Sunday, March 12, 2006

Visit From David

David Graber is an old friend from high school. I think we may be the only people in our little circle of friends from Mount Vernon, Iowa who now live in Europe. David lives in Berlin. He arrived on Thursday evening with his flatmate Viola.

I hadn't seen dear David in about 25 years! He and Viola are here at Whitelees for a long weekend. I took Friday and Monday off work to have more time with them. We're having a great time catching up. For the most part, he hasn't changed a bit. Naturally the two of us are older, but Dave is still the kind, sweet person I knew in high school.

He didn't even complain when we made him eat haggis. Before dinner I made a half hearted attempt at reading Ode to a Haggis by Robert Burns, but really, the least said about THAT the better. The poem is great, especially when read by a native Scots speaker like my neighbour, Charlie who is asked to give recitations at Burn's Night Suppers. The haggis truly is "the great cheiftain of the pudding race".

On Saturday, during the day we went to Edinburgh. We walked all over the centre of Ediburgh, had a pub lunch, looked at the architecture and generally had a nice day wandering about the place. The drive up the A701 was very pretty. The higher elevations had lots of snow. It was like the landscape had been especially decorated for photographs destined to be postcards and jigsaw puzzles.

It snowed overnight on Saturday night. We were going to go "do stuff" on Sunday but the snow gave us the excuse to stay inside to watch movies, drink tea and eat popcorn. We all took the dog for a walk down to the village and back in the snow to work off lunch. George is getting really good at snowballs. Mostly we stayed under quilts on the sofa.

This is a photo of Dave, George and Viola watching Pride and Prejudice (the BBC/Colin Firth version). See the snow out the window!? When I was taking this picture, David said, "Margaret! If this photograph goes on the internet, you're dead!" Sorry my darling, there it is.

Here is the two of us old high school pals - taken today, Sunday the 12th of March.

1 comment:

Miss Scarlet said...

CUTE Puppy!