September week 3

Another week flown by - and you can now sense it's getting autumnal - definitely not as warm as it had been recently - and we notice the leaves are now spotting brown a bit.

My week went virtually as planned - and as outlined in last week's blog - a couple of cycles and 4 games of golf. Definitely going to be a slow one today - newspapers, TV - to allow my body to recover from the stiffness I feel just now. Got a big match tomorrow - can't let Scotland down in our annual Challenge match v the Rest of the World!

I went along to the Legion on Thursday night for a hands-on training session at River Dee Radio. the tutor/presenter, Richard, was keen for us to try out the mixing desk and do a test broadcast using the Zara Radio software, but I'm not ready for any live broadcasting - I would rather pre-record shows, but this means using a different piece of software (Audacity) and Richard didn't know much about this, so I'm going to do some training on this next week.

Incidentally, next Saturday morning (1st) from 10 am to 1:00 pm there's a live show going out, featuring all the volunteer presenters, each of whom has been asked to provide two tracks to demonstrate what their show is likely to be about. I don't think I'll be able to make it along as we've got our flu jabs and then we're going to the Cowshed for lunch (double 70th birthday celebration and 50th anniversary for Les and Angela Gray). Andy Marshall is going along to represent the Banchory Headbangers. Don't forget the link to listen to River Dee Radio is http://tunein.com/radio/River-Dee-Radio-s274232

Tonight (Saturday) we're going to the Kilgours for dinner - that should be nice.

I've enjoyed the two rides I've had on my new hybrid bike so far - it's definitely easier than my mountain bike, which is going in again to the bike shop on Monday to try again to have its squealing brakes fixed.

I noticed an article in the press giving a link to a web site (https://qrisk.org/2016/) on which you can input some of your personal details and it gives you your risk of heart attack/stroke in the next 10 years. I did mine and it came out at 20.4%, which is above the 16% norm for someone of my age etc:

I played around with it a bit to see if I could get the risk factor down - I immediately thought perhaps weight was a factor, so I lopped 10 kgs off my real weight, but it made very little difference to the overall score. What did affect it greatly was the tick box for Atrial Fibrillation - if I unticked it and pretended I didn't have AF, my risk fell to 12% - well below the healthy average. Scary thought - that's something I can't do anything about.

That's all for now folks - until next week. Take care.