Thursday 8th June 2023
By great good mercy, my tartan tracksuit arrived in time, having been scheduled not to. What a quality of fabric! So springy and shiny. American.
Laura Malcolm insisted on walk-on luggage only. I nearly broke down with the planing – lobbying at Malin Goetz for sample sachets, only one spare pair of shoes, the tartan tracksuit (too bad the clash with the tartan topcoat by Oliver Spencer which everybody adores but I think a sack), for the Sunday repeating items from the Friday travelling outfit; finally on the Monday wearing all day the suit by Sandro (grease stain on the elbow from the club lunch with Rufus Pitman: phoned Val who said tetracarbon’s been banned for home use) because direct from the airport I was diarised to go to a nurturing dinner for American Patrons at our favourite museum.
I don’t like to admit it, but existing from a tiny case for three days – well, it was soothing. No great dynastic caravan of possessions, the agony of maintenance, archiving, scheduling and control as well as dragging about. Just the little box with everything in it, neat and contained. Reduced, the items somehow more precious.
On arrival the Laird gave us our individual laminated cards displaying the number of the minibus. He is now self-identified as Gay although not including any trousers-down type of work of course. At Loch Lomond calling-card-sized cards of premium quality were distributed telling us of the next departure time. We took a ferry across the Loch to Luss. There were islands where nobody lives. One of them had rare birds nesting but you couldn’t see them. The general theme was the Nature and its glory. We dined at Lake of Mentieth which is the only Lake in Scotland. There were islands there too, one of which had once had Mary, Queen of Scots on it, on the run from somewhere or other.
The style of service at the dinner was novel. Scotland is a Socialist country but the view of the Lake from the dining table was unsurpassed. Possibly attention could have been paid to the state of the carpet. The breakfast buffet table was already in place with an odd hotpotch of cloths unartfully arranged with gaps through which the mini-packets of disastrous breakfast cereals could be glimpsed. The waiter said, ‘What do you want now?’ with undisguised impatience. We said, ‘Cheese,’ so a bundle of knives was dumped down. The actual cheese was first class though.
After dinner we visited some Lake-side friends of the Lairds (he is one of the Three Scottish Tenors) in their new modern house which showed clearly the influence of Virgil Grayson. Below was a straight hedge marking where a running track had been made by the former owners (magnates of some kind) for Eric Liddell to practise on. The magnates are now gone and the estate split up with Socialist progress.

The Lake of Mentieth from the hotel garden

The Lake of Mentieth: The island in the distance once Sheltered Mary, Queen of Scots
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