Sunday Post

Third blog post in a row on a Sunday. It's derby day in the English Premier league, so it's been football, football, football all afternoon - none of it Scottish, even though Aberdeen are playing Celtic in the League Cup Final - but it's on BT Sport and we don't have that - only Sky.

It's all very much a consolation because my first love, Partick Thistle, are now bottom of the Championship, having just been relegated from the Premiership last season. Gary even went to the trouble of blaming me and shaming me on Facebook for passing on this peculiar inheritance. Well, I blame my Dad too.

None of this will be of any great interest to most of the rest of my family, but I thought you should all know that it still leaves scars on my psyche.

On to other matters - it was a pretty wet week last week and we were housebound for a few days, although I did manage a couple of cycles at the start and end of the week when the sun did actually shine. I was also over in Inverurie 3 days in a row, starting with the usual Tuesday Luca visit. Gary's hot water broke down so I arranged to come back on Wednesday morning to house-sit until the engineer arrived - he discovered that it was a broken diaphragm - but he would have to order one - could I come back tomorrow?

So, Thursday morning, I set off for Inverurie once more. Just as I was leaving Banchory at 7:30 am, my phone rang - it was Luca. "Granda, I can't do up the top button of my school shirt and I normally leave to walk to school at 7:55 am". Don't worry son - Granda will get there by 8 am, fix your top button and drive you to school. Crisis averted.

So all good so far, but, sod's law, when the engineer did arrive, it was with an apology - the part hadn't arrived - could I come again (yet again!) tomorrow? "Sorry - no - we're getting our flu jabs on Friday". I could come back Monday, but Gary couldn't wait that long, and, in the end, Gary had to take a couple of hours off work - he couldn't survive all weekend without hot water.

So, today, two new frames arrived for the posters we've had hidden in our cupboards for years. I fitted them up and put one in the study/studio downstairs:

The other one has temporarily gone up in our bedroom, but I'm pretty sure it won't survive the evening there - Jo has plans for that space. Still, it fills a gap, doesn't it?:

Well, we're two days in to Advent now and that's two bottles down. All good so far - can we keep it up for the month?

To close, another plug for our Headbangers show on River Dee Radio - now available as a podcast on a number of platforms - Mixcloud, Soundcloud, Spreaker, Stitcher and you can find it in i-Tunes too. The RSS feed is https://www.spreaker.com/show/3251191/episodes/feed