Rees family trip to Europe - part 2: Scotland

If I had been blogging more regularly, then I would have told you about this trip already, but I don't think I have mentioned it here at all. About a year ago we started planning this swing through Europe, based around a visit to Elf's brother Chonk and his family in Switzerland - wife Irma, and kids Bea and Eric. We just got home on Sunday after seven weeks living in each other's pockets in amazing places like Venice, Florence, York and Inverness, finishing with ten days at their house in Winterthur near Zürich.

Here I'd like to send a special shout out to Irma, an incredibly loyal follower of this blog. At last there is a new post! I hope this makes your day!

You are probably wondering where Part 1 is. I am doing this post at work and I have access only to our photos from the UK, so I will double back later for a brief Part 1 about our first few days in Switzerland.

Our itinerary was: 

• fly to Switzerland
• 3 days later fly to Inverness
• 2 weeks travelling through the UK stopping in Edinburgh, Alnwick, York, Cambridge and London
• back to Switzerland for a few days
• to Italy via the Bernina Express train over (and under) the Alps
• 2 weeks travelling through Italy staying in Milan, Monterosso (Cinque Terre), Florence, Sorrento, and Venice
• back again to Switzerland for another 10 days, then home

So here are some pics in rough chronological order

We did the UK from the top down, starting at Inverness. It was surprisingly lovely weather when we arrived and held up throughout. We stayed in an Airbnb near the centre of town; just across the street was an old church which was built on a pre-Christian mound. This is the spot where Christianity came to Scotland. I think the spire on the right is the one. 

Our two planned Inverness activities were a) visiting the Culloden battlefield and b) taking a day tour to the Isle of Skye. 

We took a local bus out to the edge of town near the battlefield and walked from there, on a gorgeous morning, past horsey paddocks and a lovely field of dougals.

By long family tradition we call these round haybales dougals.

This was one of the days when Michael took a long time to get into the right holiday spirit.
I found a suitable role for him at the visitors centre as 'unfortunate corpse'.

The battlefield is a vast flat grassy plain. It is very peaceful today.
The highlanders of Bonnie Prince Charlie were routed by the redcoats.

Our day trip to Skye with WOW Scotland Tours was fantastic. The bus left Inverness around 8.30am and returned after dark about 12 hours later. The guide Gordon and driver Karen were both really great at their jobs. Marcus left our camera on the bus and Gordon very kindly posted it on for us.

Lobster traps at Kyle of Lochalsh, our first port of call on Skye. 

Portree, the very pretty major town.

We stopped at a fascinating place called Fairy Glen, where mysterious conical mounds rise from the plain.

This place is called The Quiraing, and it is also mysterious and beautiful.
Various films I have never seen (Prometheus and Stardust) were filmed here.

This spot is called Sligachan. The water was 2 metres higher just a week earlier.

On our last day in Inverness we were catching a train at lunchtime for Edinburgh. The night before we were chatting to a man in a souvenir shop who told us about the prehistoric Clava Cairns just near Culloden. So we decided to go back out there and have a look in the morning. Here we are on our way back, carrying ALL our bags because I hadn't worked out that there were lockers at the train station. Later our train went over that beautiful bridge.

This rock at Clava Cairns was worked like this about 4000 years ago.

The train to Edinburgh was very interesting. We went through some very forbidding moorland, delightful little towns, and past beaches with people walking dogs in the sun. Kirkcaldy, just over the water from Edinburgh in Fife, looked particularly nice.

Our 2nd Airbnb in Edinburgh was on the major road in the suburb of Corstorphine (pron. cuh STOR fin) and we agree now it was our least favourite of the six we stayed in.

Edinburgh has a very stern air. There are a lot of jagged steeples and countless chimneys. Everything is stone, and stained dark with centuries of smoke, although now wood and coal heaters are banned.

The slice of the old town viewed from the parade ground in front of Edinburgh castle.

Inside the castle walls.

