Easter Sunday technology challenge

It is all about the breakfast. There were the wonderfully colorful eggs - part smuggled from Poland, part local production; incidentally, you could spot the Polish ones even when they were stripped off their colorful shells as apparently Polish hens are given carotene to make the egg yellows a deep fluorescent orange. So yes, there were the eggs, a lamp-shaped butter, white sausages and horseradish and lovely Polish ham. Very simple and completely secular - normally all the foods on the table would have been sanctified in the Church earlier that morning. I actually miss that, the preparation of small wicker baskets with a selection of foods representing all foods to be eaten the following year, including salt; the dressing of the baskets in white linen, green branches and flowers adorning them, being carried to the Church proudly by the youngest member of the family. I still remember the enormous baskets with dozens of eggs and entire breadlofs that the peasant women would bring, to ensure that each and every food they were going to serve their guests on this Sunday morning had been made holy.

The simple breakfast table.

The very Polish Easter cake, and a very Scottish fuitcake.

Tatatoes the engineer had his heart set on seeing the Union Canal boat lift, so we ignored the rain and got on a train to Falkirk. I have to admit, it was something worth seeing.

A friendly train driver in Falkirk.

The excellent piece of engineering in motion.

The lift was completed in 2002, and it was opened by the Queen herself. The guide told us that four and a half thousand people stood in the pouring rain as she pressed the red button which released the wheel for the first time; in reality, the button which she operated with such glee was a 4.99 door bell from B&Q. Actually, the wheel was released by people in the control room - but she does not need to know that, bless her dignified octogenarian heart.

A view from the top of the Union Canal towards the North side of the Firth of Forth.

You can take a boat and go on a rainy ride on the Falkirk wheel, and be transported from the Forth & Clyde Canal to the Union Canal in four and a half minutes, while your boat continues to nestle comfortably in what I must call a basin of water. And it is incredibly energy efficient - it takes the energy needed to boil eight electric kettles to complete one turn. Go physics! Yes, I know, I am a geek.


But a happy geek - for when we floated gently down there was a display of hand-reared birds of prey. And they were gorgeous! There was something quite bizzare about having them held down on perches, in equal distance from one another, and yes I did believe they would tear one another apart if it weren't for that. The barn owl would occassionally screech loudly, while the buzzard would try to take off after a pigeon. The kestrel would just spread its wings in the wind and let it lift its light body, in a graceful movement. I just had to hold it, and I did! It was light and beautiful and keen-eyed.

The buzzard.
The sweet kestrel - isn't she beautiful?

The European Eagle Owl, a serious piece of bird.

The screetchy Barn Owl.

I also held the massive European eagle owl - I had to rest my arm on my hip, it was so heavy! But it was also so docile I could stroke it between its lovely feathery ears, although the enormous claws made me quite weary.