Greetings from home

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Just like Gary yesterday, here I am blogging from home today. My reason for so doing is a little different from Gary's - I didn't fall down the stairs and injure my knee - at least, not yesterday I didn't. No, mine was largely weather induced.

Jo had stayed overnight at Gary's last night so that she could drive him in to work first thing this morning. He couldn't drive Carole's car because it's not automatic. Anyway, I was a little later leaving this morning and it was a snowy start to the day. I was driving along the top road on the Raemoir to Garlogie section, just before the Hirn turnoff, when I noticed a queue of cars in front of me. I sat patiently in line for a while, not moving at all, then a police car came up the outside line, lights flashing. It was clear there had been an accident and soon we are all told to turn round and head back to Banchory.

OK - second attempt. North Deeside Road this time. I got as far as Kippie Lodge, just short of Milltimber and the traffic stopped again. This time it was sheer volume - everything was backed up. It appeared that Aberdeen city had iced up and there were logjams everywhere. North Sound radio was reporting hour long jams at Haudagain roundabout and cars struggling to get up the hill at the Parkway. That was enough for me. Two hours in the car already and still no nearer the office, so I just turned around and came home and worked from there - or, at least, tried to.

Jo got home not long after me, having spent a couple of hours taking Gary to work. Next, our doorbell rang - it was Irene from next door. She wanted to discuss some of the potential issues on the Council's draft contract to lay new surfaces on Birch Grove and Arbor Court. If you haven't been here recently, you won't have seen the huge potholes in the road - so bad, in fact, that Les Mason - Jo's pal Anne's husband - had recently tripped when carrying his baby grand-daughter. It could have been a really nasty accident, but she was OK in the end. It did, however, prompt Les to take action and circulate all the neighbours to get their approval to the proposed scheme - the roads are not adopted so they're our responsibility, not the Council's, so we have to pay.

Irene is the only one who hasn't signed up yet, and, given her chequered past relationship with all her neighbours, some suspected she might not agree, but actually she does - in principle at least. It took at least an hour and a half to find out what her points of detail were - and some of them were pretty pertinent - but, by the time she was gone, it was lunchtime and I still hadn't done any work.

Anyway, I did get some work done this afternoon, so I'm feeling a bit better now - hence this quick blog.

We've had some aerial problems recently - it only affects digital terrestial TV and we use the satellite virtually all of the time, so it's not been a great problem, but it was a job that Ross had to find time for and today is one of his days off, so up in to the loft he went. Problem only partially resolved - it needs more time - but whilst he was up there, he was at least able to clean the loft skylight, which had built up layers of dust and bugs - it might have been a decade or so - since the fire - that it was last cleared.

My journey to Fraserburgh in the morning might be disrupted again, but I'll give it a go anyway if there's not too much snow. We're planning a curry night out with the Veterans' Football Group in Aberdeen on Friday night - again weather permitting.

That's my lot for now. I'll finish with a slightly artistic photo, "stolen" from Facebook, of Scolty Hill from Banchory today: