Flaming June!

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Not so far, it's not - but the weather forecast for Banchory for the next couple of days is wall to wall sunshine and 23 C - and where am I going to be? - down in London! Ah well, hope it's as least as warm there and I can enjoy Friday's 2nd Test Match against Sri Lanka in the sun - although I don't expect we'll see anything as exciting as the finish to the 1st Test Match in Cardiff on Monday.

I played my first Seniors match of the season for Banchory at Deeside yesterday afternoon - and very nice it was too, despite us getting duffed. More golf tonight, then an early morning drive up to Fraserburgh in the morning before heading back to the airport for the plane down to London.

I bought a couple of cheap holiday books on Sunday - on offer in John Menzies - but I've really been enjoying reading Keith Richards' autobiography, Life. It's quite a big tome but I've been making no effort to race through it - in fact, I'm savouring reading only short excerpts at night to try and make it last a while. It's written just as if Keef was talking to you - fun reading.

Talking about holidays, would you believe we've already got something fixed up for USA 2012? We got confirmation this morning of an exchange week next July at Stoneridge Resort, Idaho - http://www.stoneridgeresort.com/. It's in Blanchard, which is northern Idaho, and it's 627 miles from Scott and Lucy's - a little less than they travelled last year (and this year) down to Newport Coast, CA. Nearest airport is Spokane, Washington. This is a map of North West USA, with "A" marking Blanchard:

Incidentally, check out my Headbangers blog (http://banchoryheadbangers.blogspot.com/) for a rare sighting of an old school-mate of mine appearing on Top of the Pops in 1976!

You may have noticed on my blog that it's now been viewed 9,200 times - keep logging on and we'll get to 10,000 soon!

Lastly, spare a thought for poor Johanne Kilgour, who had to retire from teaching many years ago when she contracted Parkinson's - one of the youngest ever to do so. She and Colin went to Bruges for a holiday, but Johanne had a nasty fall on the first full day there and they had to return home, with her looking heavily battered and bruised. Externally, she appears to be looking a bit better, but she's still got internal injuries and now she's building up fluid in her feet/ankles. Poor girl doesn't have her troubles to seek.

Last posting in May

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yes - tomorrow's June - can you believe it? Where's the year going? Only 3 weeks until the longest day - then it's all downhill from there!

You may have read from my other blogs or on Facebook about the incident we had on the golf course at the weekend - that was unwelcome and I hope there's going to be no more of it. The youth of Banchory have always traditionally spent weekends and evenings in the summer down by the river, getting up to the usual teenage high jinks - it's almost a rite of passage. Sometimes it's spilled over a little from the area down by the Dee bridge, but this is the first time we've seen anything this far up - in the middle section of the course.

Next week is CAMRA's big annual event - the Beer Festival at Pittodrie - and I spent a bit of time last night distributing the latest quarterly newsletter round Deeside (and Fraserburgh). The Festival was originally due to be held this week, but Aberdeen Football Club took a late booking for a Rod Stewart concert and so the organisers of the festival had to hastily make arrangements to put the festival back a week - not an easy task, given that it takes the best of a year to organise the event.

This change of date has rather messed up my plans for attending the festival - it used to clash with a regular annual golf outing we went on to Blairgowrie, but I managed to persuade the organiser of the golf outing to put his event back a week this year so that it didn't clash with the beer festival - and he agreed. All was well until Rod the Mod's concert changed matters - I can't pull out of the golf outing now, having got the date changed just to suit me, but it means I won't be able to go along with our usual crowd to the festival on the Friday night. I'm planning to work behind the bar on Thursday and Saturday - perhaps I'll manage to take some time off to allow myself a few beers?

When I found out about the changes in dates, I also then arranged my annual trip to Lord's for the cricket - and it's this Thursday that I'm going down - ash clouds permitting, of course. I'm taking in a Nils Lofgren gig at Cadogan Hall on Thursday evening and then on Friday night, Donovan is performing Sunshine Superman (and his greatest hits) at the Royal Albert Hall, backed by the London Symphony Orchestra - something to look forward to. I fly back on Saturday morning - too late for golf, but I've got my next appointment on Saturday afternoon with the Dental Surgeon who's trying to put the smile back on my face by filling the huge gap in my grin.

So that's about it from me. If you're viewing this from the blog itself, you'll notice that I've removed some of the archive photos from the sidebar of my blog, so I thought I would just add one old photo to the main body of this posting. It's from a year ago when we went to Edinburgh to see Les Miserables (again) and briefly met up with our old friends the Elgies, who are now back in Middlesborough, but happened to be in Edinburgh the same weekend as us:

Leslie Mason, Colin Kilgour, Colin Elgie and yours truly.