Travelling Poss 2.

Dad and I went for a drive through the Swan Valley, past all the vineyards, wineries and expensive houses. He and Mum used to live nearby in Midland; it's where they met about 50 years ago.

And then I did a trawl of new and second hand furniture stores looking for a tea trolley on wheels. No luck, though I'm sure they must be out there somewhere.

I made the mistake of calling into Freedom Furniture - that wasn't the mistake, wandering into the Mikasa factory outlet across the car park was. Mikasa have made some lovely art deco style crockery in the past and I was taken by a design called Angles. The 20 piece dinner set was *cough* $210. A tea saucer alone was $9 and that was the factory price! I headed for the clearance table and found another really nice design called Soho Loft which features nice angles and curves and didn't cost $210. The original price was $200 and I got the last set in the shop for less than half that. Not much less than half, mind you, but for the first time in my adult life, I have bought myself a complete set of crockery. Where everything matches.

More Scotland - the Falls of Bruar.

The Falls are about 16k north of Pitlochry. "The woodland surrounding the Bruar gorge is a living memorial to the poet Robert Burns, who came here in 1787 to admire the waterfalls. At that time the steep slopes were bare, so Burns wrote 'The Humble Petition of Bruar Water' in which he urged the Duke of Atholl to plant its bleak banks with trees. When the poet died in 1796, the duke created a 'wild garden' in his memory, planting the riverbanks and establishing paths and bridges." And it's still pretty spectacular.


 










 

Adjacent to the Falls is the House of Bruar, a commercial enterprise which sells very expensive woollen garments, furniture and more kinds of ginger and Turkish Delight than I've seen in one place. And the Ladies toilet was definitely worth a visit - no plastic rubbish bins or metal hand towel dispensers here, just tres tasteful wicker baskets.