Hello again. It's the Winter solstice today and, in theory, it's all downhill from here to Midsummer - at least in terms of hours of daylight anyway - I rather suspect we've got a few more months of bad weather to put up with before then.
The radio this morning also advised us that there was a full Lunar eclipse and it was highly visible in the clear blue skies in the North East of Scotland. Sure enough, as I drove to work and looked up towards the Hill of Fare, it was almost completely gone:
At roughly 240,000 miles away, it's a bit difficult to represent with a small digital camera the same image as the eye could see, but I hope you get the idea anyway. The dark side of the moon was still visible to the naked eye so it was quite a sight.
It also would have been my Dad's 90th birthday today - and Jo's Mum would have been 88 a couple of weeks ago - but they've both gone now, I'm afraid. I remember them meeting for the first time - it must have been about the time that Jo and I got engaged (Guy Fawkes night, 1971 - Lottie thought I was trying to make a point by choosing the date of an alleged Papist plot!). I had told my prospective in-laws that my folks didn't drink much (and they didn't generally) but the time they met, my Dad was matching Lottie whisky for whisky - she was most impressed, but I'm not sure my Mum was!
Things are pretty quiet at work - our canning plant closed down last Thursday for 2 weeks for its festive holiday/maintenance, and you get the general feeling that all businesses are winding down for the holiday. Our other 2 factories have to keep producing every day, however - Tesco are open 363 days p.a. and we have to produce and deliver chilled mackerel and herring to them every one of those days. It's been a bit of a nightmare recently with all the snow - you can imagine the logistical problems of distribution from Fraserburgh all over the UK.
The business problems of the weather pale in to insignificance, however, when you hear about some of the recent personal stories - particularly those that have been stranded at Heathrow and Gatwick airports for the last few days. It's just over 3 weeks until we're due to depart on our trip to Oz - hope we get a bit luckier.
Got a busy day tomorrow at work but after that it should be fairly easy. Getting our smoked salmon and prawns tomorrow, and our turkey on Thursday. Jo bought our tree last week - dwarf variety, it seems - perhaps she'll show it on her blog?
Hoping to play squash again tomorrow - played again last night and, so far, the new knees have stood up pretty well. They'll get a real test on Friday, however - it's our annual football outing when those of us that have retired come out to play to celebrate Dave Williamson's birthday.
Barry and Helen retire this week - do I envy them? Not really - I'll be interested to see what they do from here and how they get on, but I'm sure they'll be fine.
That's all for now, folks.
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