Tor-na-Coille

Timing is everything I guess. I had sent a letter off to the Deeside Piper last week about the Council's planning meeting re CALA's proposed development. It wasn't published, but, instead, Roxanne's letter was.

I decided therefore to try again and responded to her letter this week, but the Piper has today published the letter I wrote last week, before I had seen Roxanne's letter - check http://www.deesidepiper.co.uk/letters/Planning-process-39shrouded-in-mystery39.4834426.jp

They also crucially, for me at least, omitted the last paragraph I had put in about the squash courts and the fact that they are sound, and are lying idle, despite approaches from the councillors to allow access to the courts, at least until the planning decision is made. I might try again next week!

Hogmanay

Even although Cade's not playing, here's the answer to my previous photo quiz. For those of you who haven't been before, this was taken in 2002 from the top of Sears Tower, formerly the highest building in the world, looking out over the city of Chicago and beyond to Lake Michigan:


Can you really see the curvature of the earth, or is it an optical illusion?

Didn't bother going to the office this morning - had a bit of a lie in for a change. Anyway, we're changing phones, servers etc and have no internet or e-mail access there anyway, so I'm better off here anyway.

I only worked a morning yesterday as well and then headed out to Inverurie for a bit of a birthday lunch with Jo, Carole and Luca - the mini chocolate birthday cake was nice! Two years old now - wow! I also managed a game of squash doubles later on, so it was a nice easy day all round.

I've taken the holiday cardboard boxes to the tip this morning - Jo was a bit concerned about me doing this as she doubts my eco credentials and was worried that I wouldn't properly separate the polystyrene from the cardboard!

So I'm sitting here in the kitchen doing my blog and watching the bacon for lunch - Jo is hoovering next door. We're playing football again this afternoon at 2:00 pm and tonight we're going to the Kilgours for dinner, so that's today done.

We just found last year's Christmas cake, so we've opened it and are now working our way through it!

We found a couple of suitable places for Kelly and Craig to stay in for the extra week they are in Tenerife, but, by the time we had agreed which one to go for, it had gone! Never mind, there's plenty of others so we'll get something soon.

Post Xmas

Boxing Day was largely spent by the telly until Kelly and Craig arrived later in the evening. I had been fixing up the Xmas present that Ross bought me (a huge hard drive that stores all my music, videos, photos etc and links to the TV, sound system etc). We Skyped Scott and Lucy and Ross linked my laptop up to our big TV so that we could all see them in their little Elf hats - it didn't come out too well on this photo, but you get the idea:


On Saturday, Ross, Gary and I went to Pittodrie and saw Aberdeen beat Hearts 1-0 in front of a full house - it was great. When we got home, Jo was wearing her gifts from me - ear-rings and necklace:

Craig spent the night in Peterhead and Kelly took my car and went to the cinema with her friend, so I had a chance to play golf on Sunday morning before everyone arrived for dinner:

Kelly and Craig were considering going to the sales in Aberdeen this morning and I offered to drive them in and take them home, whilst I popped in to the office, but they eventually thought better of it, so I just got up at the usual time and came in for a couple of hours - I'll head off home and have lunch with them then take them to the airport this evening.

Christmas

It was another odd Christmas day. Jo went to church and Ross and I got ready for her return and then we all drove out to Inverurie where Carole had laid on a light lunch for us. We had a nice time with them - Luca was great and it was our first sight of tiny little Sima, Gary's new Jack Russell. Luca grazed on Jo's knee:




One of Carole's presents from Gary was her Man U shirt with her favourite player's name on it. As usual, Carole insisted that her face wouldn't be seen on camera:

and here's a first - Luca took this photo of me - rather good, eh?:

Gary wore his pinny getting ready for the afternoon's work in the kitchen:

Ross got pally with tiny little Sima:

and then he helped erect Luca's garage:

Luca's main present was Elmo:

We drove home in the gathering gloom to have our Christmas dinner, but when we got there, both Ross and I felt nauseous and had to go and lie down for an hour. We both got up eventually and managed to eat some of our dinner, but it didn't seem right. Shame for Jo, who, for a change, was fine - but she was the only one! I even missed Lucy's Skype - I tried to call her back later but no answer.

Kelly and Barry called to wish us Merry Christmas - and we'll see Kelly and Craig tonight of course.

Still feel a bit nauseous this morning and the tingling in my head hasn't gone away yet. I think Carole's theory of blocked sinuses may have some relevance - I think I may have an infection and if it doesn't clear soon I may need an antiobiotic to clear it.

Calling Dr Lucy

Dear Dr Lucy,

Can you help please? The left side of my head is tender - the eyeball is sore, like somebody is sticking pins in it and the left top of my head is very sensitive to the touch, like all the nerve ends are exposed. Is it terminal? (It's OK - Jo tested for strokes and I passed!).

Anyway, what have I done to offend Cade? He is not replying to any of my blog photo quizzes. I'm going to try just one more time. Where is this?:

(Clue - it's in USA).

When I had a couple of days off ill recently, it gave me the chance to watch Series 1 of Gavin and Stacey - Michael had given me the DVD. I had never previously watched it, but quite enjoyed the series, so when I noticed that BBC HD was showing all 7 episodes of Series 2 on Sunday night, we watched a couple of them and recorded the rest - or so I thought. Unfortunately, the last 3 recordings failed, so here we are, stuck in the middle of Series 2 with a Christmas Special to come tomorrow evening.

Monday

Kelly - that's fine about Saturday - if you and Craig want to go through to Peterhead then, you can use my car - Ross will take me to the football and back. That leaves Sunday afternoon/evening free for a family meal.

Foolishly tried to go up town at lunchtime - major mistake! Not much sign of recession here.

Weekend

Details of a busy weekend can be found on my other blogs - http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/ and http://bvetsfootballgroup.blogspot.com/

Gary and Ross want to come with me to see the Aberdeen - Hearts match on Saturday, but Jo reminded me that Kelly and Craig will be here and she wants to have a big family meal some time when they're up. The key question is, when will Kelly and Craig be going through to Peterhead? If it's on Saturday, then that's fine - we can have a meal at ours on the Sunday. If not, we'll have to change plans - but no sweat either way.

To everyone else

What have I been up to? Well, organising the meals for tonight's do at Franco's, that's one. Oh I do get frustrated when people don't respond - especially when you are trying to help them.

I'm also organising our traditional Christmas Eve football at DATA for Dave Williamson's birthday - got a good response to this - there's 16 playing.

I've posted off my Dad's birthday card today - he's 88 on Sunday! I finally decided that I should, after all, write to Harvey's about our settee, so that's another thing done today. Tomorrow, it's off to Dundee with Colin, Dave and Malcolm.

So what are the plans for Kelly's and Craig's arrival next Friday? They arrive at 17:35 - do Gary and Carole want to pick them up and bring them over to ours, or shall I do it?

On Saturday 27th December, I've got tickets for the Aberdeen - Hearts match - who's coming?

HELLO CADE

HI CADE - ARE YOU OK?

HAVEN'T HAD ANY ANSWERS TO MY PHOTO QUIZ - ARE THEY TOO DIFFICULT?

PLEASE REPLY

LOVE

GRANDA IAN

Countdown to Christmas

Less than a week to go now - Jo will be partied out well before then. Not so for me - I sorted out the arrangements for our do at Franco's tomorrow and now I'm trying to co-ordinate everyone's orders for the meal - they want us to pre-order everything.

Nothing much else new - Fraserburgh today - the canning factory closes down for 2 weeks from tomorrow. Quiet night tonight then work tomorrow, followed by football, then Franco's, and then, on Saturday, we're off to Dundee to see Thistle for the first time this season.

Right, Cade - this one's a bit nearer home for you:

Skype

Good to see Inverurie has entered the world of Skype. Gary phoned us at 10:15 pm last night - he was surprised he couldn't get through to us - we were in bed reading our books by then - no computers on.

Now just Kelly and Craig to sort out - Kelly was going to send me a photo of their webcam so I could check if it's the same as mine - if so, it's not Vista that's causing them problems.

A new day, a new world - to Cade

Well done, Cade - your Mom said you got all the correct answers to the places where our photos were taken - but you didn't actually name them - maybe it's because you knew the answers but you didn't want your Mom to find out? - she would never have guessed on her own!

We can let her know now though, can't we? The Great Wall of China was first - maybe your Mom would have gotten that one, huh? The second one was taken in a desert - but which one? Not Arizona - no camels there - and not Dubai either - although it was very close - it was Abu Dhabi - they are both part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - look it up on the map. We had just been riding big 4-wheelers across the huge sand dunes - they take the air out of the tyres before you go on the dunes to give more control.

The 3rd photo with Jo in it was taken at Giza, just outside Cairo in Egypt, in front of the Sphinx and one of the pyramids. Now here's another question for you (all of you!) - which is older? The Great Wall of China or the pyramids of Egypt?

Today's photo quiz - which city was this taken in?:

Here's another clue:

and another one - but can you guess where the photo was taken from?:

Tuesday

Today's picture from round the world features Jo - taken in January, 2001 - where do you think this one was taken, Cade?

We had our meeting last night to decide where to go for our golf next October - and, for a change, it went very smoothly - we all voted to go to Almeria in Spain (http://www.desertspringsrentals.com/).

Today it's work and tonight I'm out for dinner with our computer software suppliers.

Kelly/Craig

I should have clarified - they don't travel up until Boxing Day (evening) and return on Monday evening.

Good news week

The good news is that Flybe did allow Jo and I to transfer our free flight vouchers to Kelly and Craig, so they'll be up for a few days after all - they arrive on Boxing Day and go back on Monday 29th.

Back at work and it doesn't feel too bad - I think I needed to get out of the house - cabin fever!

Did Cade guess correctly that I was at the Great Wall of China in yesterday's blog? Where do you think I might have been in this one from the year 2000?:

3rd post Sunday

Oh - and what's Carole's middle name? Just noticed the posting was by CCC.

Sunday 2nd post

I walked along to the shops and picked up my Sunday Times and, when I got home, I went to take my usual seat and suddenly thought to myself - why is it so uncomfortable? From the very first time we bought this settee, the place that I sit very quickly seemed to depress. I know it's fairly well used, but it shouldn't have collapsed so quickly. I'm disappointed in it - perhaps we should have complained at the start? I decided to take a picture, but it doesn't really demonstrate the point, does it?

Anyway, in the course of taking the photo, I broke off the tiniest corner of my camera's battery latch. It still takes photos but I couldn't download them to my PC as I kept getting a warning that the battery compartment was open, so I had to search for the fragment and try to sellotape it back in to place. It works, but it's only a short-term fix because any time I have to charge the battery, I have to remove it from the camera and this will mean un-sellotaping and re-sellotaping each time - that's sure to infuriate me.

Perhaps the script was already written - I've never quite taken to this camera the way I always enjoyed my previous Fujis - maybe a new one is now on the horizon!

Don't you just hate it when products you buy aren't quite what you wanted or expected?

Has Cade guessed yet where I was in the photo on my previous blog? Come to think of it, Cade hasn't posted anything to the blog recently - but, then again, nor has Lucy - and Scott has still to make his debut too.

Sunday at home again

Well done Carole - your first posting! Keep it up. To move photos simply click on them and drag. If you need to centre them, the icons in the text box above do that.

I awoke before 5 am this morning - I think it was the sound of Ross in the kitchen. When we got up, all of last night's meatloaf had gone - and Jo only had a corner nibble.

I rolled over and it was after 9 before we both got up. Jo's off to church now and I'm sitting here doing this and contemplating whether to walk along to the shops to get my Sunday Times, or do it the lazy way. I do miss our regular paper deliveries.

No golf obviously - the course was closed yesterday anyway but it seems much nicer today. Mind you, I probably wouldn't have been tempted anyway. I'll give myself one more day before taking any exercise. My body is getting dangerously addicted to lethargy. I had been playing quite a lot of squash and football again and had found it difficult to squeeze in sessions at Bannatyne's - they say this is a stereotypical pattern for new gym joiners - hugely enthusiastic at the start and then tailing away. I must try to break that mould. Pity Banchory doesn't have a proper leisure centre - the Tor-na-Coille would be an ideal location.

Tuesday is D-day for CALA's planning application. It looks like being thrown out, but you can never be sure, and I'm sure that won't be the end of it anyway. Roxanne (Jekyll and Hyde) Sloane-Maris features in this week's Piper donating crockery to the Scouts. Hardly a coincidence I think - she must believe in her own mind that this mini charm offensive will persuade everyone that she's really a nice, kind, caring person with the aims of the community at heart - and not the pantomime villain she's been cast as.

