Die deutsche Version findet ihr HIER, zusammen mit Teil 11.
A short part, our last day at Mountquhanie Estate.
There is also a dog on the farm, a completely uneducated, black, smooth-furred island dog named Moy, who is beautiful but excruciatingly annoying. While eating, he playfully bites our legs under the table and tears everything off the table that is not nailed down, if you leave him alone in the kitchen. Once he spreads half a pound of butter on the floor and sprinkled it with the contents of a large bag of peanuts (peanut butter, hehe).
[I can’t remember the older boys, maybe they weren’t even there, just the two girls and the baby.] The girls have ponies that look very fat. I express the desire to ride, so of course the two girls also want to and put on their fancy riding gear, only to ride an ungroomed pony bareback. The animals have not been ridden for a long time and obviously want to leave it at that. Believe it or not, we have to shove them out of the paddock!
Once outside, they show themselves more willing. I’m sitting on the bigger pony with one of the girls behind me. It could be very funny if Moy (the dog) weren’t chasing after us snapping at the pony. When he then bites into the tail of our pony and lets himself be dragged along, it’s too much for the horse. It jumps into the air a few times with all fours (with two riders !!!) and kicks out, with the result that Moy runs away, howling. The pony must have hit him hard. We see him chase around the house a couple of times like a black lightning and then disappear into it. The rest of the day he remains unseen, as does my riding companion. Of course we fell off during the bucking, but we didn’t fall deep and into soft grass. Anyway, I have the pony to myself for the rest of the time. And Moy is unlikely to venture near a pony again anytime soon.
Felicity is now planning her vacation trip. Her choice falls on Cyprus, from where, because of the war, all foreigners are being evacuated. (But nowadays it is no longer called war, but ’conflict’.) She loves to go where there are not so many tourists and where there is something to experience. (I find this snobbery inappropriate. After all, people are dieing there!)
On our last day in Mountquhanie, a new au pair arrives, Francesca from Edinburgh. The girls hope that she is not a ’Beauty Queen’, because those are useless.
In the evening the five of us go to the pub (Jim with four women, he enjoyed that …) [ I think Caroline the secretary was the fourth woman], for a welcome drink for Francesca and a farewell drink for us, because we want to leave the next day. I think it’s pretty boring because the conversation is almost all gossip. Francesca is very nice. There is only one thing I don’t like: she sometimes underlines her stories by squinting, sticking out her tongue and biting on it. That should be ’cute’ for sure, but after the umpteenth time it loses its charm and looks silly (at least to me, maybe men see it differently). Anyway, Jim seems very taken with her. And he finally gives us a plausible answer to the question why one puts milk in one’s tea: „Because otherwise it is too hot!“
[At that time the estate was mainly used for agriculture, at least that’s how I remember it. Nowadays rooms in the manor house and cottages on the estate are rented out to tourists, often golf tourists. (It’s close to St. Andrews, the Scottish Gulf Mecca.) In my opinion, the rooms didn’t look as nice as on the website at the time, but maybe I just didn’t see them. We all ate together in the kitchen. However, the link does not work anymore, Mountquhanie does not appear on that B&B website anymore.]
(To be continued)
Stella, oh, Stella 