Midsummer

I got my wish from my last blog - the sun shone gloriously on Thursday and we had a wonderful evening golfing in shorts in our weekly Quaich competition. Being the longest day, we sat in the bar until late, admiring the how light it was - and thinking to ourselves, it's all downhill from here!

On Friday, I was in to the office early but managed to complete all my meetings and was able to head off to Blairgowrie to join the rest of the guys who had played the Wee course there in the morning. There was warm sunshine and we donned shorts for the afternoon round at Rosemount. The forecast was for isolated heavy thunderstorms and lightning, and so it proved. From about the 5th hole, we could see a storm approaching and we began to hear distant thunder, then eventually forked lightning lit the sky. For the first time ever in Scotland, we heard the sign of the klaxon suspending play and they came out in buggies to ensure we left the course. We had got as far as the 7th hole, which, sod's law, was about as far as we could get from the clubhouse. We trudged towards it and then the heavens opened and there were several crashes of thunder and lightning strikes which seemed to be within yards of where we were.

Thankfully, we all made it safely back to the clubhouse and after showering and supping some very fine Young's, we decided to head back up the road to Banchory for a meal in the clubhouse. The roads around Blairgowrie were treacherous with standing water but, within a few miles, it was completely dry and there was no sign of rain anywhere in the North East - bizarre!

Jo was out at Tricia's next door - viewing her holiday photos! - so I toddled off to bed alone.

Saturday morning was dry and I managed a game at Banchory, but it started to rain in the afternoon. We had our appointment with the man from Everest and we signed up for a new driveway, which will also cover the existing bit of grass out front - but not the rockery. They will also re-harl the wall between us and Trisha and place new coping stones on top. We hope to combine this with the work to re-tile our porch and vestibule.

Mid-June

Nothing much to write about - just golf, golf, golf at this time of year! It was our Seniors championship on Weds, Fri and Mon - qualified OK, but no prizes.

We're still trying to find a builder to come in and prepare our porch for the new tiles - the old ones need removed and the area needs to be prepared for the tile fixer, but can you find a builder in Deeside nowadays? - they're all too busy and small jobs like this are at the bottom of the queue.

We've started looking at the driveway as well - Everest are now in to this market and the chap is coming back this Saturday with some ideas and samples.

Of course, we had Luca overnight again last Saturday - he was as good as gold again.

Got a phone call from Barry on Monday night telling me Dad had been taken in to hospital with a suspected bowel blockage. He hadn't shown up at his day centre and they had sent somebody round to check him and the ambulance was called. I got up at the crack of dawn on Tuesday and went down to the Western Infirmary, Glasgow to see how he was. It transpired that it was largely caused by dehydration - they X-rayed him and found that he was highly "compacted", so laxatives were prescribed and this eventually, with the aid of a glucose drip, resolved the matter. He'll stay in for a day or so whilst they re-assess his needs for care, but he seems to be OK, although more confused than ever.

I went over to see Dawn after the hospital - they're still doing things in the new house - the decking is laid at the back and a new sideboard had just arrived for the hall. We swapped stories about our kids over bacon butties and pineapple cakes!

Jo is going to one of her work-mates leaving do's tonight (Weds 20th) - ironically, this is almost the first night I haven't been golfing for the last couple of weeks!

Midsummer today/tomorrow, but the weather is far from seasonal - hope it improves soon.