I’ve been housesitting off and on for over nine years now. You’d think I would have learned to avoid the pitfalls. And mostly I have. But every now and then I I follow an impulse and end up doing something I regret. Nothing disastrous, just – doh!
Coming to Ireland and the UK in winter was not the brightest thing I’ve ever done perhaps, but I don’t regret that. It has been good for my emotional health.
But one thing I learned very early on in housesitting is, that you will rarely have housesits whose dates dovetail exactly. For the gaps, sometimes it comes down to a choice between a short housesit and a hotel.
This is why I ended up in a hotel in Dublin for a few days after Maynooth. I stayed at the hotel for four nights then went on to a two week housesit in the south of Dublin.
The dogs had to be walked separately and Rolo, the Pomeranian, hurled challenges at every dog he passed, but though he was fierce, he was small enough that controlling him was not hard. Tami, the little black rescue, was nervous, but just hid behind my legs if something scary happened, like another dog approaching. And they were really good cuddlers.
I had lunch with my dear friend Rachel, and dinner with Jinju and Andy again. It was all very peaceful.
When that housesit finished, I had about a week before I started my long housesit in a village called Penn, about 30 minutes northwest of London. I booked an Airbnb in case no suitable housesits offered, but that was going to cost me about $1400. So I kept looking for housesits to fill that the gap.
One came up in Dunfermline, Scotland. It started the day I finished in Dublin, and ended two nights before I was due in Penn. It would still leave a small gap, but generally speaking, people are fine with having a housesitter stay over for a night after the housesit ends. Thrilled to have found something for almost the dates I needed, I applied.
The only question in my mind was, what time were they leaving the day I left Dublin, and would I be able to arrive there in time. I had already booked a flight to London in anticipation of the Airbnb near my next, long housesit.
Sarah and Michael came back right away. They weren’t leaving until the evening and it appeared I could make it, if I traveled all day. They said they would be thrilled to have me come and look after Haggis, their dachshund, as they had never left him with anyone but their parents before, and were reassured by my decades of experience with dogs. I accepted the sit.
As the date grew closer, reality set in, along with the regrets. I would have to leave Dublin around 5:30 in the morning to get my flight to Heathrow. A layover there, then a flight to Edinburgh, arriving early evening. Then a tram into Edinburgh to get the train to Dunfermline. Ugh. Had I not already booked a flight to Heathrow, I could have flown directly to Edinburgh. This deal was getting worse and worse.
Shortly before the date I was due to leave, Sarah and Michael said they would come and pick me up from Edinburgh airport ( about a forty minute drive). This saved me finding the tram and the train and lugging my suitcase up and down railway stairs and platforms. It was extraordinarily generous of them, as they had to turn right around and go back to the airport in Edinburgh, stopping only briefly to show me the house and explain the dog.
The friends thought the backyard was nice, but it would have been wiser to be there in the summer. They were right.
Haggis was adorable.
But he barked at me the entire time Sarah and Michael were there. I figured he would warm up to me. Dogs like me. Well, there was that one German Shepherd in Cuenca, who gave me a rather horrendous bite on my calf, but even he came and showed me his belly once his owner arrived on the scene.
But there was a worry. I was instructed that while Hamish frequently ran upstairs, he had to be carried back down. And once on the bed, he had to be lifted off. They had concerns about his back. I was told that he would not attempt the stairs coming down, once he was up there.
Sure enough, as soon as the owners left, Hamish scampered upstairs and stood at the top, barking defiance at me. I went up to join him. He scurried under the bed in ‘my’ room. I closed all the other doors on the landing and went back downstairs to get some dog treats. I sat at the top of the stairs and cooed to him. He came out, highly suspicious. Once he was engaged with his treat, I jumped up – okay, who am I kidding? The long, arduous day had taken a toll on my hips and knees and in fact, I just slowly stood up, grabbing the banister for balance. It was good enough, since I had put myself between Haggis and the bedroom door. I got that closed and then it was just Haggis and me.
Treats and bribes held tightly between my fingers got him close, but as soon as I reached for him, he would jump back. I pondered various plans of action, then thought “Dachshund – they like to burrow.” I squeezed through a bathroom door, putting my foot up to block Haggis and grabbed a big towel. I dropped that over Haggis. He immediately froze. I carefully lifted him up and took him down the stairs, him growling and barking, but not offering to bite. I closed us into the living room/kitchen area, and collapsed into the wing chair.
I think the presence of that wing chair in the photos on the listing explains 90 percent of my motivation for taking the sit. The other ten percent was wanting to visit Dunfermline Abbey, the burial site of more royal dead than any location in Scotland except for Iona.
The tomb of Robert the Bruce is there. About which, more later.
I then started to stress over whether Haggis would come back inside, once I let him out into the yard for his last pee of the night. The homeowners messaged to see how everything was going. I explained about the towel and my concern about him coming back in.
Sarah told me to just stand at the door and yell “Cheese” and he would come running. funny coincidence – that works on me too.
He did come in, even without cheese and he and I had reached an understanding by the next day. He even slept with my under the covers. Haggis flatly refused to go for a walk, so I didn’t have to organise that.
But as with my last experience in Scotland at the housesit in Aberdeen, this house was in the middle of a suburban hellscape with not a shop or service within walking distance.
I needed a UK SIM card. I had tried unsuccessfully to get one at Heathrow, but that is another whole story. The next day, tired though I was, I had to figure out the bus services, walk in a cold wind to the bus stop, and travel about thirty minutes by bus into the city proper.
I could see all three Forth bridges from a hill near the house.
There was this burst of beauty.
I did get the phone set up with a SIM. I did get some groceries. I did manage some sightseeing. But I was only at this housesit for a total of four days, and it was way, way too much effort to be worth it. Especially since, unlike almost every other housesit I’ve done, it turned out that the next housesit could not have me until the day after I left Dunfermline and there were also reasons why it was not convenient for me to spend that extra night in the house in Dunfermline. So I ended up paying for a hotel near Heathrow for a night.
In the end, between the airfare, the hotel and other things, I ended up spending about the same as I would have done had I just gone straight to the Airbnb I had originally booked.
I’d like to say “Lesson learned”, but hey, it’s me.
Dunfermline town is fairly small, but has some lovely old buildings and winding streets.
The Alhambra Theatre was fun.
I was interested that an old church has been converted to a mosque.
Dunfermline is the birthplace of Andrew Carnegie. The first public library he donated, was to Dunfermline.
You can just glimpse the older bit at the left. It has been added onto in modern times. The original part is not particularly distinguished.
The amount of Carnegie’s wealth converted to today’s currency is staggering – over 300 billion dollars. He had his share of scandals. His fortune was founded on insider trading tips from his mentor, Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railway. Scott also showed him the value of payoffs. Carnegie’s company was involved in union busting – strikers were killed – and he and his ‘Sports Club” buddies were instrumental in causing the Jonestown flood disaster.
But he was famously generous, giving away something like 90% of his fortune before his death. He was also a pacifist who deplored the Spanish American War.
Teddy Roosevelt’s take on Carnegie’s pacifism was: “All the suffering from the Spanish war comes far short of the suffering, preventable and non-preventable, among the operators of the Carnegie steel works, and among the small investors, during the time that Carnegie was making his fortune…. It is as noxious folly to denounce war per se as it is to denounce business per se. Unrighteous war is a hideous evil; but I am not at all sure that it is worse evil than business unrighteousness.”
Seems rather a propos in today’s world.
An art exhibit in the modern part of the library showcased the work of Sir Joseph Noel Paton, another son of Dunfermline. He was a painter and book illustrator among other things. The exhibition ranked him with Lewis Carrol, John Ruskin and Oscar Wilde, but, um, nope. Most of the pieces on display were the kind of trite, bad art nouveau shit that was so popular with Queen Victoria and her age.
But then there I came across the 1874 work “Satan Watching The Sleep of Christ”.
