Midweek mumbles

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

I couldn't join Jo in Inverurie yesterday and I assumed I would be home alone in the evening with Ross due to be at work. As it transpired, Ross didn't make it to work as he was ill - but I only discovered this when I eventually got home, having taken a detour to Tarland and Aboyne to squeeze in another 3 pub surveys - time is running out as the meeting which decides which pubs in our area make it in to next year's Good Beer Guide is a week on Saturday.

I've managed to do 10 of them so far, so I'm not quite half way on the list of 21 that I was given, and there's a couple of extras likely to be added as well. If I get a bit of time tomorrow when I'm up in the Broch, I'll hopefully manage to squeeze another couple in before dashing off to squash. That would then leave Ballater (4), Crathie and Braemar to do - plus 3 in Banchory, which I hope to do on Friday night. The long trip up Deeside will probably have to be done this weekend - if the weather behaves itself.

And today, I actually made it along to Bannatyne's at lunchtime - the first time in a long while - and who should I bump into in the changing room but our Gary! Amazing what you find out - apparently he's handed his notice in at work and is leaving ASCO to join rivals Pentagon, who, coincidentally, Colin Kilgour works for. In fact, Colin is retiring (again) at the end of this month on his 65th birthday, so maybe Gary's effectively replacing him?

Next week we have to try and secure our tickets for the Ramsdens Cup Final between Thistle and QoS (Queen of the South to the uninitiated). We lost our young Manager last week - he stepped up to the SPL with Dundee United - so I'm not sure that we're favourites to win the cup any more, but we'll be heading to Livingston on Sunday 7th April, mob-handed, in any event.

I'm now starting to feel guilty about not having done any more of Renshaw's Chronicles (http://renshawschronicles.blogspot.co.uk/) for the last 3 months. I've been very good at keeping my other blogs going recently but the Chronicles requires a lot more time, effort and working memory cells. Who knows when I'll manage the next episode - the early days in Banchory - virtually 30 years ago.

I always like to add some pictorial stuff to my blogs - dry prose only bores - I can almost hear you yawning from here. Here's a recent one from USA:

Terrorists at large? Well, very small ones.

Lastly, to continue on one of the themes making a lot of headlines in the press recently - the battle over mackerel in the North Sea. I spotted an interesting graphic that neatly sums up the problem:

As you can see, the biomass is huge, but we need to come to an agreement soon as to who gets what, and reduce the overall annual catch from all the northern European nations back down to nearer the sustainable level of 0.5m. tonnes, or we will quickly deplete the stock, even allowing for the fact that the relatively short life cycle of mackerel helps it regenerate quickly.

Today's short lesson over.

Jo's op

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yesterday (Monday), I took the day off to take Jo to Albyn for her appointment with Dr. Kumar, who seemed to quickly recognise and diagnose the problem with her shoulder. Apparently it's frozen shoulder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_shoulder) or, more properly, adhesive capsulitis.

Apparently the shoulder joint sits in a bag and this bag has now shrunk, causing lack of movement in her shoulder. Jo first experienced symptoms and pain in the middle of last year. According to Dr. Kumar, it goes through stages and, if had been caught in the first few weeks, or even months, then a simple cortisone injection should have resolved the matter and stopped it developing further, but there's now scar tissue there which is adding to the restriction and the pain. Now that we're 7 or 8 months on, Jo had 2 choices - either wait for it to heal itself - which could take another year or more, or have an operation. Jo chose the latter.

She had an X-ray just to confirm that there's nothing else going on - and there's not - so we're now just waiting for a space in Dr. Kumar's busy diary. Mid-March is most likely. It's keyhole surgery, but although it's just daycare, there's a general anaesthetic, followed by some fairly lengthy physiotherapy apparently.

What causes it? Apparently nobody knows.

Tayside weekend

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Spittal of Glenshee was closed, so we had to head south east on Saturday morning - and we couldn't even go over Cairn o' Mount, so it was the Slug Road to Stonehaven for us. We had thought we might have to go all the way down to Dundee and across to Perth and back up the A9 from there, but it seemed fairly mild so we cut across country from Forfar - to Kirriemuir and Blairgowrie, with the intention of carrying on westwards to Pitlochry from there. Bad luck - roads closed due to flooding, so we ended up having to go down to Perth anyway - only on the country roads rather than the main dual carriageways.

So, despite leaving Banchory nice and early, we were a bit late arriving for lunch but at least I'd managed to get hold of Barry and let him know. We parked at our B & B in Strathtay and took the short walk to the Inn on the Tay - only we started walking in the wrong direction and had to go all the way back again! I guess it just wasn't our day.

Lunch was nice and we caught up on all the news. Barry and Helen are back working again - part-time, 2 days a week as Assessors for the new Modern Apprentice scheme. They're actually training as they're doing the job - the first in Glasgow as well. Harriet, the dog they were training for the Guide Dogs for the Blind, has now gone. She failed, I'm afraid, so she's now just a house dog somewhere. I think Helen misses her.

Dawn told us about Julie having quit her PhD, which came with some funding which has now obviously gone, so it's going to be tough for them with just Kieran's wage coming in and a wedding on the horizon.

After lunch, we posed outside the Inn:

Don't know why Barry and I are looking so unhappy?

Jo and I walked back to our B & B and Dawn, Barry & Helen drove back home. Riverwood was a lovely, high quality place - if a tad precious. We were told the house rules as soon as we arrived - including wearing slippers in the house.

The Evening with Tony Robinson at the theatre in Pitlochry was good fun. It was very informal and was far from a full house. He was on stage with a fellow actor and he just chatted away. He is very small - and very round. His chosen outfit of sparkly cardigan over plain t-shirt wasn't exactly flattering either:

We popped in to the Moulin Inn for a quick pint before heading back to Strathtay.

Breakfast was lovely - sitting at the window looking out at the Tay, with red squirrel and pheasant roaming round the garden. French toast with maple syrup and bacon - delicious.

We had decided we wanted to do a walk before coming home, but it appeared that the planned trip over the hill to Pitlochry was a lot more than the 4 miles I'd been led to believe it was, so we looked elsewhere. I spotted a walk from Grandtully to Aberfeldy - 4 miles apparently, but it would be a bit more than twice that there and back, as it transpired.

Arriving just outside Aberfeldy, first stop looked like being Dewar's distillery, but their coffee shop was shut on Sundays in winter, unfortunately. Nevertheless, there was a photo opportunity in front of their symbol:

You'd never guess we'd just had words, would you?

We found a lovely new coffee shop in the town centre however - the Habitat Cafe. Suitably refreshed, we headed back along the trail to Grandtully, passing Dewar's once more:

Then, the long drive home - on the main roads this time!