I'm dreaming of a ......

It's certainly looking that way -the snow is now fairly well established and the temperature is not forecast to increase significantly enough to clear it all before Friday. In fact, I've already made a pre-emptive strike and re-organised our traditional annual outdoor match at DATA on Thursday to the large indoor pitch at Strikers at Bridge of Don - very handy for me as it's just a couple of hundred yards down the road from our factory.

Yesterday we had a board meeting at the offices of our external investors (Aberdeen Asset Management). Francis had organised a lunch afterwards for the great and good at the offices of Adam & Co, RBS' private banking division, just along the road from AAM.

Jo drove me in to the meeting as I didn't want to have a car there as I was told it was going to be quite a boozy lunch. Francis had bid for it in an auction - just £250 it had cost him - and he and Michael would be there, as would our external non-executive director, Kevin Milne, and his boss, Martin Gilbert, Chief Executive of AAM, who had just had his annual bonus approved by the shareholders at the company's AGM - a mere £1.4m.!

The great and the good included the Earl of Haddo, and Mark, a cousin of the Queen, who is married in to Lady Saltoun's family (Fraserburgh), plus Sarah Mackie, one of the farming and ice cream family and a rising star in Tesco. In all there were 10 of us. It was only afterwards that Francis was told the prize he had bought in the auction was lunch for 6, not 10!

Starters were kidney and sausages, followed by beef steak. Very nice it was too - and the company was OK actually - I didn't feel too overwhelmed.

This morning, I sailed in from Banchory to the outskirts of Aberdeen - the Deeside roads were absolutely fine - completely black - but when I hit Bucksburn that's where the trouble started. It seemed Aberdeen city had had the worst of the overnight snow and every road was completely white - it appeared that no gritters had been out. It took me an hour to get from Bucksburn to Bridge of Don - no more than 3-4 miles.

The snow came down and, by lunchtime, I decided I had to get out. It was exactly the same in reverse - slow drag out of the city but then all clear out to Banchory. Jo was out with Anne so I made myself some lunch, did some work and half watched a movie on TV - The Rocker if you must know - ageing heavy metal drummer gets a second chance of fame - you can easily figure the script from there - light hearted and predictable - another Hollywood formulaic movie. I just noticed that Frost/Nixon is on tonight, so I've recorded that for future viewing - hopefully that'll be a bit better.

Anyway, as Gary says, I digress. We had arranged to play squash this evening, but better planning of our transport was required this time - Malcolm took his big 4 wheel Audi and it worked a treat. Incidentally, Richard got his Jag back from Findrack on Sunday, but only after the sterling support of 2 friends and neighbours plus towing from his big Land Cruiser.

Hoping the weather behaves tonight - I have to go to the Broch in the morning, then get back to Aberdeen to pick up our turkey.

Back to my headline - what good Christmas songs are there? Some of them sounded good at the time, and some even for a few years afterwards, but eventually over-familiarity breeds contempt. Even Fairy Tale of New York grates a bit now. Jo was bemoaning the lack of seasonal songs this year - I referred her to Bob Dylan's Christmas album, but she didn't seem overly impressed. Any suggestions?