Strange Christmas

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Well, it's been a bit of a strange Christmas holiday - the weather meant that postal deliveries were spasmodic to say the least prior to Christmas - no doubt there'll be a ton of mail arriving any day now.

We're still consuming turkey, despite having had it for our main meal on Christmas Day (just Jo, Ross and I) and also Boxing Day (six of us, including Gary, Carole and Luca). It's been turkey toasties since then - always enjoyable - but the trifle is still not finished, and nor is the cheesecake, and, to make matters even worse, Jo thought she would make a dumpling, so we've got that to consume as well!

Jo's been experimenting for Friday night - we've got guests coming round for Hogmanay dinner and she's not sure what to give them yet. My favourite was always her slightly curried chicken pie, but I've been told we're not having that.

Before all that, we've got Luca's birthday tomorrow - he's four! He's fairly growing up - we notice it most weeks now. He stayed with us last night as his mum and dad are working today and there's no nursery this week. He still seems to spend a lot of the night coughing - the other week he got up in the morning and was complaining of stomach pains - hardly surprising considering how much he had racked his body half the night with coughing fits. Last night he was coughing again and so we decided to move him to another room, just in case it was some kind of allergic reaction to something in that room.

Despite all that, he still gets up in the morning full of the joys of spring. "Is it morning now Grandad?" "Oh yes, it's morning in the curtains" as he delightfully puts it. "Shall we go downstairs?" "Wait for me, Grandad". "Can we put the TV on?" "Whoo - Ben 10!"

Mustn't forget Dawn's birthday today too. Hoping to catch up with Dawn and Barry possibly next weekend (8th/9th January) in Aviemore where Jo and I are going for a short weekend break - just days before we head off to HK and Oz.

That's about all my diary news. I did play squash last night, but not very well - still recovering from our annual football match on Christmas Eve. I knew my knees were sore, but I discovered last night so was my ankle and a wrist. It's getting harder and harder each year to keep it going.

Another symptom of age appeared recently as well. I've lost a bit of hair at the nape of my neck. The hairdresser thinks it may be a touch of alopecia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alopecia_areata). What next?

Been back to in the office the last couple of mornings, but didn't exactly rush in. How nice it is to be able to drive properly again instead of tip-toeing along trying to avoid snow and ice. It may be misty and murky but at least the thaw is continuing, although I suspect it'll be a while yet before the inches of permafrost on our golf course lift. Roll on spring - just 81 days until the Vernal Equinox!


On this morning's drive, I was entertained by Stephen Stills' Manassas. I hadn't heard it for a while and I enjoyed it. There's not that many stand-out individual tracks, but it's a proper old fashioned LP that should be taken as a whole rather than individual tracks. Actually, it was a double album when it was released, but that's another thing that's lost in the digital age, along with proper album covers to peruse. Tracks on vinyl albums used to be placed strategically - the opening and closing tracks of each side were intended to have impact and haste-ye-back qualities respectively, but now it's all end to end, and usually played on shuffle as well.


That sounded like a real old f**t ranting away about the good old days, didn't it? Of course, it wasn't all good and there are many things that are better now, but occasionally I'm reminded of things that have gone and I miss a bit - and some aspects of vinyl recordings are one of them. The standard LP usually had 14 tracks - 7 a side - and lasted 40 minutes if you were lucky. Some of them were ridiculously short - less than half an hour on occasion - what a rip-off.


Anyway, enough for now. Hopefully one more posting before the year's out.