There was a magical predawn sky. It had a cosmic feel about it.

It almost looked like there was a galaxy on display above the horizon.

I rose to let the three dogs out and get a photo. The phone camera does not work well in dim skies.

Then a screech owl began screaming not too far below the house.

That lasted a little while, and then all went quiet again.

Last night was the Harvest Moon. When I awoke—often—the night forest was bleached in cold light. Occasional shafts of bright moonbeams penetrated the still leafy canopy. They would light the forest floor like spotlights.

I had a horrible dream just before waking in the dark.

The bookstore was in apocalyptic condition. The concrete floors had piles of drywall dust—grey and ugly, and dotted with black screws.

Junk, boxes and trash abounded.

I was confused. Had something happened? A storm or bomb. Or was it just being constructed? There was urgency to get things cleaned up so we could open on time.

A truck was halfway in one of the loading docks. I would need to back it in, but it would be tricky. The front was on a trailer. The vehicle was askew and there was no space to straighten it out. The front was in tight against the trailer wall and the rear was angled toward the cinderblock wall.

There were employees. I could hear their voices, but they were always out of sight behind large packing crates, piles of boxes, stacks of bookcases. The space was filled with junk. How would this ever become a bookstore?

A new employee whom I had never seen before began singing an obscene song.

“Send him home.”

I began sweeping leaves and other debris off a loading dock onto the ground below.

There was despair, as the task was just too great to complete. I was dejected at that failure.

The housekeeper texted at 7:06 am. She can’t come today for her bimonthly visit. What a relief. I don’t have to pre-clean this morning.

I wonder why I felt so crappy last evening and then all night.

Too much stress?

Wednesday was another miserable day. Not sure why, but I found it stressful and painful to be at “work.”

The big project I think has wormed its way into my psyche. Is it too big? What can happen to hurt or even destroy us? Paralyzing.

Yesterday was the insurance meeting day. All the employees met individually with reps about their health care options. My routine and territory was shaken. There was nowhere to hide.

There was drippy rain when I awoke this morning. Maybe I’ll plant some more hellebores and lungwort on the mound on my way out. It is far down the driveway. I dug up some seedlings in anticipation last night, though I felt miserable. Dinner was a chopped up head of romaine lettuce with some Italian dressing poured over it.

There were vivid dreams last night. One seemed very long. Was I walking from Annapolis via Rockville to Frederick?

It began in a college lobby with dozens of people. I wanted to leave, but I was told, “You can’t go out that way.” I returned in a little while and just walked out. “You can’t go out that way!”

I walked up a steep asphalt path overlooking a brightly lit sports field. The way got steeper and steeper until I had to bend and use my hands and feet to continue. The path then descended into a neighborhood.

The journey continued through creepy, decrepit 1930s homes. Through dead-end backyards until finally, there was a major street ahead. Commercial buildings were lit up like the 1960s. I went into one of them, a furniture store. The two owners, middle-aged men with fluffy permed hair, were closing up. I asked, “Is this Georgia Avenue?” They said it was, and I went out onto the sidewalk and continued walking west into the sunset that didn’t end.

When I let the dogs out just after dawn, Pip RAN out of his pen and dashed down the steps and onto the driveway with his tail wagging and a pep in his step.

Miraculous! It has been three years of decline and experimenting with different drugs under the care of six or seven vets. He looks trim, and his demeanor is perky. He is still mostly blind. For the first time in over a month, he was able to climb the four steps onto the porch and inside.

“Good boy!”

I feel better, too. Ten hours of sleep. And maybe the pernicious cold that accompanied me back from Scotland has finally left the scene—with its final burst of misery.

Scotland.

Time to finish the story of the trip.

We left Grasmere and drove through miles and miles of rolling hills dotted with sheep. Our wonderful guide, Nici, had gone into the village before everything closed at 4 and bought us each a package of the wonderful gingerbread.

We’d been treated to some of the shortbread at Rydal Mount, where the Wordsworths lived from 1813 until their deaths (William passed in 1850, and Dorothy in 1855). It is somewhere between a thick cookie and a firm cake.

I’ve already tried to order some online but they aren’t shipping due to tariffs.

My last breakfast at the Daffodil Hotel was delightful.

They served Bury Black Pudding, poached eggs and bacon. Most pudding you’re served at English/ Scottish/Irish breakfast is kind of dry, and has the texture of sawdust and the taste of cardboard. This was excellent blood sausage. The dining room overlooks the lawns and Lake Grasmere beyond. Through the mist, you can see the far shore of the lake, apparently largely unpopulated.

