Union Canal at Ratho
We went out for a stroll yesterday, a start to working off the festive chocolate glut. It wasn’t a huge walk, just three miles alongside the Union Canal from Ratho, but it was enjoyable.
It’s a while since I/we’ve been there. Some new houses and a marina on one side of the bridge caught me unawares, but on the eastern side, the one we walked, the only change was a path has been laid to replace to previous muddy track. The narrow boat owners weren’t out on the canal, but canoeists were, powering their way through the murky water.
It wasn’t especially busy, but there were a pleasing number of friendly dogs looking for ear scratches and chin rubs.
Goosander
Bird life was unexciting, and there was no sign at all of aquatic life until, towards the end of our walk, a handsome pair of goosander put in an appearance.
Unfortunately there was no room at the Bridge Inn for lunch.
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For some reason, not long after the bells at New Year, I found myself pondering mortality and transience. Partly, I think, this came from an awareness that the older one gets, and with each passing regular ‘event’, the shorter life seems; partly also it was because of the death of my uncle over the holiday period; and partly it came from reading Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived.
Perhaps it was thoughts of transience, or perhaps it was just getting round to it at last, but for whatever reason I spent last night working out the basics of Robin Dransfield’s Fair Maids of February, one of those songs I come back to again and again and again.
From the darkness of winter, the first flowers to venture
And now you’re lying beneath the snow
Fair Maids of February are snowdrops.
The song covers, or hints at, a lot of things, and I catch different resonances every time I listen to it or read the words. Robin and his brother Barry, individually or as a duo, have so many good songs.
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