US Presidential elections Archives - Scones, history and a dollop of politics

The title picture is of Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh with the Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat in the background. Obviously you want to know the age of Arthur’s Seat, everyone does, don’t they? It’s a 346 million year old extinct volcano, give or take a couple of million. Back then, fire and lava would have been spewing everywhere! But,of course, that all happened when Scotland was much closer to the equator than it is today … obviously! Another old Celtic explanation is that a huge dragon used to terrorise the city until one day it ate too much, lay down to sleep and turned into the Arthur’s Seat. Today, looking up at the craggy hill, for some reason the dragon explanation seems much more believable.

Awkward questions

The only reason we are able to furnish you with these little nuggets is because we’re here with a couple of granddaughters at the Dynamic Earth Science Centre and Planetarium. It tells the epic story of how planet earth began. The girls are always asking awkward questions so this seemed like the place to get some answers.

You know how they say that the best place to start is at the beginning. Well. here you can enter a Time Machine which takes you all the way back to the Big Bang. The visual and sound effects are amazing. At one point you have to hang on to railings as the ground violently shifts and rumbles beneath your feet and volcanoes explode all around. Luckily, rather than millions of years, it only takes about 90 minutes to walk all the interactive experiences from the Big Bang back to the present day. However, you do emerge from the Time Machine with more than a touch of information overload.

Facts and figures

Our 9 and 11 year old girls are fascinated by tectonic plates and how mountains and valleys are formed so this was ideal for them. Did you know that continents move 2cm every year? Did you know that 200,000 people are born ever day or that 2 people die every second? Well, if you didn’t, you do now!

These days, for Pat and I, information overload kicks in pretty early. What a relief then to find that there was no thinking or decisions required at the cafe. Cheese scones, take them or leave them! We took them along with a bowl of lentil soup. The girls had a kiddies goodie bag which they emptied in double quick time.. The soup/cheese scone combo was surprisingly good and much easier digested than some of the rather mind boggling facts and figures. It was never going to be a topscone but enjoyable nevertheless.

Differentiation

Our 11 year old is fascinated by Time Machines. When we suggested that she just wanted to go back to the beginning of time, we were emphatically corrected. “No. I just want to go back 70,000 years!” Okay, why just 70,000 years?. “Because that’s when human’s cognitive abilities developed so that they could differentiate themselves from other animals“. she explained in her serious voice. A slow “okaaay” was our only response. These girls are a constant source of surprise and joy.

Cognitive development

Lola holding up the world — Maybe she can save the world?

However, given that we have presumably been developing our cognitive skills over 70,000 years it makes the slanging match that characterises the American Presidential elections somewhat puzzling. You’d think, after all that time, that selecting the most powerful person on earth would be a tad more sophisticated.

But we should know by now that people are fickle. Australians, for example. Recently Lidia Thorpe protested during King Charles’s visit to Australia with “You are not my King“. Charlie’s official title is “King Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Australia and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth”. The question is why do people, particularly straight thinking Australians, put up with this sort of nonsense? Even the King himself, a thoroughly decent chap, looked embarrassed being reminded of Britain’s genocidal land grabbing tendencies. Privately, we suspect he would have been on Lidia’s side.

Now they are discussing dropping the word “Empire” from the King’s honours list. Could this be yet another attempt to sanitise Britain’s history. Perish the thought!

External view of Dynamic Earth — Starting to get dark as we left Dynamic Earth

Fungi?

The only slight disappointment to our day was the Planetarium visit. We had always assumed that Planetariums only did things about planets. On this occasion it was all about fungi! Interesting enough but not what we had expected. In terms of learning, we did learn not to make assumptions! An very enjoyable day of time travel for everyone concerned.

EH8 8AS tel: 0131 550 7800 Dynamic Earth

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It’s funny how things work out! Several months ago we fell in with a couple of ladies who got on our London bound train at Edinburgh. They were cousins, one in her nineties, from the south of England and the other, in her seventies, from California. They were great fun. At one point, the one in her nineties waltzed off to the restaurant car for a couple of bottles of wine to have with their sandwiches. We only hope that we can still do that when we are that age. Anyway, as part of our four and a half hour chat they mentioned that the previous day they had been at a fantastic farm café in Fintry. Hold on to that snippet.

View north from the Fintry - Kippen road. — View to the north with Ben Lomond on the left

Definitely a Marilyn!

Unusually for us, today we find ourselves with nothing to do except please ourselves … wow! It’s a beautiful day, the type you don’t want to waste, so we set of rather aimlessly to go ‘somewhere’. Eventually we found ourselves wending our way alongside Carron Valley reservoir, Falkirk’s water supply, taking in the fantastic autumn colours. On the other side of the water was the Meikle Bin (1,870 ft, not a Munro but definitely a Marilyn), a hill etched in my memory as one on which I pushed a mountain bike to the summit so that my young son could hurtle back down, kamikaze style.

Also on that Sunday morning, there were a lot of other people carrying very heavy objects up the hill. Turned out they were radio hams setting up a UK wide network where lots of other hams, similarly placed on top of hills, could hook up together? Judging by the amount of effort, they must all have been mega-enthusiasts! Wonder if they still do it considering the ease of communications these days?

To cut a long story short, we found ourselves a few miles past Carron Valley, in Fintry at round about scone-o’clock where Pat suddenly remembered that she had noted, on her phone, the name of the farm given to us by the train ladies … remember? It was called Knockraich and we eventually found it on the Fintry to Kippen road, a road we had never been on before. What an absolute pleasure it was. The café gets its name from the courtyard in which it is situated and the whole place was buzzing with entrepreneurial flair. They bake all their own stuff; sell non-homogenised milk by the litre; make their own ice cream, yoghurt, butter, you name it!

Taking pride

Most of the tables were pre-booked so we had to wait a little while. They also sell furniture, lights and all sorts of other stuff, so a short wait was no hardship. After some recent scone disasters we were hoping for an upturn in our fortunes and The Courtyard looked very promising. The staff were warm, welcoming and seemed to take real pride in what they were doing. Everything came beautifully presented, just as if someone had actually thought about it! Mercifully, the scones were wonderful and it was a pleasure to give them a topscone award. In the summer, the Courtyard, with it’s outside seating area, would be even better. We may be back!

And just when you thought the whole world had gone slightly mad, Fintry itself, seems to be a rare oasis of sanity and bonhomie, with a great sense of community spirit. Fantastic, long may it remain so!

Picture of the entire population of Fintry at at the Courtyard Café at Knockraich Farm, Fintry — 2010 photograph of the entire population of Fintry

Oval or rectangular office?

Many thanks to our train companions for the recommendation. The lady who lived in California hated it. She had lived there for many years, but would have moved back to England in the blink of an eye if it wasn’t for grandchildren! We discussed the upcoming Presidential elections but, being an alien, she wasn’t allowed to vote. We are sure, with something like twenty four hours to go, that she is counting her blessings. With each of the US presidential hopefuls facing the prospect of having to swap the Oval Office for a more rectangular affair with bars on the windows, you really couldn’t make it up. By the time you receive the next scone post, however, the result will be known …. ooooo, scary!G63 0LN tel: 01360 860132 Courtyard Café

Scones, history and a dollop of politics

Tag Archives: US Presidential elections

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