Adventures in public transport

I've been on a trip to the UK since the beginning of October, which I hope explains my blogging silence. It was a strange visit, starting in Aberdeen and ending up in Kent, with lots of buses, trains and walking in between.

One of the big differences between living in rural Ontario and living in a British town is the availability of public transport. In my trip away I saw the best and the worst of UK public transport, from severe overcrowding on trains in London and Leicester, to punctual and frequent bus services in Aberdeen and Dundee. OK, the bus from the airport into Aberdeen on my first day wasn't so good - I had a half-hour wait in wind and rain and then the woman who was sitting behind me vomited into her bag as we got into the city. But otherwise, my bus experiences in Scotland were fairly positive.

In Leicester I enjoyed the scenic environs of the New Walk very much. Except for the point when a man entered the park and urinated against a tree just twenty feet from where I was sitting. That was another low point of the trip. As I walked back to the station, a couple were having a screaming row on the path. So loud and passionate were they ("This time I never slept wiv no-one!"), that I half-suspected it to be a piece of street theatre, with hidden cameras recording the responses of passers-by. At times on this trip I wondered if all these people had been sent to misbehave around me just to reassure me that I'd made the right decision about emigrating.

The only other note-worth journey was the experience of going into and out of London's St. Pancras station on the Southeastern Highspeed trains. It was novel to get from Kent to London by first travelling through Essex. The trains had a mildly annoying three-note chime before every announcement.*

On my journey back into Kent something had gone wrong with the automated announcements altogether and it seemed to be stuck on a continuous loop, repeatedly informing us that the train was on its way to Faversham. This began by being irritating, but soon I became close to breaking into unseemly giggles, as everyone else in the carriage was studiously ignoring the repetitions. Perhaps it happens every night. I began to feel that there was some deep significance to the brief pause and then seductively breathy emphasis that the female voice gave to the final word of the announcement "and...Faversham". It was quite a relief to get off that swish, clinical and high-tech train at Rochester, to board a smelly regular train, whose digital display insisted, for the remainder of the journey, that the next stop was going to be Bromley South.

Where we are now, there isn't much public transport at all, so I miss these delights, in a perverse way. Now, when I go back, I feel like an outsider and observer of British life, rather than a part of it. It's an odd feeling.


*British readers of a certain age might remember a similar arrangement in announcements made in the 1980s sit-com Hi-de-Hi. It was very similar to that.

Nursery food (and a glimpse of Scotland)

I wandered up to the hayfield this evening, hoping to get some good cloud photographs. The dark skies weren't quite as impressive as I thought they might be, so I went to have a look at the Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) flowers, which had been nearly open the last time I looked at them. It is a very distinctive plant and is well-known for its role as a host to the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies.


The leaves contain a poisonous sap, but the flower buds are edible if thoroughly cooked (I haven't tried this, yet). As I looked at the plant I was thinking that I have yet to see any Monarchs this year. Then I realised that there were two Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed that I was photographing, so there must be some around:


The dark clouds might not have been that photogenic, but I did like this white one, which seemed to resemble a map of Scotland. Or the way I draw the map of Scotland, anyway (i.e. a bit vague and woolly around the west coast):

Jute, Jam and Journalism

I've been in Dundee for the last few days. I've been here before, but haven't had much of a chance to explore the city until this trip. There are some lovely buildings and the city's location on the banks of the Tay is picturesque. A lot of development is going on along the waterside to make the most of the views along the river.

Yesterday afternoon I visited the Verdant Works, a celebration of the jute industry. I had known that the jute industry was very important for Dundee in the nineteenth century, but didn't really know anything more about it. Jute is a tall annual plant that grows in north-east India and Bangladesh, on the Ganges delta. For many years the raw fibre extracted from the plant was shipped to Dundee for processing.

Via Google Book Search I found an article of 1874 in The Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science by a Professor Hodges, which described the importance of the product:

At the present time jute is used for the manufacture of a great variety of fabrics ; in fact, it will serve for the production of every kind of coarse textile material. It is even used as a substitute for hair, and can be formed into admirable chignons. The dust from the mills is employed to make silk hats, and the waste fibre yields an excellent pulp for the manufacture. Stair-carpets of jute, with bright colours, can be sold at 3d. per yard

The part about it being used as a substitute for hair didn't surprise me - the fibres look like a length of Rapunzel's hair as they go through the processes in the mill.

Too perfect?

I arrived in Edinburgh this morning after a day of travelling and my hotel room wasn't ready, meaning I couldn't immediately rest and recover. So I dropped my bag there, eschewed the shops of Princes Street and the tourist traps of the Royal Mile and instead walked up to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Inverleith. This is a lovely oasis of calm in the city, with hundreds of mature trees and a variety of specialised gardens. The garden has been on its current site for nearly 200 years and the Temperate Palm House, pictured here, was built in 1858.

At this time of year the rhododendrons are looking particularly splendid, as were the rock gardens. The place was lively with school parties, mothers out with their toddlers and many other folk who, like me, were wielding their digital cameras. The visitor information states that "photography and sketching are allowed for private use; special permission is required for commercial photography".

That seems a bit over-sensitive (or over-controlling) to me, although I wouldn't be likely to be selling any photos, myself! Jogging is also forbidden, which is another rule I'm never going to break, but which seemed a bit harsh. I wonder whether there is a squad of super-fit Royal Botanic Gardeners employed to run after any miscreant joggers to stop them from... well, what? Breathing too noisily? Damaging the paths by treading too heavily? Not having time to read the labels?

All the labels and carefully maintained and delineated plants got to me after a while. It's all a bit too formal and structured for my taste (and contemplating the huge amount of work involved in maintaining this perfection was plain scary), although I do appreciate that the whole point of the place is to study and maintain the diverse plants. At the point where I was beginning to feel uncomfortable about the precisely-arranged nature of the site, I found the Scottish Heath Garden, which is a recreation of a Highland landscape. This was much better - more rugged, untidy and much more natural. The broom was flowering and looking beautiful.