Still stalling for time - must get showered and dressed and out. The first Test from India is the background just now, and there's golf from South Africa and Dubai to follow plus lots of footy. I aways enjoy watching golf played on courses I know well, like the Emirates Majlis. It's interesting to see how much the major construction projects have come on since we were there last February. They say 40% of the world's cranes are based there just now

The next few blogs will feature me in different world locations. Today - well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?

This was taken in November 1999.

The tree - sneak preview

Before Her Majesty has even seen it, revealed in all its glory and nakedness is the Stewart 2008 Christmas Tree:


A "Premium Scottish Highland Nordmann Fir" for those interested. Over to the decorating staff now.

Wet Saturday

Feels like Cornwall here today - warm and wet (didn't I warn you, Kelly/Craig?). I'm up, showered, shaved and dressed - I've even been down to the village for a stroll with Jo - we "posted" our Banchory Xmas cards at the West church and picked up stamps for the rest - job well done.

My quarterly crate of bottle conditioned beers arrived from CAMRA today - 20 of them, but Colin's going to take half off my hands. No Cornish ones this time, but an interesting selection nonetheless:

Do you think this will persuade Craig and Kelly to come up here over the holidays? Jo received her free Flybe flight voucher today so that's both of us got one now. I've given Kelly the choice of us using them to fly down there or, if we can, let them use them and fly up here.

I'm certainly not ready for squash yet - Keith phoned to ask me - so I've agreed to meet him at the Douglas to watch a bit of the Spurs - Man U match at 5:30 this evening instead. Jo's going to a Carol concert tonight.

I noticed that Jo's bought sandpaper and varnish - the bench that was out the back is now in the utility room - you can hardly get in there now. She's obviously planning to spruce the bench up - strange considering I did offer to get Davie the painter from our work back to do it, but there you go. By coincidence, I heard a snippet of Danny Baker and Zoe Ball's radio show this morning and they were featuring great unfinished domestic jobs - could this be a contender?

The Xmas tree has now been at the front door, still in its wrapping, since Tuesday. Maybe Jo was waiting for me to get better to put it up?

If I'd been better, I would have gone to Pittodrie today, but it's as well I wasn't tempted as the damp wouldn't have done me any good. Gary couldn't make it, and Ross was trying to get Thomas to go with him, but couldn't get hold of him yesterday. I'll have to make do with a trip to Dundee next Saturday to see the Jags - the first time this season.

Ross is now off work for 3 whole weeks - a combination of holidays due plus statutory days off and office shut-downs for the holiday. Strangely, he observed normal hours last night - in bed by 9:00 pm and up by 9:00 am this morning!

No change

Still in my jammies and fed up. Trying to keep my mind busy - difficult when you can't concentrate. TV's on but it's mostly background.

I finished Stuart Maconie's Cider with Roadies book that Colin gave me - but this was before I became ill. It was good fun - some interesting musical anecdotes. I think I preferred it to the one I bought for Kelly when we went to hear him at Pitlochry in January. Talking of which, we're thinking of going back there again to take in some of their Winter Words Festival - possibly to listen to Brian Blessed.

I started to try and read the Pink Floyd autobiography that Harry gave me many months ago - I managed a chapter and a bit, but couldn't concentrate any more - which is why I'm now signing off again.

Still alive!

I'm still here - in my jammies and feeling sorry for myself - although not quite as bad as yesterday. I'm not going back to work tomorrow however - I'll leave it until Monday when hopefully, I'll be a bit fitter.

Can't be bothered to write much more - although there's the final episode of Little Dorrit to look forward to tonight. Who'd have imagined a Murder Mystery/Suspense written by Dickens!

Xmas

Jo heard on the box today that it's Cyber Sunday today when everyone goes Xmas shopping on the web. That got me to thinking about what I want and frankly I have no idea other than the usual sweater/shirt/book/CD/DVD choices.

I can't even think of any specific CD's or DVD's that I've been hankering after. Not even browsing the usual end of year "best of 2008" lists that appear in all the papers and music mags can inspire me. Today the Sunday Times published its lists - they had their top 20 rock/pop, headed like a few others by Fleet Foxes - they haven't really inspired me yet, but I suppose I should listen to them a bit more before I write them off.

