hag­gis, neeps and tatties

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…