Blazing June

We're well in to June now and the weather continues to be brilliant. I can't recall such a long period of dry, settled weather here - not quite the summers of 1975 & 1976 yet (when we were in SE England), but they say last month was the warmest and driest May for nearly 100 years. I could well believe it. I played golf yesterday - a relatively rare event for me nowadays - and the course was hard and dry and there were several areas where the ground was cracking up.

As I said, I don't play nearly as much golf as I used to, but the next couple of weeks before we head off to USA will see the most action for a while - June is always the busiest golf month of the year for me. It's likely Jo and I won't see much of each other before we get on the plane on 27th June!

Jo's away today - a day out in Edinburgh with her pal Anne. I drove them to Stonehaven early this morning. Ordinarily, this would have meant I was home alone today, but I'm afraid that's far from the situation. We have the painters in just now - they've been here since Monday and they're blitzing the whole house - inside and out. The house is like a war zone - there's no room where we can sit down and relax - all the furniture is piled up and shrouded with old bedsheets and polythene. They also sanded down a couple of our Artex ceilings, so every surface in the house now has a layer of dust on it. It's going to be quite a tidy-up job once they're finished. One side benefit has been the fact that we've had to clear space for them and this gave us a chance to have a major clear-out of some of the old files, books and CD's that had been overspilling some of our shelves and wardrobes. Lucy's and Kelly's old university course books and papers were part of that - and, Kelly - I have to tell you that we came across an old diary of yours!

I'm off to Edinburgh on Sunday to watch the Scotland v England cricket match. Brother-in-law Brian is joining us, as is Leslie Mason (Anne's husband). From there, it's then down to Peebles for 3 days' golf, so it'll be Thursday next week when we go to Inverurie for our usual weekly "babysitting" duties.

Jo's appointment to get her cataracts done hasn't come through yet, but she has now got a date for her endoscopy - Tuesday 19th June.

Sorry - no photos today - not even one of Luca after I took him for a haircut on Tuesday. You probably wouldn't notice the difference anyway!