We went in search of Scotland Street, famous from the serialised stories of Alexander McCall Smith.
We found it, and this basement cafe that could well be Big Lou's. Needed more books though.

We climbed the Scott Monument to get this view of Edinburgh. 287 steps.

Before the trip we were visiting Michael's buddy Jono one day when his parents Shona and Mike suggested we should see a couple of things at Falkirk while we were in Scotland. It was a little bit out of our way but well worth it.

This is the Falkirk Wheel - devised to connect two moribund canals
and now a tourist attraction in its own right.

This shows how it works.

Nearby are The Kelpies, largest equestrian sculptures in the world.
They represent the Celtic legend of horrible monsters who live in a loch,
but turn themselves into beautiful horses to lure men to their deaths.

Jonathan Jones doesn't like them.

From Falkirk we were headed to Alnwick in Northumberland, England. We had picked up a hire car in Edinburgh with that modern infestation, a GPS. They don't give you a map any more. We had a miserable day on the road and Elf insisted first thing the next morning that we buy a map before doing anything else. We tried in vain to get south from Falkirk without being dragged back into Edinburgh but the GPS would not have a bar of it. At one point it directed us into a dodgy -looking council housing estate carpark in Airdrie.

We loved Scotland and would very happily return to spend longer. The weather down south wasn't quite up to what it had been in Inverness but no-one would believe us.

Time capsule on the wall

The function room here at Red Jelly was once a bunch of small offices. Back in the 1940s people pasted newspaper clippings on their walls. They are mostly sports photos; cricket, horse racing, football. There are a couple of bits of war news, and some movie star chit chat. One photo shows the elaborate double staircase that was made by staff at the Hobart Technical College asa demonstration of skills and presented to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. It was used for over 60 years but is now suspended from the ceiling as an exhibit. When things are quiet here at work I like to go and look at the wall and let my mind slip back to Hobart in the 1940s.

Mooching

I am now trying to cover as much ground as I can in my lunch hour each day. One good walk is up to the Huon Valley Butchery on the edge of West Hobart. It’s pretty fancy, I won't be buying meat there a lot, but they are friendly and I know they have their own abbatoir at Cradoc and take animal welfare very seriously.

This corner is just nearby. It's a beautiful group of three houses on the corner. 

The other day after dropping Marcus at soccer (he has to be there 45 minutes before kick off) I went for a wander through New Town, where I hadn't walked for years. I saw this amazing bus stop.

You can hear the bzzzzt bzzz bzz bzzzzt just looking at the pic can’t you?

Fitzgeralds

Being downtown for an extended time, I am walking past this facade a lot. I haven't been in a position to take a photo myself, so I have scooped this pic from here, thank you to whoever is responsible.

Fitzgeralds was a statewide department store chain that was just ubiquitous in my life growing up. The Burnie Fitzies took up half a block of town, and I bought most of my clothes and records there.

Later after I moved to Hobart I worked at the ad agency who did all of Fitzies TV, press and catalogues; where I made my notorious typo in a cosmetics ad; “come in and talk to one of our beauty conslutants” which was 100% accidental.


Fun fact; for a time there was a Fitzgeralds at Forest Hills in Melbourne! But shortly after that the parent company based in Adelaide rebranded the whole lot as Harris Scarfe and the whole chain fell into a bit of a snooze. The Hobart store is a poorly-patronised rump of what was once there.

If you have any great memories of Fitzies I'd love to hear them. I liked how you could buy a leg of lamb, a Soundgarden CD and a six pack of Rio underdaks not just under one roof, in fact inside a 10m radius.

Back to the sign; the shape of these characters are fascinating. That's a G in the middle below. Talk about minimal.

And look at this R below. Its common to build an R from the P but this is brutal!

