first ;) Love the new kitchen and nice to see a picture of your grandson and his dad.

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    1. Monica, I don't really have my decorations up. The snowman has been sitting there (originally as a joke) since last Christmas.

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    2. Graham, I actually wondered... ;) Well, at least he looks happy to be "in the picture" again!

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  12. testing t see ifI can post as google

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    1. Yes, Beverley, you can. I'm glad you've solved the problem.

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  13. Well that worked so now I know how to do it. I have to open your blog with Google rather than Safari. That then allows me to post a comment. You learn something new most days.

    Now I really must learn to read what rubbish the "spill chucker", as you so aptly call it Graham, has decided to type rather than just pressing send before checking. Bah!

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    1. Beverley, the term 'spillchucker' comes from the days before 'spellchecker' was in the general vocabulary. My brother typed in spellchecker and it replaced it with spillchucker and he and I have used the term ever since. The odd thing is that the spellchecker doesn't try to correct it.

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  14. Great photos; great cakes; great kitchen.

    We no longer celebrate Guy Fawkes night down this way. We did when I was a kid...and we had loads of fun every year on 5th November. However, we've enough devastating, very concerning bushfires raging around so many areas throughout Queensland and New South Wales everyone has seen enough flames, I reckon. Rain is desperately needed...lots of it!

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    1. Thank you, Lee. I suspect few here amongst the younger generation know who Guy Fawkes was. It's generally called simply Bonfire Night.

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  15. A nice, honest blogpost which I enjoyed reading - probably because I am quite nosy. I especially liked the picture of wee Brodie with his proud dad. Brodie is not a babe in arms any more. I must think about buying my own all-in-one yellow jumpsuit. Brodie's looks so cool!

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    1. YP, I try to make most of my posts honest if not necessarily nice. Brodie is coming up for 2. Tempus fugit. I think there is an element of nosiness in us all.

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  16. What lovely photos, specially the rainbow - actually, no, all of them are lovely in their different ways. You must see an endless variety of wonderful seascapes, the sunset and clouds are like a fairytale. And Christmas cake... oh heck! I would love to make one but not right now. I am guessing you can't actually bake in bugs - surely the heat would destroy them but I don't think I'll risk it till next week.

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    1. Thank you Jenny. I am fortunate in that the sea and sky around me are constantly changing. I like that. I'm sorry to hear that you have another malady. I think it must be something to do with living in the city with so many opportunities to catch things from your fellow inhabitants.

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  17. A wonderful posting. I went to the grape-nuts link. Kind of sad they changed how it was made. This may explain why I remember it tasting a certain way, but when I buy it now, it isn't the same. Your kitchen is so nice. Love that rounded area. And what beautiful country you live in.

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    1. Thank you, Nan. Yes, Scotland is beautiful for the most part. I've had grape-nuts for as long as I can remember but, to be honest, I don't have a very good sense of taste and don't recall the flavour changing.

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  18. lots of colourful scenery there, perfect for biking through and I love your kitchen, it's so neat and tidy.

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    1. Amy, there are lots of bespoke (sorry about that) cycle trails through the woods specifically for mountain bikers but, of course, many ordinary cyclists just out for a bit of exercise use the general paths.

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  19. What beautiful and uplifting photographs. Not a bad few days. I hope to be baking our Christmas cake next week. Six is impressive.
    It doesn't seem so long since Lily was in one of those bike seats and now she's riding so well by herself.

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    1. Thank you, Jules. The Christmas Cakes have become an established Christmas gift over the years, I'd vowed last year that I would never go through the hassle again whilst I had a gas over. Now that I have a full fan over so much of the trial and error and stress has been removed and I enjoyed making them this year. I'm sure that it will only be a mere flash of time before Brodie is riding his own too,

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  20. Your collection of books is impressive - a man after my own heart!

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    1. Given the tiny number of my collection that you can see, David, I'm glad you can make that assertion. Your bird photos are certainly impressive.

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