A Strange Walk in the Field

Sometime an Emperor just wants to walk in the field ....

I must stop day dreaming ...

Wall Art: Leith, Edinburgh

[I think they are moving house ... doing a flit in the Scottish tongue]

Cherry Blossom Explosion, Dollar Glen, Scotland

 

[The annual explosion of pink Cherry Blossom in the town of Dollar Scotland]

Only in Scotland

[St Andrews, Scotland.]

Into the Frozen North

Pentland Hills, Nr Edinburgh

Dining with Friends

Recently the Emperor was invited to dine with a friend.

I was reminded of a letter from that most famous of statesman, Cicero, written  to his fiend Papirius Paetus in 44 BC:

"I am sorry to hear that you have given up dining out. You have deprived yourself of a great deal of amusement and pleasure. Furthermore (you will not mind me being so candid), I am afraid that you will unlearn what little you used to know, and forget how to give little dinner-parties. ..."

"And really my dear Paetus, all joking apart I advise you, as something which I regard as relevant to happiness, to spend time in honest, pleasant, and friendly company. Nothing becomes life better, or is more in harmony with its happy living. I am not thinking of physical pleasure, but of community of life and habit and of mental recreation, of which familiar conversation is the most effective agent; and conversation is at its most agreeable at dinner-parties. In this respect our countrymen are wiser than the Greeks. They use words literally meaning 'co-drinkings' or 'co-dinings', but we say 'co-livings', because at dinner-parties more than anywhere else life is lived in company. You see how I try to bring you back to dinners by philosophising!"

"Take care of your health - which you will most easily compass by constantly dining abroad." 

[Cicero, Letter to Papirius Paetus]

Shelf Life - Portobello, November 2010

[Iron cast profile of the Cerne Abbas Giant]

Granted that my 'wee man' is not so excited as the ancient original; carved into chalk and measuring 180 feet on a Dorset hillside. However, he is certainly contented looking out over the ever changing light and water that is the Firth of Forth.   

For the Cerne Abbas Giant,

see:  http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-archaeology/w-archaeology-places_to_visit/w-archaeology-cerne_abbas_giant.htm