Our first stop was Gretna Green. It is right on the border of England and Scotland. Scotland has looser marriage laws, and Gretna Green became famous for elopements or “runaway marriages.” The age of consent is 16. Young brides or grooms would run away from home in hopes of reaching Gretna Green before being caught by their parents. Scotland is also known for “irregular marriages.” “Trial” marriages were an agreement which lasted a year and a day. After that, the couple could part or get formally married.

The little town is still the site for thousands of marriages each year. It also doubles as a tourist stop. There’s a huge sculpture of two hands entwined with a ribbon (handfasting).

There are also anvils set about in some of the shops or in public places.

An anvil wedding refers to a type of clandestine marriage that took place in Scotland, particularly in Gretna Green, where couples could marry without parental consent by simply declaring their vows in front of witnesses. The ceremony often involved a blacksmith, who symbolically concluded the marriage by striking an anvil, representing the forging of their union.

We had arrived early at the shopping/marriage center. Some of my little group purchased shortbread, scarves, and other bits and bobs. As we were getting ready to return to the bus, four or five other buses arrived, and out poured out larger groups of various nationalities. The shortbread sold like hotcakes.

We traveled through more beautiful countryside, crossing and recrossing the Scottish border. That reminded me of The Border Ballads, like Sir Patrick Spens and Thomas the Rhymer. Oddly, a nice collection arrived on one of my carts last weekend.

The next destination was Abbotsford. Sir Walter Scott’s writings, of course, are full of fantasy—and you can see it reflected in the way he built his house. Indeed, it was his writing that paid for it all. He was the J.K. Rowling of the early 19th century. His books sold like… hotcakes. Most middle and upper class 19th century homes in the U.S. had a set of the Waverly Novels. I inherited the set that had always been in my grandparents’ home—built by my carpenter great-grandfather in San Marcos, Texas. There’s a story I wrote long ago about that here. We see a lot of Waverly sets. Sadly, it is very difficult to sell Scott in this century. While Dickens has held up well, most vintage Scott editions get relegated to Books By the Foot unless they are special editions or have high-end bindings.

We made our way from the parking lot toward the visitor center. Off to one side, there was a kind of playground. It was called “Witch Corner.” Witches were certainly a “thing” in old Scotland. Think of Macbeth.

There was a painting that belonged to Scott. He had a vast collection of rare books on witchery.

Sadly, it seems most witches were falsely accused—often by spouses who wished to dissolve an unhappy marriage.

Tests like dunking were used to prove witchcraft. If a woman drowned being dunked, she was innocent. If she survived, she was burned.

The tour group took lunch upstairs in the center. I chose to wander around. There’s a museum and a shop on ground level. The museum was interesting, displaying information about Scott’s lifetime, as well as some of his books and personal artifacts.

There was an evocative painting of a very young Walter Scott with the other giant of Scottish writing, Robert Burns.

Then I went outside to wander a bit. Scott’s estate is on the Tweed River and the beeches in the forest drew me as if they were anthropomorphic beings—like Ents. I’ve been attracted to beeches my whole life for some reason. It was much later that the word book was derived from ancient words for beech.

The following is from Wikipedia’s “Book” entry:

The word book comes from the Old English bōc, which in turn likely comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate to “beech”. In Slavic languages like Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian буква bukva—”letter” is cognate with “beech”. In Russian, Serbian and Macedonian, the word букварь (bukvar’) or буквар (bukvar) refers to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood. The Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant “block of wood”.

Some years ago, I started a long story about a beech tree and books and Denmark, where the word for beech and book is “bog.” It. It was called “Tree Song,” and sadly, I haven’t returned to it.

Back to Scott and Scotland. There was a gate barring my way into the walled gardens. It required a code to open it. Magically, my guide, Nici, appeared. She reached over and unlatched the thing.

“You have a ticket. You can go in.”

So while my tour mates were lunching, I was in a magic garden overlooking a fairytale castle.

Gardens tend to fade as autumn approaches, but the gardener here had not let go. It was perfect. As I wandered the paths, I was pleased to find that I could identify many of the plants, and I chastised myself for those plants whose names I couldn’t dredge up from memory.

Then it was time to rendezvous. We were led to the baronial mansion’s entrance by a high-spirited Scottish woman—our local guide.

She overflowed with information. Scott, in addition to being a writer and scholar, was also a collector. Am I misremembering, or did he really go to the battlefield of Waterloo and pick up armor and artifacts? There were wood-paneled rooms filled with built-in bookcases, art work and display cases containing things like the crucifix that Mary Queen of Scots held when her head was chopped off.

