The weather in the first 10 days after our return from Oz has been excellent - so much so that I played golf on both Sunday and Monday. We didn't have to go to Inverurie on Tuesday as Luca was away on a ski-ing trip with his school.
Wednesday and Thursday were spent in the Central Belt. We spent Wednesday afternoon at Dawn's. She looks after Kieran and Julie's Mara in the morning and we arrived just in time to see her before she went off to Nursery in the afternoon:
Barry and Helen had been down at the MG Owners' Club and the Caravan Club Show in the Midlands, but they drove back early and we took them to the Three Craws for a meal before spending the night at theirs.
On Thursday morning we drove over to Elderslie to see Mary, who's been suffering a bit recently with high blood pressure. She seems to be recovering now, however. In the afternoon we drove over to Edinburgh to see Ross and Lizzie. Storm Doris was forecast to wreak havoc over the North of England and South and Central Scotland but, although the M8 was very wet, we didn't have much difficulty with our travel.
Ross has had a terrible start to life in the capital. The job he was promised by his pal Harris has come to nothing and Harris is now winding up his business and has taken on a salaried job, leaving Ross to scrabble around looking for odd bits and bobs of work anywhere he could find it - but it's not the best time of year for this and he's struggled to get more than a few hours a week of low paid work.
Thankfully, just before we arrived at their flat, Ross got some better news with a couple of offers of more regular work, so we hope that's a corner turned now. With little or no money between the two of them and bills to pay, it's been almost impossible for them to have any kind of social life until now, so Lizzie's first impressions of life in Edinburgh have not been positive. We'll see what happens when their current lease ends in October, but we wouldn't be too surprised if they came back to Banchory.
On Friday, Jo went swimming with her pals in the afternoon, whilst I joined up with 4 of mine to go for a walk on Hill of Fare from Echt to Raemoir. I hadn't appreciated there would be so much snow this far north and the underfoot conditions at the top were very tricky, which led to me straining my groin and having to hobble for most of the second half of the walk, which turned out to be a little longer than planned at 15 kms:
A hot bath eased the pain a little last night, but today (Saturday) it's worse and I'm pretty immobile - no golf for me tomorrow. I had actually planned to go in to Aberdeen this afternoon for a CAMRA meeting - the annual one where our branch decides which pubs in our area should go in to next year's Good Beer Guide - but the bus I had planned to catch didn't show up and the next one would have been too late, so I'm sitting here watching the Scotland - Wales rugby international and listening in to the football scores. Come 5:30 pm, I'll need some liquid medication - although how I'll get to the pub, I don't know.
I've checked online as to what to do with a groin strain and they say I should ice it and strap it up - and take Ibuprofen. I'll start tonight.
To close - a photo of Jo on holiday wearing the new top she bought whilst we were away:
