No, for real. I for­get who it was who said that the Amer­i­cans and Eng­lish were two peo­ples sep­a­rated by a com­mon lan­guage? Well, I won­der what who­ever it was would say about the Scottish.

Avery and set­tled into our cozy room, lined on two walls with the orig­i­nal 13th cen­tury stone of which the cas­tle is made. The room was on the ground floor and looked directly onto a slop­ing hill which Avery found use­ful for going up and down, exit­ing through the bed­room win­dow itself. After a bit of explor­ing, we decided to have lunch in the Orangery, the con­ser­va­tory cafe with a stun­ning view of the river Eck and the val­ley of Dal­housie. The menu was pre­sented by Grace, who took care of us for our entire visit, and she laughed to see our reac­tion to the spe­cialty dish of the house: “Stacked Hag­gis with Bashed Neeps and Clampit Tat­ties.” I decided that if we were going to get the most out of our Scot­tish adven­ture, we’d bet­ter start right off admit­ting we had no idea what any­thing was! Avery, I must tell you, informed me that “neeps” was the medieval term for turnips. Of course it was. So Grace filled in that hag­gis is oat­meal and var­i­ous spices, cooked in the stom­ach lin­ing of a sheep. That can­not be com­fort­able for the sheep. “Why not just cook it in a saucepan?” I asked rea­son­ably enough. “The stom­ach lin­ing is to give the oat­meal fla­vor,” Grace assured me. That’s what I was afraid of. Then “bashed neeps” were merely mashed turnips, and “clampit tat­ties” were sliced pota­toes. At this point Avery and I were com­pletely exhausted! I ordered a toasted ham and moz­zarella sand­wich on bal­samic vinegar-infused cia­batta, nice and famil­iar. Avery ordered what was the first of about a thou­sand smoked salmon sandwiches.

Directly after lunch the recep­tion lady reminded us of Avery’s mid-afternoon horse­back rid­ing les­son! We pulled on our new Bar­bour jack­ets, grabbed her hel­met, changed her from kilt to jodh­purs, and were ready to ride. Except that it turned out the sta­ble was a taxi ride away. We were picked up by who became just about our best friend dur­ing our stay: Derek the Taxi Dri­ver, of D & D Cars. His part­ner is called Derek as well! Their dis­patcher con­ver­sa­tions in the car were com­pletely unin­tel­li­gi­ble, but when Derek spoke directly to us, we could under­stand. I adore that accent. We arrived at the Edin­burgh and Lass­wade Rid­ing Cen­tre, so named for the vil­lage because once in the mists of time a “lass” was able to “wade” across the swollen river dur­ing a flood and save half the vil­lage from destruc­tion. Yeah, some­thing like that. Any­how, we were greeted at the sta­ble by no fewer than a dozen yap­ping lit­tle dogs, some Jack Rus­sell ter­ri­ers and some a skanky, dirty ver­sion of the royal cor­gies. Through the course of the three days we vis­ited the sta­ble, the dogs became grad­u­ally filth­ier and filth­ier, lead­ing us to believe that Fri­days are bath day.

Avery shared a beginner’s les­son, sort of a mixup, but she was just happy to be on a horse. She rode Gin­ger, a school pony with sides of steel, fol­low­ing her instruc­tor up a steep hill, through gor­geous trees and shrubs, and right out of my line of vision. To com­fort myself I called up my brother-in-law Joel and got the low­down on my niece’s lat­est bril­liant accom­plish­ments. The child can say “bub­ble”! Surely Har­vard is next. How we miss her. An hour later Avery appeared, hav­ing had a heav­enly but slightly dan­ger­ous trail ride, over fallen trees and a too-high rush­ing river. It was arranged that the next day would be a reg­u­lar school les­son, in the indoor arena. We were col­lected by Derek, who was most inter­ested to hear about Avery’s rid­ing back in New York, and he informed us that this was the sta­ble fre­quented by the Scot­tish MP Robin Cook. Until he dropped dead on a moun­tain­side, that is. We con­fessed to Derek that one of our great­est wishes dur­ing our visit was to see some spring lambs, but that the hotel had not known where to send us. “I’ll give it a think and let you know,” he reas­sured us.

We spent the rest of the after­noon at the Fal­conry. About four years ago the Cas­tle finally suc­ceeded in its quest to lure a local Fal­conry to the Cas­tle Grounds, and under the superb gen­er­al­ship of Julie and Tom, it runs like clock­work. I admit to a lit­tle ongo­ing dis­com­fort with birds being teth­ered to lit­tle perches, or shut up in aviaries. The staff try to dis­pel this with a lit­tle plac­ard that explains, some birds would be uncom­fort­able in a pen, so they are perched, and some want the free­dom to fly about a bit, so they are penned. This all ignores what must be a basic fact: all birds would rather not be in cap­tiv­ity! But per­haps not. Any­way, we vis­ited all the fal­cons, eagles, kestrels and owls, and made an appoint­ment for the fol­low­ing day to have Avery go fal­con­ing. We picked up a lit­tle scroll tied up in black watch plaid rib­bon that promised to explain all the things you could hire the ani­mals to do. We sat on the stone steps out­side our bed­room, under what the Eng­lish call a “blink­ing” sky, clouds rolling rapidly over a blue, blue sky and bright sun. We decided that our favorite fal­conry option was this: for a mere 280 pounds, you can get an owl to deliver the engage­ment ring to your pro­posed fiancee. Right on the cas­tle grounds. Of course you should prob­a­bly choose between that and hav­ing the wed­ding ring deliv­ered to the chapel dur­ing the wed­ding itself. I think both deliv­er­ies would be overkill. Can you imag­ine hav­ing the owl swoop down, while you’re down on one knee, and the girl in front of you says, “Actu­ally, no.”

Finally it seemed time for din­ner, and the recep­tion desk lady asked us, “Dun­geon or Orangery?” Now what would you say? So we found our­selves deep down in the bow­els of the cas­tle, sur­rounded by suits of armor and dis­plays of swords, at a white-tableclothed table for two, the only peo­ple there. We talked in extremely hushed tones until we began to feel silly, but there was some­thing hush-making about the atmos­phere. Grad­u­ally other peo­ple appeared, most of them look­ing like they’d just had a dia­mond deliv­ered by an owl. We decided to share a main course, since nei­ther of us has enough appetite for the gen­er­ally enor­mous sizes of restau­rant meals. For a starter I had ordered foie gras on a lit­tle bed of lentils, with horse­rad­ish sauce. Now, I don’t really like lentils, but these were the tiny lit­tle ones from Le Puy in France and I fig­ured the foie gras would make up for it. I con­vinced Avery to try the cured salmon and tur­bot, and the child bravely did try it, but quickly deter­mined that smoked salmon is good, cured salmon is not. Espe­cially sprin­kled with dill. But bless her heart to try it. Shortly after, the wait­ress brought a lit­tle so-called “amuse geuele,” a lit­tle gift from the chef to amuse our palates. It was a lovely lit­tle sin­gle ravi­oli with a pretty car­rot coulis in the shape of an excla­ma­tion point. I ate half the lit­tle ravi­oli, as did Avery, and then over her shoul­der I heard the wait­ress present the same dish to the cou­ple behind us. “This is a snail ravi­oli with car­rot coulis, com­pli­ments of the chef.” Eeeww! How could I have missed that salient word when she gave the dish to us?? I couldn’t eat the rest, but decided to throw Avery to the wolves and see what she thought, and she ate it bravely think­ing it was mush­rooms. Slightly shudder-making. Now John has been known to eat an entire plat­ter of peri­win­kles, with a lit­tle pin. But not I.

Our main course, how­ever, made up for the scary lit­tle ravi­oli. Dover sole meu­niere, which I have often eaten but always thought had melted anchovies in the but­tery sauce. But no, our lovely head­waiter explained that “meu­nier” is French for “flour-maker,” and that “meu­niere” sauce is made by dredg­ing the fish in flour and then cook­ing in but­ter until brown, which results in a really com­plex, crunchy fla­vor. Deli­cious. White aspara­gus with it, whose charm was lost on Avery, a huge green aspara­gus fan. What a trooper, to eat so many odd and fancy things. She decided that vanilla ice cream in our room was a proper reward, so off we went. As she spooned it up, I came clean about the ravi­oli. “And you let me FIN­ISH it?” she was hor­ri­fied. “I mean, I like snails! As ANI­MALS!” We came up with a mantra for the evening, “Escar-No-No-No.”

