Week ending 9th June

I had an exciting evening on E-Bay on Sunday. Dave Williamson and I are going down to London on 30th June/1st July - we're going to see Lou Reed at Hammersmith Apollo on the Saturday but the original purpose was to go to Lord's on the Sunday to see the One Day international against the West Indies. We had successfully bid for tickets at the Squash Club's Silent Auction last year but Robert Strang-Steel, who is a member of the MCC and had donated the tickets, missed the cut-off date for member's applications for tickets - and the match was now a sell-out.

We found 2 tickets on E-Bay but Dave, who does this thing a lot, was travelling to Cairo when the deadline was due to expire, so it was over to me. I was under instructions to leave it until the last few seconds and then outbid the previous highest bid - which I managed to do successfully - pretty tense and exciting stuff!

I had a match at Torphins on Tuesday, which I won, and the Quaich was switched to Thursday this week - played pretty well again and I followed this up on Friday afternoon when we had a "board meeting" at Royal Aberdeen - the two Clarks (handicaps one and two) plus Kevin Milne of Aberdeen Asset Management. It was a glorious afternoon and Francis and I beat Michael and Kevin, with both Francis and I having birdie 3's at the last - great way to finish.

Friday night was down at the Douglas and when I came home, Jo was sitting on the balcony talking to Lucy on the phone. I took over eventually - and got chastised again for not updating my blog - hence this flurry of activity on Saturday morning before I head off to golf - looks promising again and I think I'll don the shorts once more.

Week ending 2nd June

Fairly routine week although we did go to the theatre on Thursday night to see the new musical based on the Proclaimers songs - Sunshine on Leith. It was OK, although the storyline was contrived to say the least - you just knew the last two songs had to be Letter from America and 500 Miles and it was all too obvious the way the story twisted to accommodate them. Still the music was enjoyable enough and we had a nice supper and some beers at the Globe beforehand.

On Friday afternoon it was our football group's annual golf outing and we went to Craibstone on a beautiful afternoon. I managed to successfully defend the trophy I won last year at Peterculter. The photo shows Gary presenting me with the shield - note the "green" jacket which the winner has to wear each year.

After the golf we went back to Scott Skinner's for a charity Music Quiz, which was good fun.

On Saturday, Gary and Carole were going to Crieff Hydro for the night and so we were babysitting Luca overnight for the first time. He was as good as gold - and I was very careful not to sneeze in his presence this time, as I had blotted my copybook with him the last time he was over - scaring him when I let out an enormous sneeze. Jo put his cot up in our room because, naturally, she was concerned she wouldn't hear him if he awoke. She needn't have worried - although next time perhaps we'll put him in another room - I would hear him anyway - he talks in his sleep and it means you're always on the surface and never sleeping deeply.

Week ending 26th May

Monday 21st May - had our meeting with Mike Rumbles, MSP and he was very supportive and promised to contact Aberdeenshire Council to find out what was happening with the long-awaited Hill of Banchory development - and how much planning gain there had been.

We played squash at Crathes that evening and it wasn't at all bad and it offers us somewhere to play - at least in the short term.

The rest of the week was spent planning the Sponsored tournament at Banchory on the Saturday, including erecting the gazebo on Friday night. The day itself went very well - the weather was kind as you can see from the photo above, taken very early on Saturday. Jo and I were joined by Colin and Johanne for an evening meal at the club after the prize-giving and we were all entertained by "Sammy the Shammy"!