Saturday blog

(If you're viewing this via e-mail, don't forget it's better viewed on the blog itself at http://ianrstewart.blogspot.co.uk/).

Luca's back in Inverurie with his parents now so our house is a little quieter - and it'll get even more so next week as Ross and Lizzie leave for their big adventure in Edinburgh on Monday. Ross got his car through its MoT yesterday so he'll be selling it to his pal Dan this weekend.

When Luca was here he was quite happy to hang around the house most of the time. Jo suggested taking a run over to Stonehaven one day but he didn't fancy spending any more time on a car journey - "I'm always doing that!". In fact, the only times we had him out of the house was on Thursday when I took him for a haircut when Jo was away getting her hair done. This was how he looked before the cut:

We had to wait for a bit, so Luca grabbed my phone and took a few photos of his surroundings:

Luca was impressed by the framed shirts of two local Banchory lads who play for Aberdeen - and he even managed to get me and him in the same photo!

Post haircut with prize lolly

Luca was very defensive about his long locks - he didn't want to lose them, and he gave the hairdresser specific instructions just to cut his fringe so that it wasn't in his eyes any more. She pointed out that his parting was the wrong way because of where his crown is, making his hair stick up there, but, again, he was having none of it - "it's because I'm left handed" he protested.

Beforehand, he climbed up his favourite little hill at Corsee Road:

Yesterday (Friday), Jo and I took Luca out for another slightly longer walk to get rid of some of his surplus energy. We went along the familiar trail to Morrison's, along the riverbank, with Luca showing us the way. We stopped off in KGV park to let him play on the zip slide for a while:

Last Sunday, Gary did the Loch Rannoch Marathon, which, to nobody's surprise but his apparently, was a pretty hilly affair, but he still put in a very respectable time of 3:38, finishing in 68th place overall and 9th in his age category:

The 5 new houses where the Tor-na-Coille filling station used to be are now complete - just a bit of site tidy-up to do now - levelling off the car parking spaces etc. The show house opened yesterday and it's open viewing all weekend so I popped in to do my nosey. They're very nicely equipped and finished, but I reckon we would have to throw out 80% of the stuff we have if we were to consider downsizing and moving in to them. The upstairs living space is all in one - there's no separation, so if somebody wanted to watch TV and somebody else wanted to do something else like read, then they would have to go to one of the 2 bedrooms. I took this photo in the dark the other night:

Next Thursday we're off to York for the weekend. After that, I've got golf in Tenerife 2 weeks today, then we're off to Edinburgh for the Wine Fair 2 weeks after that. Five weeks later we're off to Oz!

We haven't done anything about our American holiday next year yet. We've left it later than usual and may now have missed out on some Air Miles offers and the better Marriott holidays. I guess we'll discuss plans with Lucy when we meet up with her in Adelaide. I saw an article in the papers recently about a musical odyssey that I've long considered doing:

Definitely on the wish list.