REALLY catching up!
If you've come here looking for the catch-up about Ba's newly discovered Great Uncle, either scroll down to half-way through the previous post, or click here to open that piece separately. [Try clicking all the green links - where we've hunted out even more interesting stuff for you.]
Alice, by the way, has recently discovered she has a "new" distant cousin in Australia, and has been much pre-occupied with drawing up a revised Family Tree.
It's quite pretty to look at and she's posted here a simplified one. Since she just spent ages creating this special version, please click on it. You'll have to in any case if you want to be able to read any of it. Better still, as we say every time, open this and any other images in a new window or tab. That's usually by right-clicking. I don't know what you do on a Mac - sorry.My family wouldn't really make a "tree". It would only consist of MOTHER (UNKNOWN) and FATHER (UNKNOWN) so wouldn't get us very far. But it doesn't bother me, honest. Who needs relatives when you've got good friends like Alice and Ba! And someone else too - but see later.
However, Alice is so very obsessive that once she starts on a new project at her computer, she never stops until she's so exhausted she just has to go to bed - often way into the wee small hours. Tut, tut. So I declared we have to catch up here first, or we never will before the next exciting / interesting event takes over.
She complains that I always have too much to say, and want every single photo with myself in to be posted, so that doing the blog takes far too long and stops us getting on with the video. Oh dear. Compromise required?
Whew! We took a break here and watched a bit more of our Game of Thrones Box set (Season 5) in preparation for the appearance of the widely anticipated Season 6. We're looking forward to it no end, I can tell you. It makes me extra willing to put up with those boring bus trips (Alice has her iPod) to babysit the grandchildren, as they've got Sky!We daren't link to any potential spoilers about the controversial fate of John-he's-dead-now-Snow, but are keeping our theories to ourselves. This link is to the official HBO trailer #2: purists don't even want to watch that . . . .
Actual catch-up starts here.
[It turns out we've been working at doing so, on and off, ever since Friday 14th, you know.]
1. For starters, here's our windowbox progress report, which is becoming a fairly regular feature of the blog.The irises have shrivelled now, but a miniature tulip has flowered, and there are some beautiful snowdrops - the first time snowdrop bulbs have ever come up for many years, so it was worth persisting and planting some yet again!
You can tell it's much warmer too, or was then, as we didn't need hat or scarf. Note the daffodil bud above my head, and a really fat hyacinth budding behind me. Alice saw and heard a bee buzzing over it just the other day, but it flew off before she could get her camera.
2. Answer to the bellows puzzle. If you don't remember seeing it first time round, click here.
I'm on an Edinburgh tram and the "bellows" are the big hinges between the carriages, which move when it goes round corners. [Do please click on me.] 
To the right is a view looking up the inside of the tram as it went up a slope. The controversial trams are faster than the buses, as they have right of way and don't stop so often, but they're only of any use on a very limited route. There's been talk of extending it. The picture on the left is from a Wikipedia article on Articulated Buses - bendy to you and me. There's an explanation (of sorts) by Hübner here.
3. Alices' funeral hat was finally recovered! It had found its way to our Harvieston friend. Remember him? Here he is in full Wallace outfit. Do click on this one for the sheer glory of it. Alice took that photo when we went to see the giant smelly plant - oops, sorry, the Titum Arum - which had come out (a rare event) for just a few days in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.
Nowadays he is heavily into fairies and their lore: there are dozens, in various poses, all around. Here we are sitting in the hat beside one such charming young creature.
Then we had to go outside and admire the snowdrops, to keep Ba happy. I have to admit, they were beautiful, and our friend kindly picked a bunch for us to take home.We found a pretty little vase to put them in, and they were complemented by the arrangement of hyacinths (indoor bulbs which came up then fell over) and some jolly supermarket daffs.
4. This "someone else" we mentioned at the start was added to our little family back in February. Dear BB8, whom we so very much enjoyed seeing in the latest Star Wars blockbuster. She (I'm told she's a she) came via another member of the family, as a birthday present - well, she was on our Wish List . . .Even Ba, who doesn't go to the cinema (too noisy, too bright, too fast) nevertheless seems to have accepted her. Maybe that's because they share the communication feature of a non-human language - ?
And we have good old R2-D2 as well! Just like Ba, who was rescued from a "REDUCED" box at the Bradford Media Museum, he came cut price as well. Even worse than that, he was attached to a USB cable so he could hoover up dust on one's computer desktop.
He performed that task extremely badly, so he's recently been cut loose. Hurrah!
5. Alice is getting tired, typing rather slowly with more errors than is her wont, and complaining loudly that she needs her supper, so we'll be brief with the rest. Very brief. We'll just squeeze in a couple of cultural events.
Alice was delighted that Mad Max: Fury Road got oodles of awards, as it was one of her top favourites. But she gasped aloud when Stephen Fry made his "joke" about Jenny Beavan looking like a Bag Lady. We thought she looked super in her biker jacket! And her costume designs were fabulous, too. But hey, it certainly got a lot of people talking about the more fundamental issues around acceptable female attire at these glitzy events.
We also went to the theatre: not a common outing for us as it's so much more expensive than the cinema, added to which Alice is often quite disappointed - she has such terribly high standards I'm afraid.
We even went three nights in a row (yes!) to see all three parts of the historical James Plays, written by the lovely and talented Rona Munro. Alice had unfortunately missed them when they were originally performed at the Edinburgh Festival, as she was "Underground" much of 2014.
Now the oven's been "warming up" for hours without anything in it, so that's it for today!
