High pressure continues

Still glorious here - and long may it continue. I love days when the skies are clear and you wake up to a slight frosting on your car and the day just gets warmer and warmer from there.

I went for a short walk round Fraserburgh harbour yesterday at lunchtime, staring up at the huge pelagic trawlers, which are now all tied up after the end of the main mackerel season. Stopped off at Inverurie for tea with Luca and Jo before dashing back to Banchory for an important meeting on the future of the planned new Sports Centre. I decided to dump my car at home - I just had enough time to do that before walking from one end of the village to the other for the meeting at Hill of Banchory. The walk took me just over half an hour, walking as fast as I could.

Of course, one of the reasons I walked to the meeting was that I was falling short of my 10,000 steps per day target. My new Jawbone Up doesn't have much data yet, but here was the first report after a couple of days:

 

 

The history of the planned Sports Centre goes back two decades at least, when the community raised funds for a new pool. The money collected - £100K - has been sitting in a bank account earning peanuts in interest ever since, with little sign of the pool appearing - until now. It appears that we are now finally entering the final stages of a long, drawn-out programme, with final designs now being put together, with a view to having the Centre operational in 2017 - and yes, it's almost certain we will have squash courts in it - but only courtesy of Richard Simcox, who has made a very generous commitment to provide a six figure sum. There still remains a funding gap of c. £350K - £400K, which has to be available within 18 months, but I really believe we will get there this time.

The tragedy for me is that I will not be in a position to get much use from the centre by the time it opens - and a whole generation have missed out.

This morning was a trip to the dentist, so no weekly cycle with the boys. I did leave work early this afternoon, however, with the intention of going for a late afternoon cycle round Banchory. I headed up round Inchmarlo, but didn't get very far and ended up coming back down to the High St and going for a haircut!

A long-awaited parcel arrived from America - the Official Bootleg Box by Graham Parker and the Rumour, for which I was one of the original funders of the project - gaining myself a mention on the album notes:

(right hand page, middle column, 9 down)

That's all for now, folks