For the second time in two days, Geoff, my husband, Daisy, our dog, and I set off for a visit to the Borders Book Festival held at the lovely Town of Melrose. Why the second time. Therein lies the tale and why I am still looking forward to Scotland not waking up in the Borders. When we tried to book accommodation ages ago, Melrose was booked up, and so we decided to return to a cottage in Jedburgh we had visited before,with the charming name, Tweed Cottage. Herein lay the main downfall. We assumed the same name meant the same cottage.
When we left yesterday for the event, we left in scattered sun but with spirits collected together, and things seemed to be going well. We determined to go slowly and stop at Corbridge for coffee but could not find a parking space, not unusual for that lovely village. What we ought to have taken as an omen is that as we progressed up the A68, we found it closed with a long diversion created to approach A68 higher up via the A695. That seemed a blessing neverthelessbecause could stop at Kirhehale Hall, birthplace of Lancelot (Capability) Brown, which has fanciful ‘Northumberland, crafts, including some ace minotaur figures I fell in love with but could not afford to buy. But tne lunch at The courtyard cafe was ex excellent. This link will tell you more about the place: https://www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=3438.
And so we took off again, meeting tje Scottish Border as rain threatened:
It threatened but stayed away. We reached Jedburgh, killed time with coffee, and went shopping for provisions in the rather drab town that Jedburgh, despite some magnificent historic architectural beauty, is.
We reached the cottage and could not access it, for we had, as you will see above, assumed we were going to the same cottage. We should not have made that assumption despite the same name, for since our last visit, the name is used now for renting out a different cottage in the same row of modern hillside cottages. The owners did not answer messages, and booking.com are famous for making their customer support inaccessible by a series of barriers depending on getting information from different sources, most inaccessible as you wait outside a cottage. We waited, got no return from messsages, and, as the skies opened with rain, left and returned home, the A68 now fully open:
At home, we found a message on our home phone from the cottage owner saying the cottage was different and that we should have known that. Maybe. Maybe not! Anyway, we were given an extension till Monday, which we may use, and after a blustery stormy night at home, will travel up again.
Tje event we missed was the Walter Scott Prize For Historical Fiction Prize winner announcement. The prize went. I learned that evening at home to a debut novel by a great writer I love . I have bloggedon that novel. See it as this link:
A BOOKER WINNER!: ‘Even shit has life in it, after all’. Sometimes Kevin Jared Hosein suggests that we had better look anywhere for a source of meaningful life rather than we let life hide from us with no attempt to search for it; or worse, realise ‘ that time has left (you) behind’. This blog is a review of Kevin Jared Hosein (2023) ‘Hungry Ghosts’.
Tonigh, I see Tan Twan Eng on another contender novel, The House of Doors, a fictional.part biography of Somerset Maugham. See my blog at this link:
BOOKER 2023: Lesley Hamlyn, confronts the character Willie near the end of the novel and says to him that he has “never written about a homosexual affair in any of your books. You’ve never even alluded to it in all your stories, not even once. … And I think you never will. Why risk drawing the beam of that particular light onto yourself”. This is a blog on Tan Twan Eng (2023) ‘The House of Doors’.
And tomorrow, Juano Diaz. That latter’s memoir is why I am returning. See my blog here:
There is no way that you can read through a memoir like ‘Slum Boy: A Portrait’ by following one unbending line of narrative that you expect to unfold in one direction only, for lives full of deep ruptures in personal experience, and maybe all lives, don’t work that way. Reading Juano Diaz (2024) ‘Slum Boy: A Portrait London’.
I may write again from Melrose. Meanwhile, better luck and less naively, about people who sell commodities, not homely memories, for visit two to Scotland for us. Lol.
With love
Steven xxxxxxx
PS. It is 2.30 pm and we are here, unpacked and ready to start again. Nice view from window.
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