Weaponry spanning the ages hung upon the walls. “That’s the sword of Rob Roy,” our guide said at one point.

It is a magical place, created by a genius with an immense imagination.

The tour finished with a whisky (when you’re discussing Scotch, there is no “e” in whiskey) tasting in a bower at the top of the garden overlooking the perfect turrets.

I have a lot of notes about this place. I just don’t know how much you can stand.

From there, it was on to Edinburgh. I’d visited there a few years ago on another Globus tour, but I certainly didn’t mind going again. The guides always talk about different things and have different spins.

We pulled up to the venerable George Hotel. The doormen and bellmen—and, well, everyone—was kilted. Nici handed us our room keys. The bags would be taken up to the rooms for us. I hurried up the elevator, dumped my knapsack in the room and headed out.

The National Portrait Gallery was just around the corner, and I immersed myself in the art there. One of the most potent images was the execution of King Charles the First. The people on this island! When they weren’t burning people, they were chopping their heads off with plenty of extra torture to enhance the experience.

The tour had an optional dinner—a traditional Haggis affair with bagpipes and sword dancing.
“Hoot man!” and bonnie lassies…

I’d done that last trip. So the evening was mine to do what I pleased.

So I put on a nice sweater and headed out to find my own dinner and see the nightlife.

Saturday night in Edinburgh. Buses bring in loads of people from the small towns and countryside. Some are chartered. Others have a small city’s name above the windshield and come and go on schedules. The sidewalks are packed. Tourists, locals, hen parties, dating couples. What I wanted to eat became more of a question of where I COULD eat.

“Sorry, we’re booked…”

I ended up walking and walking. Faces flashed by on the sidewalks. A common theme seemed to be “looking to get drunk.” A lot of that was women in pairs or small groups. (Maybe the men were already drunk inside). Some seemed to be dressed for birthday parties or bridal celebrations. Pink cowboy costumes seemed popular, with matching pink cowboy hats on each party member’s head. I’d pass a pub or bistro and look in the window.

“Too wild… too crowded…”

Then I found myself crossing the bridge into Old Town. Is it like this every Saturday night? I headed up the Royal Mile and then down steep steps to the Grass Market.

Places there either didn’t look good enough for me or appeared too fancy and busy to accept a single with no reservations. Eventually I headed back to the New Town (which is very old). It had been a long day and my legs were tiring. Edinburgh is not flat.

I was well over 25,000 steps. Eventually I got back to the neighborhood of my hotel. A hundred yards up from the hotel, there’s a square with a park and someone’s statue high, high, high atop a column. Around the square, there are a number of restaurants.

“Sorry, we’re booked…”

It was getting late. I looked in The Ivy’s window. There was a lot of room at the bar. I approached the very young woman at the podium, the gatekeeper who decides who gets in and who does not.

“May I just sit at the bar?”

She looked doubtful, then looked inside, and eventually led me to the end seat at the bar.

“You can have this stool.” As if it was my only option.

I climbed onto it and was met by fronds from huge potted plants literally caressing my head. I moved to the next stool, risking eviction.

Eventually a bartender deigned to notice me, and I ordered a martini.

“Can I order food here?”

A menu was set before me, and the choices were sublime. I’ve dined at The Ivy near Covent Garden, known for famous actors and writers’ customs.

Stress and the sense of not belonging melted away with each small sip of crystal liquid.

It turned out to be an iconic meal and worth every step of the long roundabout route I took getting there.

The next day began with a bus tour. There was a women’s marathon that day, so many roads were closed or blocked. That sent our bus to some secondary sites. Our local guide was on the microphone at the front of the bus.

“That house with the red door was the home of Robert Louis Stevenson.”

Some think Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is modeled on the differences between the degraded Old Town and respectable New Town of Edinburgh. Others think the model is Deacon Brodie:

In his tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, one of the first ‘psychological’ thrillers, R.L.S. portrays how two contradictory personalities – one conventional and ‘good’, the other an example of increasingly uncontrolled ‘evil’ – can coexist in one body. It is said that this was an idea modelled on the late 18th century case of Deacon Brodie, a respectable Edinburgh businessman by day who was a gambler, adulterer, armed robber and murderer by night – and nobody knew until he bungled a robbery, was eventually caught and hanged on a gallows of his own invention!

We were also told he was a respected locksmith who installed locks by day and used his skills to unlock them at night.