Sat­ur­day saw us at her fal­conry les­son. Tom took us all around the prop­erty with two other kids and their older brother mean to take pic­tures, and first we went out with a lit­tle kestrel called Alpha. What hap­pens is the birds are brought to their “fly­ing weight” in advance of a les­son, which means they weigh enough to feel well to fly, but they are hun­gry enough to come back to peo­ple with food, in this case, rather icky lit­tle dead yel­low chicks, but OK. So each child wore a glove, and Alpha came back and back for his lit­tle bits of lunch. Then we took Alpha back to the fal­conry and got Boomer the Tawny Owl from his perch, and came out for lunch as well. Really a lovely sport! You can just see the ani­mal judg­ing whether it would be nicer to sim­ply fly away for good, or to have another bite of chick.

At lunch, wolf­ing down yet another pile of smoked salmon sand­wiches, I told the wait­ress I had heard we were going to be treated to a wed­ding that evening. “Well, we were,” she said with rel­ish, “but it has been can­celled.” Oooh! What would it take to can­cel a wed­ding the day of. Per­haps an owl pooped on the fiancee as she received the ring, and she thought it was a bad omen?
“But the guests have decided that, hav­ing paid for it all in advance, why not come along any­way and have a fam­ily reunion?”

Back to the sta­bles with Derek, who told us that after the les­son he would take us to see some lambs. The dear man had spent half the day before dri­ving around the coun­try­side look­ing for sheep that had lambed, and had finally run a flock to earth in Bon­nyrigg. So Avery had rather a bor­ing les­son with lit­tle begin­ners (but still enjoyed it), and I spent the time with other moth­ers in the view­ing gallery, reflect­ing after­ward that it’s a uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence: moth­ers watch­ing lit­tle girls ride around and around, trad­ing sto­ries about our chil­dren falling, being thrown, the first can­ter, what sort of sad­dle, etc. After the les­son, Derek fer­ried us to a farm where there were lambs. And not just ordi­nary lambs, a spe­cial kind called Jacob sheep, marked with brown and cream blobs. The lambs were quite pre­pared to walk right to the fence to say hello to us, until their dis­grun­tled moth­ers shooed them away and then spent a lot of time baaa-ing at us to leave. There is just noth­ing cuter than a lamb. Dear Derek! “Will you be jump­ing, now, at your les­son tomor­row, Avery? I’ll be want­ing to hear all about it.”

It was the most beau­ti­ful after­noon when we got back, and Avery spent a lot of time spin­ning around on the expan­sive green lawn, mak­ing her­self dizzy and falling down. We vis­ited the birds, explored the river bank, and had high tea in the gor­geous cas­tle library. As pretty as it was, how­ever, it was dis­tin­guished by being the only library I have ever been in that had not a sin­gle book I wanted to read. Avery con­tented her­self with “A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream,” since the Form Six girls at King’s Col­lege had per­formed it just before break. The most mem­o­rable thing about the per­for­mance was, I gath­ered, the girl who when­ever she for­got her lines, said, “Oh, SNAP!” I had a lovely tra­di­tional egg and cress sand­wich and Avery had three dif­fer­ent kinds of scone, with the inevitable clot­ted cream and a whole tree full of tiny jam and pre­serve choices!

Din­ner that night was in the Orangery, one night in the Dun­geon hav­ing proved suf­fi­cient. We shared a gor­geous rib-eye steak with huge piles of french fries, and I felt like I was back in the gold­fish bowl of Tribeca when the wait­ress asked, “Well, now, did Derek man­age to find you some lambs, then? And how was the horse­back rid­ing?” We left the din­ing room to go look for bun­nies under the fir tree by the fal­conry (the rab­bits sleep all day while the birds are out and then there are sim­ply dozens of them on the lawn when the sun goes down and the birds are put away). It was chilly, but we per­se­vered, crouch­ing by the war­ren under the bush, and being rewarded now and then by lit­tle pairs of bunny ears, then a face, and finally lit­tle paws all tucked up under bunny chins. No one was brave enough to come out with us, how­ever. On our way back into the hotel, shiv­er­ing and look­ing for­ward to hot water bot­tles in our bed­room, out floated the sound of bag­pipe play­ing, and there were the erst­while wed­ding guests, the men in full Scot­tish garb with diced hose and kilts, all one fam­ily tar­tan. There were tiny lit­tle boys as well, lit­tle ver­sions of their dads, all being played into the Dun­geon for their din­ner. What a sight!