New job

I am writing this at my new job, at a place called Red Jelly. It's a big ad agency in Hobart but its kind of a secret - not many people know it's here and what it does. There's about 50 staff, 4 of whom are named Chris. Half the place is dedicated to the national liquor chain Dan Murphy's. Dan's generates a hell of a lot of press ads, outdoor ads, point of sale and odds and sods, and it is owned by Woolworths (as is another liquor chain BWS but that's another story). There are dozens of other clients but the big ones seem to all be Woolworths subsidiaries, including Countdown which is the name Woolworths uses in New Zealand.

Before starting here about two months ago, I had been working from home for about three years, long enough to get right into a groove. The days flew by every day, punctuated by meeting the kids after school, walking the dog, meeting clients, and doing the work. Although business varied between quiet-ish and brisk-ish, I never found that I was sitting around with nothing to do. If it was sunny I did washing, and if I felt like cleaning toilets I could do that too. Or take the wave ski out.

For my first 6 weeks here I was working on the Tourism Tasmania spring campaign at a manic rate, with no downtime at all. Once that was finished I was shifted into the Dan's room, where all around me Whisky Guides and outdoor ads for Far North Queensland are being created. There is a rhythm to the week in here and lots of flat spots.

It feels different to browse the net when you should be doing something, versus doing it to fill in time. One is a guilty pleasure and the other is just ... not something I usually do. Feels weird.

So, I am going to give myself a range of things I can do while I wait for the ping of email or the approach of the account manager. Such as – blogging.

Michael's Opinion Triangle

The Opinion Triangle is very useful in deciding opinions. It is a triangle and not a square, because instead of just showing where they are on a scale which the square would show, a triangle shows the relative differences between choices. As you care less and less, the variation between positive and negative becomes less and less as well causing the possible choice window to be smaller. And when you don't care at all, there is no difference! You might as well save having to choose where on a line to put a point, so just make one place to put it!

Interpretations of your position on the Opinion Triangle

Opinion Triangle by Michael Rees is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Important List! #12 - Fanta Flavours

"Fanta originated as a result of difficulties importing Coca-Cola syrup into Nazi Germany during World War II due to a trade embargo." - Wikipedia

Despite losing the war, Fanta has gone on to be popular worldwide. The flavours available vary from region to region but include;

Peach Mangosteen (Albania)
Spider Chocolate Orange (Australia, retired)
Red Cream (Bahamas)
Madness [Grape] (Bosnia Herzogovina)
Madness [Elderflower] (Bulgaria)
Green Apple & Cherry (France)
Vanilla and Lime (Germany, retired)
Herbs  (Germany, retired)
Banana (Grenada)
Moo Moo White (Japan*)
Cassis (Netherlands)
Cinnamon Rum (Romania, retired)
Toffee (Taiwan)

*There are a ridiculous number of flavours in Japan

In 2015 the 75th anniversary of Fanta in Germany was was celebrated with Classic Fanta in original design bottles, and with the great original logo.

According to TV ads this was intended to bring back "the feeling of the Good Old Times" ... of Germany circa 1940. The ad had a mixed reception.

Slogans for Andean Tourism

I came up with a new slogan to attract tourists to Peru.

SOFT LLAMAS. NO DRAMAS.

But they rejected it, so I gave it to Ecuador, where it immediately produced a spike in tourist numbers. At the expense of Peru. Of course they whinged about it so I gave them my second best slogan which is

WE ALSO HAVE LLAMAS. SPEND ALL DAY IN YOUR PYJAMAS.

Michael constructs a few more alphasyllabaries/abugidas

Think of a number

I was trying to get the kids out of bed and into the shower.

Me: Alright, think of a number. Marcus?

Marcus: Mine is very, very large.

Michael: Mine is absurdly small.

Me: *after nearly choking with laughter* OK. My number was 5. In the shower, Marcus.

Work

It's suddenly a busy time at work, and I have got some interesting and varied things on. 

I am doing a website for a fire protection company - sprinklers are their main thing. While I was meeting with the GM he took a call from one of his blokes out in the field; a solid brass fitting had somehow broken. "See if you can sweat a brass nipple on to it. Yeah. Nah. Yeah, its only an outlet, we are only after the orifice".

I am also doing some animations and graphics for an online education video about brain pathology in dementia. One of the top men of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre is an old friend of mine, so it was a real pleasure to go and talk business with him, then get 20 minutes just shooting the breeze. His office is at the top of one of Hobart's architectural landmarks; unfortunately the building doesn't work that well in some respects . The offices with windows get so hot that everyone has just been issued with electric fans. 

While there I stuck my nose into the office of friend-of-the-blog Matthew K who works down the hall from James. I know these guys are super-smart and well regarded in their field but I tend to take it for granted. James said quietly at one stage "Yeah Matt is pretty much the go-to man in Australia now on brain anatomy".

James has been filmed talking off the cuff about dementia - he has a terrific command of his subject, I guess naturally since he runs an institute devoted to it. As there was no script I felt like I had to transcribe what he said to have a basis for editing and matching graphics to his comments. 

As its over 20 minutes worth, I googled how to convert speech-to-text; not that hard if you are speaking into the microphone on your computer, but a bit fiddly to organise if the source is a recording. But I did it, and the result (although it needed cleaning up) was outstanding. Without any training in understanding James' voice, it correctly transcribed "neurodegenerative", "neurofibrillary", "cytoskeleton", and "proteinaceous". "Symptomology" it got right most of the time but in a few spots that came up as "supermodel".

I am also filling in for a friend who works as a designer at Tourism Tasmania for two weeks. They will throw work to me that can't wait for her return - although we are two and a half days  in, and nothing has come yet. I am sure she knocked herself out to get ahead of the curve before she left; and everyone will probably prefer to have the Key Woman work on their stuff if possible.

Another job I just finished was logos, banners and packaging for Cashew Creamery - they make non-dairy ice cream from cashews.

I just realised I haven't mentioned the Tasmania Advertising and Design Awards that I attended in February - the House of Fudge packaging was a finalist in the Print Graphics category. I'll blog that whole experience separately; I was actually also on the jury.

OK, time to go and animate some brains.

Marcus turns 14

Our big son hit 14 two days ago. He shot up over summer and had a few back problems as a result, but that seems to have settled down now. His main problem is that he is too busy.

Monday after school is flute ensemble, Tuesday and Thursday he has maths at college then soccer practice after school, and on Wednesday he sees his maths tutor for an hour to kick around scary advanced trig and calculus. Friday we have dinner with my mum and dad. For now the weekend is pretty free but practice matches will start soon.

This year Marcus did not want to have a party (probably because of exhaustion) so Elf's genius idea was a surprise midnight feast. We had dinner with Imp and Ed and the girl cousins, and it was supposedly going to be just a fun sleepover. Everyone else was in on the surprise though.

Elf prepared nacho makings, chocolate and marshmallows for roasting. After the kids were in bed, Ed and I moved the trampoline and I dug a little fire pit and arranged logs to sit on around it, while he hung christmas lights in the golden elm. Then he and Imp went home and we went to bed.

At 11.55 the alarm went off quietly, and I took out a bucket of kindling and got the little fire going. Michael and I had sourced long green twigs for the marshmallows. Once it was all crackling away Elf went and woke the kids. Marcus was genuinely surprised and delighted. It all looked wonderful and I took NO photos. Here is the setup by the light of day, however.

It was a lovely calm night, a bit too overcast for many stars though. We whispered Happy Birthday To You (next door's kids were sleeping not very far away) and just as we finished Winston chimed in with an appropriately quiet howl.

I was soon grumpy and keen to go back to bed. Michael was the last butt to be shifted, as he was on his haunches just loving poking various things into the fire. Eventually we got everyone back to bed.

After the midnight shenanigans Sunday kicked off surprisingly early, and we opened presents. Our gift to Marcus was a very nice leather Sherrin footy. It's a dream to kick, and unlike last time we got a new footy, Marcus didn't sprain his thumb right away.

So, happy birthday to our first child, dear boy that he is.