Rock Choir, West Parliament Stage

A trip into the city today firstly to see Barbara perform as part of the Rock Choir productions at the Fringe this year. She was part of the ensemble singing on the stage. A large crowd gathered to watch who, we came to realise, were a flash mob of yet more Rock Choir singers who promptly joined in. Great fun and very good, enthusiastic singing.

From there we walked to John Lewis to lunch seeing as we had a free drink and cake voucher to use up by the end of the month. A grey, dreich day in Edinburgh, couldn’t even see the Firth of Forth from the fourth or fifth floor (bit of a tongue twister there) of John Lewis.

A brief look around for children’s clothes was unproductive so we set off to walk to the Botanical Gardens to see the Lost Words Exhibition in Inverkeith House. The exhibition celebrates the work of author Robert Macfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris who are making a concerted effort to bring back the natural world into children’s lives

“Imagine a childhood without gerbils, goldfish, guinea pigs, hamsters, herons, larks, or leopards; where even the idea of these things had been replaced by practical modern concepts like celebrity, vandalism, negotiate, interdependent, and creep. This is the world of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, whose current edition has dropped all the old words in the first list, and added all the new ones”

It’s a sobering thought but one which Macfarlane and Morris are determined to do something about. I think I read that funds were raised to put one of the Lost Words books into every school in Scotland. Not sure about anywhere else. An admirable ambition and one which seems to be catching the imagination of teachers and others who are determined to make the natural environment count in a world where money trumps (and I use that in whatever context you care to think) every other consideration.