Sun­day was one last ride, and it was a great one. She got in with an advanced class, and the instruc­tor was Mar­jory, the actual owner of the sta­bles. Boy were they worked hard. My favorite of the games was when she paired off the rider and they had to try to ride side by side, at exactly the same pace, each hold­ing one end of a crop! I really feared that one or the other in each pair would sim­ply pull the other off, into the dirt. But it didn’t hap­pen. It was thrilling to see Avery get right back at the top of her game, trot­ting, can­ter­ing, chang­ing direc­tion, all her old skills. The only glitch came at the end when she didn’t know if she should join the jumpers or not, and in the end her pony Snowy decided she had had enough, and left the ring. Next time… All the more moti­va­tion to find the right barn here. And per­haps on Sun­day we will.

So we came home on the after­noon train on Mon­day, and while it was a lot of fun for awhile to look out the win­dow at TONS of lambs in the rolling fields, after a cou­ple of hours the fun paled and we were ready to get off the train. Unfor­tu­nately at that point there were three hours of the jour­ney left. So we decided in the end that the sleeper train both ways is ideal. I’m ready for a jour­ney on a train that takes even longer, so some research will have to be done.

Home again to host Anna for a sleep­over, and then all day Tues­day at an amaz­ing safari park in Woburn, about an hour out­side the city, with all Becky’s girls. Tigers, giraffes, ele­phants, black bears, and my favorite, mar­mosets! As we walked around, John called from Hong Kong, hav­ing a great time at the Sev­ens rugby matches and about to fly to Tokyo. We will all be glad to be reunited on Saturday…

Well, it’s nearly mid­night here in Lon­don and I’ve just fin­ished a spate of phone calls across the pond, designed to stave off my home­sick­ness, and I must say it’s effec­tive! Just describ­ing for peo­ple what’s been hap­pen­ing and how happy we’ve been makes it hard to feel sorry for myself.

Tomor­row Avery and I have a free day, with no play­dates, no travel, no John, so I think our plan will be to visit the May­fair branch of the pub­lic library, bran­dish­ing what­ever con­fus­ing paper­work I can bring with me to prove that I’m either Kris­ten Cur­ran, or Kris­ten Fred­er­ick­son, whichever one I am on a given piece of cor­re­spon­dence through the Royal Mail, and get me an Eng­lish library card. Then per­haps tea at Claridge’s? We have not indulged in that joy since per­haps the sec­ond or third week we were here, in no con­di­tion to appre­ci­ate it truly. Pre-blog! Does such a time even exist?! So more tomor­row about Scot­land, but in the mean­time feast your eyes on this adorable, dare I say it, pic­ture of Avery on the lawn of the Cas­tle Hotel, and the gor­geous place itself. Bliss.

Oh, you must all go right now and book rooms at the Cas­tle Dal­housie Hotel. What a find! We did not even get a fancy room. But wait, half the fun was get­ting there.

After our lovely and hilar­i­ous din­ner with the McBs lateish Thurs­day evening, they went home with many exhor­ta­tions to have fun and spend lots of money in Scot­land, and we grabbed our bags and were off to Euston Sta­tion to catch the Cale­don­ian Sleeper Train at nearly mid­night. I had been quite ridicu­lously ner­vous all day over the thoughts of hav­ing screwed up the train tick­ets, or the hotel reser­va­tions, or some­thing, and so to get to the sta­tion in time, get on the train, tick­ets approved, and in our lit­tle cabin, was quite a relief! We stowed away our small belong­ings in the incred­i­bly tiny lit­tle space (you could either have a shelf, or you could lift it up and have a sink! but not both), got into our paja­mas, unpacked our books, and in my case poured a lovely lit­tle Scotch for myself, and filled hot water bot­tles from said sink. Heaven! Soon the train began to rock back and forth, and Avery’s lit­tle com­ments about how cozy she was became less fre­quent, and she had her lul­la­bies and so to sleep. Absolute heaven.

We were awak­ened very early by the tea lady, bring­ing tea, juice and crois­sants, albeit in a very unro­man­tic Sco­trail paper bag, but hey, gra­cious liv­ing we are not. We could have had first class berths, and I hon­estly con­sid­ered it, but we would have been sep­a­rated into two dif­fer­ent cab­ins and that did not sound cozy at all. So we were happy to lump it in stan­dard. Rain was falling, but who cared? We stuck our lug­gage in the “left lug­gage” (love the phrase, what about the right lug­gage?), had a glo­ri­ous Ital­ian break­fast at Cen­totre in George Street, which we would highly rec­om­mend if you find your­self feel­ing peck­ish in Edin­burgh. Incred­i­ble egg sand­wiches in cia­batta, and fruity drinks with names like The Pinoc­chio (apple, cran­berry and lime) and The Bosco (lemon and pear). Then we struck out toward the zoo. Even in the rain it was charm­ing! It took us but a moment to real­ize we were the only peo­ple there, not sur­pris­ing, and some ani­mals had the sense to get in out of the rain and were so not vis­i­ble, but the meerkats! The lions! The pen­guins! Adorable. After a good long visit, we were off to Edin­burgh proper, on a lovely city bus. In Prince Street we could not resist buy­ing Avery a kilt, and a proper Scot­tish knit­ted sweater, by a label called “MacBaaa.” To the sta­tion where we ran­somed off our bags and called the taxi com­pany rec­om­mended by the Cas­tle, and were whisked away to our des­ti­na­tion. You just would not believe the place. In my next post I will begin with a shot of the cas­tle. And the staff! Lovely! And the fal­conry, and the food, and the bunny rab­bits on the lawn… to be continued!

Home from Scot­land! Lots to tell about that, but first I must unbur­den myself and say that both Avery and I have had attacks of home­sick­ness these last few days. For Avery it was the last of three rid­ing lessons dur­ing our hol­i­day up north. The best pos­si­ble les­son, at Lass­wad (because once a “lass” “waded” across the swollen river to save the other side of the vil­lage!) Sta­bles, but the asso­ci­a­tions with her old life in New York, rid­ing really well three times a week, were too strong and the poor lit­tle thing broke down. “I miss it, I miss it…” As for me, in the space of two days I got no fewer than four emails from Tribeca events: a kick­off din­ner for the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val, early meet­ings for Taste of Tribeca, the Spring Auc­tion at PS 234, and a nice email with a funny video made by sev­eral of Avery’s old cohorts in fourth grade. The sight of scruffy adorable Clark, Zohar, Spencer and Miles jump­ing about with a huge T-bone steak (don’t ask) in Cen­tral Park was just too much.

Added to that, with John in Tokyo and Avery at Anna’s house for the night, I decided to go all nos­tal­gic and visit Nobu Lon­don for the first time. It was just exactly like our old haunt in Tribeca, Next Door Nobu. Toro with caviar, yel­low­tail tuna with jalapeno and cilantro, spicy tuna roll, all washed down with a fab­u­lous Mat­suhisa mar­tini, com­plete with float­ing slices of baby cucum­ber. I felt so sad! Work­ing my way through the lux­u­ri­ous and oh-so-familiar meal, look­ing up at the sushi chef, a twin of his com­pa­triot on Hud­son Street in my old stomp­ing ground. It just is a les­son that no mat­ter how happy you are with your new life, there comes a time when you are forced to think about what you’ve left behind. Because of course in New York we’re not strangers at Nobu, and in New York Avery is rid­ing with kids who were at her birth­day party, not peo­ple she’s never seen before and will never see again. It doesn’t mean it isn’t lovely to live here, and that I do not value all the excite­ment, the new­ness, the hap­pi­ness of our life here. But it’s very hard to remem­ber our old friends, famil­iar places, the famil­iar shape of a life you didn’t have to build, it was just THERE.

Things will seem sun­nier when John gets back on Sat­ur­day evening. I think we’ll be just about on the same sched­ule as he, com­ing back from Sheffield and the jump­ing cham­pi­onships. Then yet another new sta­ble on Sun­day, in our never-ending search for the right barn, the right instruc­tor, the right pony. This time it’s to be Wim­ble­don Vil­lage Sta­bles, as far out as you can get on the dis­trict line under­ground. Wish us luck. We miss you all.