Nessie

Last week, I said a lot of things in my blog, and the last thing I said was “I’ll give you a taste of it next time.” “It” meaning Edinburgh and Scotland. I knew at the time that our vacation in Scotland would be over, that we’d have flown to Ireland, and by the time I sat down to write this week’s blog, the historical novel conference would be a done deal.

All that is true. The thing is, I failed to consider the amount of time it would take to craft the “next time” post. To start with, my photos are all on my phone, they’re not in the cloud, I am not connected (tech-wise), the short of it being, I’ve got a long way to go before I get my post on Scotland up here. A couple, three weeks maybe, when the tour stops. There are no empty moments on this trip.

I gave you my word, though. So here is a taste. Celeste and I took one day off from Edinburgh and took a bus tour up into the Highlands, with Loch Ness as our destination. This was the highlight of the trip for me. I’ve always wanted to see Loch Ness. You see, I have this weird visualization thing where when I read about or see pictures of a place I’ve not been to, every subsequent time I see or hear about this place, it grows bigger and bigger in my mind. So at 71 years old, Loch Ness has grown huge. The only way to stop one of these places from getting bigger is for me to visit it, which always brings the place down to size. So that’s one reason I was looking forward to this trip. The other is my grandson, the one who is into dinosaurs.

Maybe a month or so ago, during his evening bath, he pulled a soft Loch Ness Monster out from among his bath toys. It was a new toy, and I am always keen to talk about new toys, so we start talking about the monster. And in the course of our conversation, I tell him I’m going to Loch Ness and maybe I’ll see the monster, or then again maybe I wouldn’t. After he got over his worry that Grandma would be no match against a real monster (I told him I would be careful), on subsequent bath nights, we always talked about Nessie. To the extent that in a peculiar way (but not to me), I was taking my grandson with me on the day we went to Loch Ness.

If that sounds weird, here comes the next part. I go into the gift shop and find a green plastic Nessie just waiting to be freed from her gift shop jail. And right then I decide that Nessie will accompany me on all my sightseeing in Scotland and Ireland and Japan. It turns out she is not camera shy and manages to stick her nose in every other photo I’ve taken so far. When Nessie, the plastic prehistoric animal, gets home and I hand it over to my grandson, she’ll come complete with so many adventures to tell, with all these photos on my phone to back up her stories.

It’s my grandson’s birthday in a couple of days, and since I’m not there to celebrate with him, I thought we could all sing “Happy Birthday” to him here. If we sing loud enough, maybe he’ll hear us, especially if Mom starts us off. OK, everybody, here we go … “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Ryland, happy birthday to you!”

Happy 4th birthday, Ryland. I hope you have a fun, fun day. I wish I was there with you. So does Nessie.

This week’s musical interlude is from Todd Rundgren …