The gruesome twosome were delivered over to us as a package on Thursday as Gary and Carole headed off for a long weekend in London. Poor Yoda really is a feartie and regularly seemed to empty her bladder in different places at unpredictable times - no major disasters but you do have to watch her - she's so timid.
Luca, on the other hand, is, as Gary has said several times, much more confident and capable of manipulating any situation with anyone. Of course, he gets spoiled rotten when he comes over to ours - not of my doing, I hasten to add.
I didn't see Luca much on Friday as I was at work in the morning, golf at Ballater in the afternoon, and out at one of our thrice yearly "Headbangs" in the evening. I cancelled my golf on Saturday, however, and we took Luca and Yoda down to Milton of Crathes as we had heard that the Deeside Railway Preservation Society were running train rides along the first mile of track they are restoring.
We arrived early for the 12:30 ride, so we bought our tickets then wandered down a bit of the adjacent Deeside Way, allowing both Luca and Yoda the opportunity to let off some steam. It's an old diesel locomotive they run, pushing carriages that used to take the Royal Family out towards their summer holiday home at Balmoral. They do have a steam engine as well, but only crank that up on high days and holidays when they know that visitor numbers are likely to be greater.
Having started walking westwards towards Banchory, we spotted the train returning to the station:
Hey Luca - we need to run back to the station in case we miss our train! So, back we headed:
We made it in plenty of time:
Our traditional thick cardboard tickets showed we were entitled to a seat in "3rd Class", but, as the only passengers on the train, we sat where the h**l we liked - and that was the Royal compartment at the front of the 1st Class section:
Apparently, my seat (next to Jo's) was where the Queen Mother always used to sit. The "inspector" came round and punched holes in our tickets - very quaint. He opened the driver's compartment at the front of the train and offered to let Luca sit in there - but he refused. He preferred to stay a bit further back.
When the journey was over we were allowed to go up in to the real driver's cabin, which was at the back of the train. The main purpose being to lift Luca up so he could pull the cord and blow the train's whistle - we did it, but I'm not really sure Luca knew what was going on - he didn't seem to correlate his pulling the cord with the sound of the whistle.
Back home later on, some gardening had to be done - Luca was the snail-remover-in chief:
On Sunday afternoon, we went to Malcolm Lodge's surprise 60th birthday BBQ. Jo drove there and spent a bit of time at the start making sure Luca was settled OK:
I think we were last over there at Malcolm's 50th, not long after they bought the property, and it's come on a lot since then - they've worked hard at it - here's the longer shot of Jo and Luca in the lower part of their garden:
Gary picked up Luca on his return yesterday (Monday) but he'll be back with us again briefly this afternoon for his usual Tuesday afternoon/early evening.
I finish with a tale of woe - my favourite - and very expensive - chair, is broken. It felt a bit odd on Sunday and today it appears as if the main right hand supporting bolt has sheared:
It's been reported and we now await their inspector's visit - but I'll miss my chair for a while it seems.
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