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.

West Country news (3)

We checked out of our lovely hotel in Stratford on Friday morning, but first a couple of last wistful photos:

Before heading off to Cheltenham for the Literature Festival, we took the short drive out to the fifth Shakespeare property - Mary Arden's Farm:

Cheltenham is only an hour away, so we got there in time for lunch - after having again to park our car in a public park, albeit the Holiday Inn at least arranged a 25% discount for us. We were just across the road from the newly developed Brewery Quarter, which, coincidentally, contained a brand new brewpub, the Brewhouse & Kitchen - very nice indeed.

Our first show was foreign correspondent, John Simpson, BBC News' World Affairs Editor. It was a straight one on one interview - very interesting. Our next show was a few hours' away so we went back to our hotel for a while then went out to look for something to eat and stumbled upon The Stable, which advertised "Pizza, Pies & Cider". Pizza was what Jo fancied and I decided that this was a "when in Rome" moment for me and sampled their ciders -very interesting, although not something I would normally partake of.

Val McDermid was interviewed by fellow crime writer Mark Billingham and they were brilliant together. We came across these odd statues before stopping for a nightcap at the local Wetherspoon's on the way back to our hotel:

Saturday morning arrived and we had a free day as the two shows we had booked were both in the evening. We had brunch at Patisserie Valerie then took a stroll over to Pittville Park. We briefly discussed the possibility of taking a drive down to Bath - and we had sufficient time - but eventually opted for the easier stroll round the park:

A mid-afternoon snack back at the Brewhouse & Kitchen, followed by a rest back at the hotel, then off for a nice steak dinner prior to the Festival - Jeremy Paxman first, followed by a very poor panel talk on The Ages of Bowie - our only disappointment of the weekend.

On Sunday we decided to have brunch at the Boston Tea Party, a busy place we had passed several times, but this time it was just too busy and we chose the easy way out and diverted to Wetherspoon's, which turned out to be very nice.

On our way to the Festival, we stopped for a photo in front of a nice street fountain:

On arrival at Imperial Square, we noticed this statue of Gustav Holst:

The Brian Wilson show featured a filmed interview with the great man and was really well done, but it underlined what a troubled man he is. As we came out of the marquee, I was pulled to one side by a BBC local radio interviewer, looking for comments on the festival to appear on Monday morning's news show. I susbsequently picked it up on the i-player and, if you click this link and scroll forward to 55:05, you can listen to it - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p049d2fh#play.

We had a bit of time to kill as the planned George Harrison tribute show, due to feature his widow Olivia, was cancelled "due to unforeseen circumstances", so we headed off to the CAMRA National Pub of the Year 2015, the Sandford Park Alehouse - and what an excellent place it was. So good, in fact, that we had lunch plus 3 pints there - well, I did anyway:

Just 2 shows left - first was Shetland - the TV series that Jo was a big fan of, and, even although I didn't watch it, nor read any of Ann Cleeves' books, I enjoyed it too.

In between shows, we had another nice meal before going in - fractionally late - to the Wilko Johnson interview, which was richly entertaining - and amusing.

Another nightcap at Wetherspoon's and that was our weekend in the West Country over. All that remained on Monday morning was to drive to the airport and catch our flight back to Aberdeen, where Ross met us and took us home.

On Tuesday morning, I drove over to Inverurie to bring Luca over to ours for the rest of the week before heading off for a morning cycle. Now that's me up to date again.

West Country news (2)

When we got up on Thursday morning, we couldn't believe it - the streets were completely clear - not a sign of the MOP Fair, which had run until 11 pm the night before. They must have been working all through the night to clear everything away. This was the view of our hotel from the street:

We had our meeting with SellMyTimeshare in the morning and it turned out much as we expected - they try to suck you in to their system, which smelled ever so slightly of pyramid selling. We weren't comfortable with signing up there and then - we're treating it as stage one in our learning process as to what to do with our two weeks in Hollywood, Florida. We're unlikely to ever use them as they're the Xmas/New Year weeks - premium time in USA - and we've been having difficulty recently in using them for suitable exchanges through Interval International. Meanwhile the maintenance fees are rising, especially after Sterling's recent collapse, so we didn't think that any of our offspring would want to take them on either, so we'll have to find a solution in due course. We're keeping our separate Marriott week and Points however - we like them.

Once we freed ourselves from their clutches we were able to do the Shakespeare thing - 5 separate properties to view, but first, lunch. We chose well - The One Elm was quirky but very good:

We rather rushed through the first Shakespeare property, which was a pity, but we had forgotten to renew our parking ticket. We took a bit more time and had some fun in the second one:

The third property was Hall's Croft:

All three so far had been within easy walking distance but Anne Hathaway's Cottage was a mile away, but worth the walk:

Back in the town, it was time for a beer - and we'd found the Stratford Ale House, a dinky little place but excellent beer. Dinner that night was in Stratford's oldest pub - the Old Thatch Tavern, another Fuller's property.

West Country news (1)

Happy to say Jo's a lot better than she was when I last posted just over a week ago. She's still not completely out of the woods yet - although the initial infection seems to have gone, she's now developed a persistent cough, but she certainly feels a whole lot better. Jo finished her course of antibiotics on Friday night and managed a couple of glasses of wine and a few beers on Saturday/Sunday before we came home on Monday.

The travel was very easy - Flybe from Aberdeen to Birmingham - very civilised times - and then we picked up a hire car and made the short journey to Stratford-(up)on-Avon in a dinky little Fiat 500 - the same model as we drove in France last year:

Perfect for the two of us - very frugal - we didn't even have to put fuel in it - but it's foot to the floor when going uphill!

When we arrived in Stratford, we had some difficulty getting to our hotel as the MOP Fair (https://www.stratford.gov.uk/leisure/the-mop-fair.cfm) was on. It took over all the streets in the centre of town and there was a large carousel right outside our hotel. Eventually we found a way to the car park at the rear, only to discover that there was no private parking - only public at £14 per day.

The hotel itself was lovely - old, but a tasteful update when Fuller's took it over 4 years ago. We checked in then did a short recce round the town, posing in front of the Shakespearean characters before taking a short walk along the banks of the Avon:

Hamlet

Falstaff

We had dinner that evening in our hotel:

So that was Wednesday. More to follow.