November weather

Straight from the pages of this week's Piper - the next in the series of ads we're running for Ross:

The weather's been all over the place recently. We had a nice Indian summer in September and early October but since then the floods have arrived. It was horrendous before I went to Spain and it started up again when I came back, but this morning it's just delightful - a beautiful autumn day - looking forward to going to the footy this afternoon with Gary - I got 2 tickets from Colin, whose work have seats in the main stand.

What else have I been up to this week? Not much really - just settling back in to the usual problems at work - dealing with bully boy supermarkets and Union disputes - call me Mr Troubleshooter.

Jo and I had our flu jabs on Thursday - she wouldn't go alone so I arranged simultaneous appointments and came home early. Got a bit of a stuffed head now - think it was coming on before Thursday and isn't a reaction to the jab.

Last night we arranged to go to the first Stonehaven Real Ale festival - run by the owner of the Marine Hotel, Stonehaven and the Creel Inn, Catterline (remember going there Scott and Lucy?). CAMRA's official Aberdeen festival has to be held in the summer now due to lack of a suitable size of venue, so Stonehaven have jumped in and grabbed the time slot - and it was very popular.

It was held in the Town Hall - similar in size to Banchory's, but with a fancier balcony. It was the second (and last) night of the festival and it was mobbed. We had gone over in a Davro 6 seater with Colin, Bill Miller and his Friday drinking buddies Mike and Lindsey. We started off in the main hall but soon retired to the quiet of the upstairs back room, where we could sit and actually hear each other. Eventually they ran out of ale, so we hot-footed it round to the harbour and the Marine Hotel.

On the way, we saw plenty of evidence of how Stonehaven made the national news this week - sandbags and tossed out furniture everywhere. The Marine Hotel was mobbed but we managed to get a seat and a couple of beers and just enough space to take a photo:

So that's me up to date now. Hoping to get some golf tomorrow morning - and see Kelly on Skype some time. Still waiting for the Kelly in Oz blog to start - no excuses now, she has the laptop Ross sent her.