I couldn't join Jo in Inverurie yesterday and I assumed I would be home alone in the evening with Ross due to be at work. As it transpired, Ross didn't make it to work as he was ill - but I only discovered this when I eventually got home, having taken a detour to Tarland and Aboyne to squeeze in another 3 pub surveys - time is running out as the meeting which decides which pubs in our area make it in to next year's Good Beer Guide is a week on Saturday.
I've managed to do 10 of them so far, so I'm not quite half way on the list of 21 that I was given, and there's a couple of extras likely to be added as well. If I get a bit of time tomorrow when I'm up in the Broch, I'll hopefully manage to squeeze another couple in before dashing off to squash. That would then leave Ballater (4), Crathie and Braemar to do - plus 3 in Banchory, which I hope to do on Friday night. The long trip up Deeside will probably have to be done this weekend - if the weather behaves itself.
And today, I actually made it along to Bannatyne's at lunchtime - the first time in a long while - and who should I bump into in the changing room but our Gary! Amazing what you find out - apparently he's handed his notice in at work and is leaving ASCO to join rivals Pentagon, who, coincidentally, Colin Kilgour works for. In fact, Colin is retiring (again) at the end of this month on his 65th birthday, so maybe Gary's effectively replacing him?
Next week we have to try and secure our tickets for the Ramsdens Cup Final between Thistle and QoS (Queen of the South to the uninitiated). We lost our young Manager last week - he stepped up to the SPL with Dundee United - so I'm not sure that we're favourites to win the cup any more, but we'll be heading to Livingston on Sunday 7th April, mob-handed, in any event.
I'm now starting to feel guilty about not having done any more of Renshaw's Chronicles (http://renshawschronicles.blogspot.co.uk/) for the last 3 months. I've been very good at keeping my other blogs going recently but the Chronicles requires a lot more time, effort and working memory cells. Who knows when I'll manage the next episode - the early days in Banchory - virtually 30 years ago.
I always like to add some pictorial stuff to my blogs - dry prose only bores - I can almost hear you yawning from here. Here's a recent one from USA:
Terrorists at large? Well, very small ones.
Lastly, to continue on one of the themes making a lot of headlines in the press recently - the battle over mackerel in the North Sea. I spotted an interesting graphic that neatly sums up the problem:
As you can see, the biomass is huge, but we need to come to an agreement soon as to who gets what, and reduce the overall annual catch from all the northern European nations back down to nearer the sustainable level of 0.5m. tonnes, or we will quickly deplete the stock, even allowing for the fact that the relatively short life cycle of mackerel helps it regenerate quickly.
Today's short lesson over.
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