Bleak House

If I ever wanted to take a photograph and put it on this blog (I will figure it out one day), it's now that I've moved house. My new house is known as "Top House", and requires us to drive up and down a bumpy and muddy mountain road to get to work every day. It is rumoured that the house is an ancient shepherd house, believable due to the flocks of sheep which wander the hills around. Inside, it's dark and pokey, has a stairway as steep as a ladder, and my bed is under an eave on the top floor. It's not quite the attic! Otherwise, I would have been a GENUINE scullery maid! As the landscape around is a picture of quiet Scottish winter - grey skies and bare, brave trees, there is only one word that comes to mind: bleak. With apologies to the great man, the literture which accompanies the thought is not Dickens, but Bronte... Wuthering Heights. Sometimes I look out the window and expect to see Heathcliff standing on yonder hill, his black cloak flapping in the wind.

I would be hard pressed to find two more gentlemanly gentlemen as two of the Slovak boys I live and work with. They have persuaded me that Slovakia ought to be, without a doubt, on my list of nations to visit before I die. How beautiful, and how interesting!! Hmm... watch this space!

I will soon be returning to the city for good. I don't know how to say this without sounding very sweet, but I will really miss the heilan' hairy coo's and their calves outside my window! (A very melodious alarm clock!)

This Post is awarded the Corny title of "Winter Wonderland"

Last night, it snowed. Yesterday, the world was green and brown and grey, and the sheep were whitish blobs on the field outside my window. Today, an unearthly white covers everything and the sheep are kind of muddy. It's definitely much more fun to have snow in a place that you have lived for a while, and to see the transformation, rather than just visit a snowy place. I still don't have the right boots for this weather but my coats and scarves are holding up alright! Speaking of coats and scarves, I made it back to Edinburgh on my day off this week, where EVEN THE SCOTS are wearing winter gear. It's officially winter!

On my way back from Edinburgh, on the bus between that fair city and Glasgow, I had the honour of sitting next to a lovely Brazilian lady, who ACTUALLY holds a current Guiness World Record. For body piercings. She has 4000 piercings. We had a very interesting chat about spiritual things and faith, but I don't think she was too impressed with my belief in Jesus (amazing how few people are), even when I shocked myself with my own boldness and told her I believed in Jesus so firmly I would die for it.

She is also a fortune teller, and I wasn't quite sure what the polite thing was to do when she began to tell me my 'fortune'. It was a bit shocking, as a couple of the things she said sounded right. Until she looked at me and said "You're losing your faith, aren't you?". It was dark and warm and noisy in the bus, her voice soft and persuasive, and it seemed like only a distant warning bell which chimed out: She's not speaking on her own. It's a lie. I said, "I'm not losing my faith". I wasn't afraid, but I wasn't exactly happy either. I took my Bible out of my bag: "Everything you say to me, I will check against this, because this is the Truth". I may be a bit dramatic, but it was good to say that. A lot more was said, but I can't remember it accurately enough to record it. I just know I wasn't a hero, I was desperate. I couldn't feel Him, but the Lord protected me then. Always, when I speak and move and think, He's there, more than enough.