The tour ended with us climbing the Royal Mile to the castle. There, our guide left us to our devices.

I headed to the Museum of Scotland, which is enormous and has on display everything from dinosaur bones to the guillotine that once stood in the city square. I enjoyed the Celtic and Pict artifacts. The Lewis Chessmen evoked how similar we are to ancients in many ways.

From there, I crossed to Greyfriars. There are many connections to J.K. Rowling’s creation of the Harry Potter epic in this area. From the Elephant Cafe, where she wrote the beginnings of the story, to the Greyfriars Kirkyard, where many of the tombstones inspired her character names.

Adjacent to the graveyard is the Heriot School, which could very well be the inspiration for Hogwarts, its student body wandering the hallowed grounds in robes.

I enjoy wandering through graveyards and reading tombstones, thinking of my plot.

Then it was time to move on and find a bathroom. I recalled a comfortable pub I’d enjoyed on my last visit. What was its name? Tolkien-inspired or literary? The phone can tell me! I scrolled back through photos…

Finnegan’s Wake! I descended into the Grass Market to find it. It seems there were preteen bagpipers busking on corners about a quarter mile apart, just far enough that their screeching didn’t overlap.

And there it was. I entered from the heavily crowded Sunday afternoon streets. My hand was on my wallet in my front pocket. The space was large and dark and cool. It was virtually empty. It’s as much a sports bar as a pub. TVs were showing soccer and F1 racing. When I went back to the bar for a second pint, I asked if they had any hoodies. (When I visited last time, they only had a couple T-shirts, and those were too small.)

They did!

Now I have a new favorite hoodie in the Roberts Collection of Important Hoodies.

Then it was time for the long walk from Old Town to the Hotel George to rendezvous with our guide for an optional junket to the Royal Yacht Britannia. On the last visit, I had walked all the way to where it is permanently docked, but I hadn’t thought touring it was worth the bother.

The vessel is as much a navy ship as a yacht. A map displayed all the ship’s world tours, carrying Queen Elizabeth and other royals to visit Commonwealth nations as well as other ports. Guests who had been aboard range from Churchill and Gandhi to the Clintons.

Walking through the decks and staterooms was like visiting another layer of the human condition. Style and grace and duty was evident at every step.

That pretty much covers the trip.

The next morning, we left Edinburgh and crossed the Firth of Forth into the County of Fife.

Thursday afternoon.

I’m toast. I think the housekeeper is still working. I don’t wanna go home.

This day has been perhaps the most stressful in recent memory. I had to put on my “rainmaker,” “problem solver” and “production maximizer” hats.

So, I stopped at Showroom, the Voltaggio restaurant that used to be Family Meal. Before that, the building was a Nissan showroom. Before that, it was the Frederick Oldsmobile showroom. Before that is ancient history.

A hundred yards away sits the property I owned for a few years that was to be the ill-fated Frederick City Farm. The aborted book bar/brewery was there. Perhaps Covid was the best thing to happen to that project—it became clear that this was NOT a good idea. The property was marketed. It was purchased by a nonprofit, and we moved on.

So it goes.

The afternoon sun is pouring in through the former car dealership’s giant windows, and I am bathed in the light of my nearby failed fantasy.

That seems to be a theme in my life.

But no risk, no reward.

Tomorrow, Friday, will be a major production. Can we pull off the “BD”?

Can it double our gross?

Will it double my stress and work?

I don’t need the money.

I don’t need the stress or the work.

I DO need the challenge. If I don’t accept the thrown down gauntlet, I could cease to be relevant. If I’m no longer relevant, move my corpse into… whatever the living hereafter is. Living death?

I’m home.

My housekeeper was still here when I got in. She never stops. Every 2-3 months my home gets polished, and my shame is washed away.

“Can I come tomorrow and finish?”

“Yes,” I said, and then I took the truck down to the mound I’m trying to turn into a garden. I swung the adze into the sterile, stony soil. My predecessor piled a mound here, I’m told, because his daughter slid off the drive and into a tree at that spot. That was 25 years ago or more. The mound is now an anomaly. Three of the five or six redbuds that I dug in have survived. There are daffodils dormant beneath the soil. But there’s very little surviving on the surface of the bare mound.

It is Friday. Almost 8 a.m. The dawn was a subtle, warm orange.

It is the coldest it has been since last spring. 39 degrees.

I tossed and turned all night. Brainstorming. Worrying. Wondering if we can pull this off.

Well, we are off and running. Let’s see if we can complete the marathon.