Spring has sprung!

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

The Vernal Equinox has indeed brought the onset of spring - it's 17 C in Aberdeen today - and probably warmer inland - and the rest of the week is supposed to stay this way too. Sod's law I head off to Turkey on a golf holiday on Wednesday morning - the forecast there looks reasonable, however - not very hot, but sunny at least.

So it was the big birthday weekend for Jo - what did we get up to? First of all, dinner on Saturday night was at the Marcliffe at Pitfodels (http://www.marcliffe.com/), Aberdeen's premier hotel. Jo wanted me to take a photo of the desserts - hers was a variety of rhubarb dishes:

The sun shone again on Sunday, and Jo went out for an early morning walk - I think she was in contemplative mode - some people climb mountains when they hit significant round figure birthdays, but a walk round Banchory in the early morning sunshine was enough for Jo. When she got back, prior to the arrival of our taxi taking us to Buchanan's Bistro (http://www.buchananfood.com/barn.html) at Woodend Barn (http://www.woodendbarn.co.uk/) for lunch, Jo looked out the back and decided some weeding was required, so out came the step ladders:

then down she came:

We were joined at lunch by the Masons and Kilgours - here's Jo, Anne, and Johanne (sounds like a made-up pop group, doesn't it?), aka The Golden Girls, at lunch:

We finished lunch a little hurriedly and rushed through to get good seats to see Jimmie Macgregor (http://www.jimmiemacgregor.co.uk/) who's doing a little mini-tour to celebrate his 80th birthday. He's still got all his marbles and can still sing and play guitar pretty well. He could have talked all day - he only covered about 15 years of his career from the mid 50's to the late 60's - but after 2 hours or so, he probably needed a wee lie down somewhere. The girls really liked his stories, many of which brought back fond memories of their childhood, so they insisted on getting photographed with him afterwards:

Then it was back to Anne and Leslie's, where champagne and a cake were waiting for us all:

Of course, when we got home, we discovered that Gary had been round and had left a big chocolate cake that he had baked - plus an enormous box of Thornton's chocolates - so we gorged ourselves on them. Wonder why we felt a bit queasy this morning?