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Stirling Castle
Sep. 24th, 2005 07:25 pmTo say that nothing important has happened between my last update and now would be rather rude to the fair number of people that I've met up with since arriving back in the St Andrews area - over the course of the week, Whitney and I have been in and out of St Andrews and have met various people from the hall last year, and ran in to a few from my classes in the Union - Jenny is back this year, Natalie is now living with Shelley, and I saw Andy at the bar, who greeted me by happily shouting "You water-drinking homo" across the room a couple of times.
The rest of the time has been taken by settling-in activities, and no one wants to read those because it's just a list of "Went to Tesco, went to St Andrews, went to Dundee, ran out of milk, was abducted by aliens, saved the Universe", and so on. Our costs have been greater than I'd imagined and at present we've spent more than my estimated monthly budget in a week, so we're going to have to reassess that. The sooner Whitney's potential employers get around to replying, the better.
Today was our most major excursion since coming here, as I drove Whitney to Stirling castle. The castle is defended by a ridiculously complex one-way road system that James V built to confound any enemies that got within a mile of it, and it was only after a large amount of guessing at the roundabouts and weaving in and out of jutting-out pavements that we managed to work our way to the top of the hill. It doesn't help that no one in Stirling knows how to use the roads, either - we frequently had to dodge obstacles like people who walked out in front of us or parked in the middle of the street.
The castle was bigger than I had imagined, though, and was just about worth the £8 entry fee. The tour plaques did seem to put an extraordinary amount of emphasis on the ceilings, and when they weren't talking about those they were describing the gigantic Hunt of the Unicorn tapestry reconstructions that hung there. I can't imagine how anything that large could be done by hand - it seems to me to be completely overwhelming, like the project that I'll be supposed to start in three days.
The rest of the time has been taken by settling-in activities, and no one wants to read those because it's just a list of "Went to Tesco, went to St Andrews, went to Dundee, ran out of milk, was abducted by aliens, saved the Universe", and so on. Our costs have been greater than I'd imagined and at present we've spent more than my estimated monthly budget in a week, so we're going to have to reassess that. The sooner Whitney's potential employers get around to replying, the better.
Today was our most major excursion since coming here, as I drove Whitney to Stirling castle. The castle is defended by a ridiculously complex one-way road system that James V built to confound any enemies that got within a mile of it, and it was only after a large amount of guessing at the roundabouts and weaving in and out of jutting-out pavements that we managed to work our way to the top of the hill. It doesn't help that no one in Stirling knows how to use the roads, either - we frequently had to dodge obstacles like people who walked out in front of us or parked in the middle of the street.
The castle was bigger than I had imagined, though, and was just about worth the £8 entry fee. The tour plaques did seem to put an extraordinary amount of emphasis on the ceilings, and when they weren't talking about those they were describing the gigantic Hunt of the Unicorn tapestry reconstructions that hung there. I can't imagine how anything that large could be done by hand - it seems to me to be completely overwhelming, like the project that I'll be supposed to start in three days.
