Xmas Eve

It doesn't really feel Christmassy to me yet - despite the fact that we had a bit of snow overnight and there's a light covering outside which should hang around all day, given the low temperatures today. Historically, we normally play football today as part of Dave Williamson's birthday celebrations. Last year was our first ever "downgrade" to walking football, but this year we can't even do that due to the restrictions, so we've come up with an alternative - a few of us are going for a walk - from Banchory to Potarch, from where Jo's going to pick me up later on. Tonight's a busy night on Zoom - we have our usual weekly call with Dawn, Barry and Helen and we're going to follow that with a global call, when we're hoping to see the rest of the family (virtually). So - the latest on the observation stakes. On Monday morning, I shaved off the last of my face fungus, so how long would it be before Jo noticed? Answer - two and a half days. She spotted the change on Wednesday afternoon. I had given a hint of it with a photo I published on Instagram, taken halfway through the Monday morning shave:

That was for the record only - my Frank Zappa period. I didn't venture out of the en suite like this, but I emerged like this:

Here's my holiday reading:

A couple of photos of Avery that Dawn sent:

and the wallpaper in Dawn's hall, which she now calls "the library":

Hope to see everyone later - in person or virtually. Stay safe and enjoy.

The shortest day

It was on this day 100 years ago that Swanson Renshaw Stewart came in to the world that he departed just over 11 years ago. Here's one of our early times together:

Born not long after the Great War had ended, I can't imagine conditions were all that great then. Here we are at the end of 2020 and so many are complaining about going in to another near-lockdown, but really most of us don't appreciate how lucky we are by comparison with previous generations. Sure, there are many instances of genuine hard luck tales and people stuck in unfortunate situations, but most of us don't really have much to moan about - although that doesn't seem to stop the social media frenzy whenever additional restrictions are imposed by the various Governments. It's an economic tragedy for many businesses however, particularly in the hospitality and travel sectors. Many pubs and restaurants are going to close forever and I imagine quite a few airlines will go bust as well. From a purely personal point of view the main change to our retirement lifestyle is the current inability to travel. Who knows when we'll feel safe enough to fly to distant places to see family again? Perhaps by the time 2021 is over, enough of us will have been vaccinated, but progress is definitely slower than we were led to believe at the time of the announcement of approval of the Pfizer vaccine. It's difficult to look forwards - perhaps that's why I keep looking back. Why, I've even gone retro with my music collection and started buying vintage vinyl recordings again. My old collections have been digitised and are now sitting up in our loft, but the new pressings I've recently acquired needed somewhere to be stored and I thought, why not display them as well, so I bought a few wall mounted holders to display some of the wonderful covers:

They adorn the walls of our ground floor office, cum music studio and pilates room. Talking of pilates, Jo and I have been keeping up our sessions 4-5 times per week. It all started on the advice of my GP. I was having upper back pains and he prescribed some drugs and suggested I should try pilates. Well, the pains in my upper back seem to have gone, but I've now got pains lower down - just above my right hip. Jo reckons pilates caused them - we've been experimenting with different tutors and some of the sessions we did were a bit too advanced for us beginner seniors. Perhaps I'll have a few days off and see what happens. I'm going to pick Ross up on Wednesday - he's coming back to Banchory for a while until he can find some employment - pretty hard in the current climate. He'll be arriving at a house that is suitably modestly festive this year - not quite as many items on display as usual. We have however got a lovely wreath, courtesy of Lucy:

I think that's all for now. To close, another vintage Banchory photo that I picked up from the Banchory Heritage FB page. It shows the old railway bridge at Corsee road - the one that apparently wasn't quite high enough so they had to lower the road under the bridge to let the lorries through, but when it rained this used to fill up - note the vehicles having to drive on the wrong side of the road to try and avoid the deeper bits: