Health report

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Well, I had my appointment with my GP this morning and he has now referred me to the knee specialist again. I was amazed when he told me it was two and a half years since my arthroscopies - I had thought it was only 18 months!

We spoke about the bowing in my bones and he assured me that a new knee would take this in to account and somehow re-align things to alleviate the ongoing pain. The lifespan is only 10-15 years so I asked him if I should have done this earlier? He gave me a very firm no to this - he said I was right to put it off as long as I can. I told him I was still undecided and he understood and said I should have a long chat about the pros and cons with the surgeon, and he reminded me that any operation is not without risk.

So, while I was doing that, Jo was at the optician's - wonder how she got on? Will find out later, no doubt. She has been complaining about her eyesight for a while with none of her glasses quite cutting the mustard for her now.

Yes, I had a very nice birthday tea on Wednesday. Gary and Luca came along, armed with a huge chocolate cake that Gary had baked - and very nice it was too. After they left, Ross gave me some specialist beers he'd bought for me and we shared a couple.

Jo's present - a nice sleeveless pullover - arrived yesterday. Nice colour, but hard to describe - no doubt they've got a special name for it. The Lesinas also sent me a package that arrived yesterday - 2 beers and lots of chocolate - as if I needed fattening up!

Got a game of squash last night and then went home and we watched Argo - pretty good, we thought. The memories of the Iranian siege of the US Embassy in Teheran over 30 years ago came flooding back.

I took the South Deeside Rd to work this morning and drove along the beach road and there was white froth blown up on to the road. I looked at the sea and it was as if somebody had put some soap powder in it. I stopped to photograph it but it didn't come out too well on camera:

So tomorrow I'm off to Stonehaven to catch the train down to Glasgow for the Wilko Johnson concert. Weather and time permitting, we'll take in the Jags match v. Dumbarton when, conceivably, they could even go back to the top of the table, given a fair wind. We travel back first thing Sunday, so no golf for me then, but it looks like being a cold weekend again anyway.

Happy birthday - to me!

Always best viewed from the blog itself - http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yes, it's a day for reflection as I enter my 65th year. This also happens to be the 1,000th posting to this particular blog - and I'm up to almost 2,000 blog postings in total now - after almost exactly 6 years - not quite one per day. This blog is also within a whisker of having had 30,000 viewings in that time - more than half the viewings of all 9 of my blogs.

So, thanks to everyone for their wishes, whether by e-mail, Facebook, text or just an old-fashioned card. Some people have even spoken to me face to face - how unusual. It's a strange day because I know of 5 other people who have birthdays today - there's squash partner Gordon Moir (exactly 10 years younger than me); Steve Paterson, footballer and fellow Headbanger (58); Ben Barr (33) - my cousin Douglas' son; Maurice Taylor (72) - former MD and owner of Nor-Sea Foods from where I'm writing this; and John Long (70) who I worked with many years ago - we even went on a driving holiday in Norway with his family back in 1990 - here's one of the photos taken at Andalsnes:

l-r: Ross, John Long, Fran Long, can't remember, Gary, Jo, Heather Long, Kelly & can't remember

So how do I feel? Not great today actually - hope I don't have the Luca bug. Talking about GS3 (I'm better at numbers), he's taken an aversion to Jo's new car - doesn't like the smell apparently. Jo's now frantically thinking of how she can sort this - air fresheners are OK, but I would stop short of replacing the car just because Luca doesn't like it.

Jo thinks I may be a bit anaemic just now, but I think it's just a little bug - something in the air. On Friday, I have my appointment with my GP which is the first step on the road to deciding what to do about my knee - when exactly to get a replacement and whether and how it will improve my lifestyle. I need to speak to the specialist who did my arthroscopies 18 months ago - the X-rays that were done then clearly showed the damage I'd done to both my femur and tibia on the right leg, which are both severely bowed through 43 years of living with the knee damage that wasn't properly fixed when I ruptured my medial ligaments at football training back in 1970.

Moving on to what I've been up to recently - my last blog posting was on 23rd February - an unusually long gap between postings for me. Well, I managed another game of golf on Sunday 24th - that was 2 weeks in a row! - and we had another of our triennial Headbangs last Friday (all the gory details on my music blog), after which Jo and I went to St. Andrews for our first visit to the Clydesdale Bank Ceilidh for a number of years. We were regulars for a while, but had dropped off the guest list for a bit when we were no longer doing business with them, but we've been back with them for a couple of years now, although it clashed with our Aussie trips a couple of times.

We had a leisurely drive down - it's only about 75-80 mins away - dumped the car at the hotel and then walked up past the Old Course to the Auld Grey Toon. We strolled round the streets in the sunshine, vainly looking for an outdoor table somewhere nice for lunch. In the end, we had to settle for indoors at the tried and trusted Central Bar.

We walked back along the shore front where we stopped at a plaque commemorating the famous beach scene from Chariots of Fire:

We nipped across the 17th fairway and checked in to our room - sorry, suite. It was massive and must have been one of the prime rooms in the hotel overlooking the Old Course - the type of room that the top pros stay in when the Open is played at St. Andrews. We could scarcely imagine what Tiger got up to in there. These were some of the views from the room on the 3rd floor:

We got dressed for dinner and posed for the camera as we sipped the chilled champagne that had been left for us:

Dinner was nice and the company at our table were fine, but we'd already made our excuses about lack of dancing when the band started playing - Jo's shoulder and my knee! We survived until 11:20 pm then toddled off to bed, leaving the rest of the revellers to it.

Nice breakfast in the morning then a short walk to get the Sunday paper before heading North again. We did make one pit stop - at Fettercairn, normally a place that's too close to home to stop at, but we fancied a coffee and we liked the look of The Arch (http://www.thearchbistro.co.uk/) - and it was very good - particularly the monster home baked scones, even if they accidentally gave me a chocolate one instead of a fruit one.

Sunday evening was a quiet one, just a snack whilst we watched some of our Sky + recordings - Spiral, the French detective series is getting better - or we're getting more into it.

Then it's back to the usual midweek routine - work, some squash on Monday and hopefully tomorrow too, some good footy on TV and that's about it until the weekend, when I'm off on Saturday to Glasgow to see Wilko Johnson in what could well be his final gig - he's got terminal cancer.