portals

Of the two places on standby for breakfast-place-choice duty today the Elephant House won on the grounds of doing better coffee than the alternative, having comfier tables, a better atmosphere, better views from the window and no instances of having been excessively grumpily-staffed in the past. I had a mere roll to the parents' large plates of greasy crap but it's a nice place to sit even without fried innards to be occupied with. They had passed and were suitably appalled by schoolchildren dressed in quasi-military uniforms on the way from the hotel; it seems to be a popular thing round here on Fridays for posher-schooled children to dress up militarily, presumably for some sort of immoral regime of indoctrination at an early age. Almost enough to put one of breakfast were it not nice and tasty. Mother trundled off to the flat whilst father and I went to the Hub (then round the block a few times until it opened) to get the festival tickets booked for his normal visit in August. Despite having forgotten what the various symbols marking various events meant I was able to work them out sufficiently to be able to get the right amounts of tickets for things on the right days, with only a little re-shuffling for booked-out events and dates where better discounts than the standard work-derived ten per cent were available. A pity the website still doesn't cope with the discount code but the seating plans the staff had were slightly better, indicating where pillars would be in the way in the Queen's Hall and which seats were likely to be unsuitable for the large elder-legs of the father-parent.

After a return to the flat to await the arrival of the other set of parents followed by various cups of tea and flapping about who would go where and when, everyone except Nicky's dad trundled down the Innocent Railway to the architectural salvage yard on Duddingston Road. We do need some doors at some point but I have so far failed to stick the measurements into my phone to be able to tell if anything we see is suitable. They also had a nice set of wooden organ-pipes which my dad would probably have seriously considered getting one or two of if he hadn't been going back on the train; it would probably make quite a good neighbour-annoying wind-sculpture if properly aligned, though the large amounts of tree tend to absorb the wind in their garden. He's also looking for the metal bits of a Victorian-style garden bench, similarly something he wouldn't be able to take away with him but also something they didn't have.

After returning, severely reducing the volume on the radio to protect the speakers and everyone else's ears at the expense of Nicky's dad being able to hear it the Nicky-parents returned to their own home whilst ours went back to their hotel in order to transfer their stuff to a different branch for their last night seeing as the original had been full over the weekend when they booked. I'm not sure which method they eventually chose but it was easily-walkable, though explaining directions on maps to my mother is often surprisingly difficult considering she should be reasonable spatially-aware as a postal delivery-entity. They then walked most of the way back over for some food at Monster Mash, currently free of obstinately grumpy staff.