The Sunday Times also suggested a couple of music books that might be of interest to me - Philip Norman's John Lennon - The Life, and The Olivetti Chronicles by John Peel.

I half toyed with the idea of getting the BOSE DAB add-on to the sound system in the house - but then I thought to myself, how much more radio do I/would I listen to? You can already get all the DAB channels through Sky, albeit not whilst anybody else is watching TV - and there's probably still enough FM channels to keep me happy for now. Maybe one to wait for retirement.

On a separate matter, I've always wanted to go to a gig at the Royal Albert Hall. I tried in vain to get tickets for the Cream reunion concerts last year, but I noticed that Eric Clapton is playing his usual season of gigs there late May next year. I might consider that, although I do find him as a solo act a little on the bland side nowadays - and his autobiography didn't exactly endear himself to me. If it had been in the middle of the footy season I could have tied it in with a trip to the Emirates or one of the other London stadia. Needs more thought.

Sunday morning

Disappointing start to the day - the golf pro wasn't answering the phone but I thought I would go along anyway as I assumed we would be playing - albeit on a frozen and full winter course. Of course, it meant getting all togged up - thermals, extra sweaters etc - and I went over to the course only to find the Course Closed signs up.

Ah well, back to the house with the Sunday Times to get ready for a day in front of the box - the Nedbank Challenge from Sun City, then Hibs v Celtic followed by Everton - Villa. Hard times.

We had a takeaway Chinese meal last night - crispy duck was great but one of the main meals we shared was pork. This morning we woke up to the news that all Irish pork in the UK has had to be withdrawn from the UK due to a toxin they have discovered - oh dear.

Saturday

Football at Goals went ok last night - and it wasn't too cold. Our headbang went well - check football (http://bvetsfootballgroup.blogspot.com/) blog for details.

Today has been slow - I had arranged to pick up my car this afternoon - I left it at Dave's last night. Unfortunately, this meant me missing out on a trip to Inverurie - Carole called Jo out on a late mercy mission to babysit.

Friday - busy, busy, busy

Still no snow, but some rain on top of ice on the back roads could be dangerous. No problems on main roads or in Aberdeen.


I thought yesterday would seem like a long day to me, being at home and with no time wasted in the car - but it slipped by fairly quickly. In the evening, we managed to completely catch up with our backlog of Little Dorrits - an intriguing tale and one that's got our resident Poirot/Sherlock foxed for now - if you know the story, don't tell her!


I went to the optician and got the all-clear again on the glaucoma tests - I've been getting annual tests done for years because Mum had glaucoma. All Scots also now get free two year eye tests, so that was also done yesterday. She said she could tweak my prescription a little on my distance (driving) glasses, and she asked again why, as both prescriptions are only minor ones (0.5/0.75 + 1.50 for near), I didn't go for varifocals - I said I'd done that before and didn't like them much, but we'll see - I might try again some time.


Playing footy again tonight - it's normally at the Beach, but it's not available, so it's outdoors at Goals - brrrr! From there, it's straight off to Dave's for a headbang.


Spare a thought for Jo and Mary - their Mum would have been 86 today. I like this photo from our trip to Spain in 1999:

Dawn

John phoned to let me know that Dawn had her knee operation this afternoon - he was heading off to the hospital to see her. She's in the Golden Jubilee hospital, Clydebank - East Wing, Level 2, Room 217 and will probably be there until Monday. Phone number is 0141-951-5000.

Thursday working from home

As I half suspected, having re-arranged everything to work from home today, the snow never arrived - I feel like a cheat!

We watched the final part of Stephen Fry in America last weekend and this one covered the West Coast, including the drive-through tree that we were at a few years ago and the Rogue River, where we went on one of the Hellgate trips last year. Here's a snippet:

Haven't seen Q magazine's 50 best albums of 2008, Gary, but I've just glanced at its sister paper Mojo's one - I think I've only got one of their choice - Beck.

I played football at Banchory last night - mistake. Somebody decided to play with an outdoor ball which whizzed around like a dervish - maybe the youngsters enjoyed it but I certainly didn't. What's wrong with using an indoor ball for indoor football? It was made worse when Stephen Thomson - half my age and twice my size - banged one at me and it caught me full on the side of my face - boy it hurt!

In between work today, I'm preparing for our headbang tomorrow night. The beer has been delivered to Potarch and I'll take the projector and screen out to Dave's later on today - probably when I go for my optician's appointment later on.

Old cliche but, as if to prove the point, Jo said to me last night when she spoke about getting our Xmas tree and wanting me to go with her - "I thought when I retired I would get to spend more time with you?". That was last night - this morning, it's "you're upsetting my routine with you being at home"! Fickle or what?

Preparing for the onslaught

Getting home before 4:30 pm yesterday meant an evening of telly watching. Jo had been saving up the Little Dorrits for me and I finally got round to watching a few episodes. Dickens' tales wander and weave in a slew of characters, many of them eccentrics - and the BBC's production emphasises this trait - good viewing. OK, I'm hooked now - perhaps a few more tonight.

My journey to work was OK this morning but everyone else seems to be complaining about the roads. We've had dire warnings about tonight's weather and I've already cancelled one of our management meetings in the Broch tomorrow. Bring it on - I'll just work from home.

It was my pal Dan Corbett's 66th birthday yesterday - you all remember him? He left Banchory over a decade ago and now lives in Linlithgow, although we still see him at various golf outings etc. You might remember what he used to look like before the beard came off - this rather grainy one came from 1993:


More recently, at Chicago airport on the way home from Florida:



The one constant, however, is Dan's "lazy" right eye. He told me yesterday that, after all these years, he was in hospital last week to have it sorted. Dan reported "That is the right eyelid that has been more or less closed for up to 60 years. One opthalmic optician had told me that I had probably been uniocular for all that time.

The procedure that the doctor followed was to chop a bit from both eyelids and tie them up a bit higher by shortening the tendon that works each eyelid. It was a terribles 2 hour ordeal but the results are, in a word, spectacular; that is from what I can now see vis-a-vis what I could see a week ago.

I will have the external stitches out this evening and the internal ones will dissolve in time. The photos are quite horrendous and I will not be circulating them; it did look like I had gone a few rounds with a particularly hard-hitting boxer. But I expect there to be an improvement before the end of this year."

So there you go - there's always hope!

Finally booked our flights to Tenerife for the February golf trip - phew!

Start of the week

Routine Monday - although I did squeeze in a game of squash doubles before going home to a lovely stew followed by another helping of conference pears in red wine - lovely!

I also managed to catch up a bit with Lucy's Eastenders recordings - I sent off 3 DVD's for her yesterday - but, with an apology - I'm missing 16th November - what happened then? - did we have a power cut?

I also found a download of Seasick Steve for Kelly - it's called Cheap and according to Wikipedia, it was released in 2004 - it's the first time I've heard him playing with a band (the Level Devils) - usually he's a one man band - although he did have a drummer with him when we saw him at the Music Hall recently.

We're going to have a very quiet Christmas - we knew Scott, Lucy and the boys weren't coming as they're here in March, and we also heard last week that Kelly and Craig couldn't make it, but, on Sunday, Gary told us that they wouldn't be coming over either. Was it something we said? Perhaps we'll pop over to Inverurie for a little while to see them before Jo, Ross and I have our Christmas dinner.

More snow overnight meant I had to change my plans for driving up to the Broch. Instead I went in to our Aberdeen office via the North Deeside Road - avoiding my usual route over the moor to Garlogie. The roads were fine, but the traffic was awful and it took me almost an hour and a half to get here. I'm definitely not hanging around until it gets dark again this afternoon.

Nothing much else on the agenda this week - perhaps another game or two of squash - optician on Thursday, headbang at Dave's on Friday.

I finally got a booking for the annual golf/squash Xmas dinner - usually we go to the Derbar, but there were several requests to change it this time, so I tried, but failed, with the Milton. I did manage to get Franco's (Italian at By-Dee Inn) on Friday 19th December - a great date I thought - until I went home and told Jo and she said whoops - she thought she was going out with the girls that night! Ah well - I'm committed now - numbers are rising as well - 28 at last count.

I'm also edging ever nearer to getting our golf trip to Tenerife sorted out for February. It looks like we're going to leave on Friday Feb 27th - which means I will be back in Banchory for my 60th birthday - but only just! It was pointed out to me last night that I could be in Tenerife 3 times next year - February, March and possibly October as well!