Which figure in this painting seems vibrant, majestic, interesting, compelling? Paton thought that Satan should be attractive or where is the temptation? This work was wildly popular. On first being exhibited, it attracted so many visitors that the dealer was reluctant to let it go. Prints were sold in their thousands.
My question is, why is this not blasphemous, when Christ and The Solder, about sixty years later, was deemed so?
The most colourful building for sure, standing out from the otherwise bleak, moss covered grey stones of Dunfermline, was this one.
I never did find out what it was, but I think it had something to do with the Abbey; possibly its brewhouse. I also do not know if the orangey-red was original or a modern upgrade.
Dunfermline Abbey, the other reason I had persuaded myself to take this housesit, was largely disappointing. I was expecting something akin to Westminster Abbey, St. Denis or Roskilde – magnificent tombs displaying the sculptor’s art in royal tombs across centuries. Nope.
The Abbey graveyard is all mossy and overgrown.
One poignant stone declares “In Memory of’ and nothing more can be read.
Sic transit omnia.
The exterior of Dunfermline Abbey is, I think, more impressive than the interior.
The ruins of Dunfermline Palace can also be seen.
Dunfermline Abbey was sacked during the Scottish Reformation in 1560. In the seventeenth century, part of the east end collapsed, followed by the towers in 1716 and 1753. Some of the old Abbey remains. The carved pillars are particularly beautiful.
But the stained glass is new.
Beautiful for sure. And there is a Tiffany window commissioned by Carnegie, which resided in various mansions and buildings before finding a home here.
I saw no tombs whatsoever, including that of Dunfermline’s most famous inhabitant, Robert the Bruce.
He was a claimant to the Scottish throne at a time when the previous king died without any obvious heirs. Bruce led the Scots in their first war of independence from England, taking up the fight against Edward I ‘The Hammer of Scotland’, both during the lifetime of William Wallace and after Wallace’s execution. Bruce did ultimately preside over a period of Scottish independence, but only after stabbing his main rival for the crown, John Comyn. In a church no less. At that point his choices were to become a fugitive, or king. He fought against his other rivals of the crown, destroying their castles and lands, then decisively defeated Edward at the Battle of Bannockburn. He was King of the Scots from 1309 to 1329.
On his death, he was interred in a magnificent tomb in Dunfermline Abbey, but only after his heart was extracted and placed in a silver ‘casket’. Sir James Douglas (The Black Douglas) wore it around his neck. Douglas joined a crusade in order to take the Bruce’s heart to the Holy Land, which had been the wish of the late king. Douglas was killed, and the heart was returned and buried at Melrose Abbey. Its location was lost, but a team of archaeologists dug it up in 1920. It was re-interred and lost again, then found by more archaeologists in 1996. Tests showed the silver casket contained human tissue, so it was declared to be the heart of Robert the Bruce and re-interred one more time at Melrose.
One would have thought that even the dour Scots Presbyters would have had a care for the tomb of Scotland’s great national hero, Robert the Bruce. But the tomb was lost.
In 1818, it was decided to build a parish church over the ruins of the old Abbey. This is largely what the visitor sees today.
The 19th century work on the new church uncovered a tomb in front of the site of the former high altar. It contained a body within an oak casket, completely covered in lead, with lead in the shape of a crown at the head. Aside from the location and the crown, the sternum had been sawn open, consistent with the account of the heart having been removed. They had found the remains of Robert the Bruce.
The body was covered in 1500 tons of molten pitch, and re-interred in the vault in the new church. But not before a plaster cast was taken of the skull. A reconstruction of the Bruce is given pride of place in the church.
It looks to me like a character in The Simpsons.
The tomb was marked with a metal plate, but I never did find that. Or indeed the tomb of Saint Margaret or King David I or any of the host of royalty whose earthly remains were received by the ancient Abbey of Dunfermline.
The enthusiasm generated by the discovery of the remains of Robert The Bruce while the new church was being built resulted in a piece of truly deplorable architectural excess. The brickwork at the top of the tower of the new building forms the words “King Robert The Bruce”; one word for each side of the tower.
If they had had neon lights in the 1820s, I’m sure they would have installed them too. Trump would approve.