Whiling away the time

We escaped the high winds in Scotland - in fact, it was pretty calm when we left, but we did spot a couple of trees that had blown over through the night, but otherwise our drive to the airport and the subsequent flight down to London was uneventful - apart that is, from not being able to find Gary's office. It took a couple of phone calls before we eventually met up with him and he dropped us at the airport and took my car away.

We purposely had quite a long wait at Heathrow - just in case of any weather problems - so that's why I'm sitting here in the Cathay Pacific lounge, blogging away - just to pass the time. The food's good and they've got London Pride in bottles too, but have to be careful with the alcohol intake, given the long flights ahead of us. We need to leave some room for our G & T's and wine with our meals on the plane!

That's about it. Two hours till scheduled take-off and then almost 12 hours in the air, arriving in Hong Kong at 17:45 local time Saturday (8 hours ahead of UK). Then less than an hour and a half in HK and back in the air again for another almost 9 hour flight, finally arriving in Adelaide at 6:35 on Sunday morning with our body clocks still ten and a half hours behind Aussie time.

Wonder when Miller takes his nap?

Incidentally, Kelly, if you're reading this, we have 2 suitcases and a set of golf clubs - hope you can manage it all!

Nearly ready

Not long now till we head off - hopefully. This morning's weather forecast wasn't encouraging, however, with major storms on the horizon. 100 + mph winds are forecast for Friday and wind speeds are twice this level at cruising altitude, so I suspect there may be some travel disruption. Nowt we can do about it - just wait and see.

When I went for a beer with Colin on Saturday, there was a really bright full moon out and the angle was again such that I caught a glimpse of it over the cross at the top of the Episcopal church - just as I'd done some months before. This was my first attempt at lining up the photo, looking at the moon through the cross:

You can just about make out the shape of the church roof, but the moon was so bright that the exposure wasn't quite right, so I tried again:

Better exposure, but alignment slightly off this time.

Gary and Luca came over on Saturday afternoon but Jo was out with her swimming group - Luca was really disappointed - at least until I told him he was authorised to use Jo's i-Pad in her absence.

Jo took the Christmas decorations down on Sunday and I took the tree off to the dump on Monday to join all the other rejected trees, which had served their purpose for another year.

I knew I couldn't/shouldn't cycle on Monday as I didn't want to do more damage to my knee before we went away, but, on the spur of the moment, having walked down to the shops with little pain, I decided to take a longer walk up Scolty Hill. It was a fine afternoon and it was nice to at least get a little bit of exercise. I took a few photos at the top:

My knee was a bit swollen and sore when I got back but an icepack soon sorted that - although I certainly didn't get any sympathy from the female members of our family.

Tuesday could be seen as my first real day of retirement as it was the day I would ordinarily have returned to work after the holiday break. So what did I do? Go to Inverurie with Jo to pick up Luca from school, that's what. Furthermore, I repeated the feat today - this time solo, as Jo was swimming. I took Luca for the haircut that his parents thought he needed. Here he was before the event:

and here's the "after" shot:

No cycling for me tomorrow either. Bags are virtually packed so not much else to do.