Not a well boy

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

The snow early last week lay on the golf course for a couple of days, which meant we couldn't get our usual Wednesday night match - nor the attempted replay on Thursday. At the 3rd time of asking, we finally managed to play on Friday - in fairly good conditions too - but, by then, I wasn't feeling too good. I've been coughing away, keeping myself - and, no doubt, Jo - awake through the night.

I was absolutely shattered after golf and went straight home to bed, and spent the rest of the weekend at home with my feet up. I think I'm on the mend now - I was back in the Aberdeen office yesterday, and today I'm in Fraserburgh. This afternoon, I'm meeting Jo at Stracathro and we're driving down to spend the night at Mary and Brian's before heading off to "Uncle" Dan's funeral in the morning.

We've also got a quick trip to Nairn this weekend. It's somewhere Jo, in particular, has always wanted to go back to. We had a fantastic weekend there back in 1987, when the sun shone gloriously - it was the middle of summer then, but this weekend isn't going to be as good as that one was - but there is always the Bandstand Beer Festival at our hotel! - 68 ales, plus 6 premium lagers and 6 ciders - if there's any left (it's the last day of the festival on Saturday) - check out http://www.braevalhotel.co.uk/bandstandbeerfestival.asp

I'm also starting to get organised for my first golf trip of the year - Turkey again next Thursday - perhaps! Jo's concerned about the troubles in neighbouring Syria, so I decided to check the latest advice from the FCO website, and their official position is Orange - the first level of warning - "Avoid all but essential travel to parts of the country":

We are flying to Antalya, at the other end of the country on the Mediterranean coast, so hopefully it'll be OK.

Finally, for my Australasian readers, particularly those residing in Adelaide who should know better, this is where the "real" Grampians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grampian_Mountains) are:

They're not anywhere near Melbourne, Victoria, where I understand some phoney alternatives are!