Midsummer

I got my wish from my last blog - the sun shone gloriously on Thursday and we had a wonderful evening golfing in shorts in our weekly Quaich competition. Being the longest day, we sat in the bar until late, admiring the how light it was - and thinking to ourselves, it's all downhill from here!

On Friday, I was in to the office early but managed to complete all my meetings and was able to head off to Blairgowrie to join the rest of the guys who had played the Wee course there in the morning. There was warm sunshine and we donned shorts for the afternoon round at Rosemount. The forecast was for isolated heavy thunderstorms and lightning, and so it proved. From about the 5th hole, we could see a storm approaching and we began to hear distant thunder, then eventually forked lightning lit the sky. For the first time ever in Scotland, we heard the sign of the klaxon suspending play and they came out in buggies to ensure we left the course. We had got as far as the 7th hole, which, sod's law, was about as far as we could get from the clubhouse. We trudged towards it and then the heavens opened and there were several crashes of thunder and lightning strikes which seemed to be within yards of where we were.

Thankfully, we all made it safely back to the clubhouse and after showering and supping some very fine Young's, we decided to head back up the road to Banchory for a meal in the clubhouse. The roads around Blairgowrie were treacherous with standing water but, within a few miles, it was completely dry and there was no sign of rain anywhere in the North East - bizarre!

Jo was out at Tricia's next door - viewing her holiday photos! - so I toddled off to bed alone.

Saturday morning was dry and I managed a game at Banchory, but it started to rain in the afternoon. We had our appointment with the man from Everest and we signed up for a new driveway, which will also cover the existing bit of grass out front - but not the rockery. They will also re-harl the wall between us and Trisha and place new coping stones on top. We hope to combine this with the work to re-tile our porch and vestibule.