Is There Anybody Out There?

As Pink Floyd once famously sang ....

Never mind - I'll carry on solo blogging, even without reciprocation. Having spent 3 weeks with the Lesinas, I'll forgive Lucy - she's a pretty busy little girl, keeping her house, job and boys all in order - but the rest of you? Bah!

We seem to have recovered from our journey back very quickly - it certainly helped to arrive back to such lovely weather at the weekend - golf in shorts already - great! I went for a couple of hours kip on Saturday afternoon but then got up and watched the Masters virtually until the close.

I awoke at the perfect time of 7:40 am on Sunday morning and since then it's like I've never been away. I hardly slept at all last Wednesday or Thursday at Lucy's as I was felling pretty ill and I certainly didn't sleep overnight Friday on the plane, so how have I managed to recover so quickly? What happened to all the sleep I missed and the effects of jet-lag? Will it all still catch up with me, or is it a myth that we need so much sleep? Perhaps I should ask Jo, who planned to stay up a bit longer than I did on Saturday, but, in the end, crumbled and retired to bed for a solid 15 hour stretch!

The Masters was great - I again stayed up until the bitter end on Sunday. It looked wonderful on large screen HD TV. It was, however, a bit odd seeing the first 2 days in "real time" - Thursday in Grants Pass and Friday at LAX - then watching it on Saturday and Sunday evening here.

Monday I was back in our Aberdeen office at the usual time, then played squash in the evening, but we had a bit of a disaster - the flooring rose on one side of the court and it became unplayable. I've since reported it to the owner - I do hope we haven't done any permanent - or extensive/expensive - damage to his court.

Tuesday was up in Fraserburgh dealing with the Union again. It's tough telling lower paid workers in our canning business that they can't get any pay increases as we're losing business all over the place to foreign competition which has considerably lower labour costs than ours. Fortunately, our chilled businesses don't have to face up to the same overseas pressure - logistics just don't allow it - our competition here is from other UK manufacturers and there's a bit more of a level playing field.

When I finally got home about 6:30 pm, Luca was still there - although Jo was about to take him back to Inverurie. He was strangely reluctant to even look at me, let alone talk to me. I know it had been a month since I'd seen him, but, come on, he knew who I was! OK - resort to Plan B - chocolate! Ah - that's better - suddenly we're best pals again!

Nice to see the wee man anyway - although it did rather put an end to our plans to go and see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which we had noticed was still on at the Belmont. There was a 5:30 pm showing last night, but not tonight or tomorrow and it finishes on Saturday. Don't know if I could face the prospect of driving back from Fraserburgh tomorrow after work, then going to the late evening showing, back home at midnight then back in to Aberdeen early on Friday morning!

Tonight will be the first chance I get to play midweek golf - looking forward to it - weather looks quite promising.

Tomorrow (Friday) it's a 20th anniversary celebration football match, followed by a curry at the Derbar. Hopefully, I'll still manage a round of golf on Saturday morning, then, on Sunday, it's the second of our training walks - this time up Clach na Beinn - first time ever.

So that's me up to date now - what's happening in your world?

USA family photos

Check out the updated sidebar I've put on the blog - http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

I've been taking "official" family photos at the end of our holiday at Grants Pass ever since 2002 and I've put all 9 to date in the sidebar.

There's been a few changing faces, but I'm probably the only one whose hair style hasn't changed over the years!