Home again

It's Friday afternoon and it's freezing back here in Scotland. It's not quite another Beast from the East, but it's cold and windy with occasional wintry showers. Quite a change.

The journey went as well as can be expected. We're both suffering a little in terms of irregular and deprived sleep - much more so than we did on the way out to Australia - but we're getting there.

The long flight to Dubai was in a very new 777. We even had our own little mini bars behind a glass door:

The chauffeur drive back to Banchory from Glasgow went smoothly enough. The aftermath of the recent bad weather was pretty evident in places:

Banchory was completely clear however and our house was warm - courtesy of Ross' recent stay there - and Hive.

I decided to try and adjust to UK time as soon as possible and the fact that I had a River Dee Radio show to do that evening was incentive enough. On Thursday morning I took a walk up to Banchory Car Centre to pick up my new(ish) car:

It's a well-spec'd Volvo XC60. Yes, after years of complaining about the increasing numbers of bulky SUV's etc, which smaller cars can't see past, I've decided I can't beat them, so better just to join them.

Today (Friday), we drove in to WeBuyAnyCar.com in Aberdeen and sold my BMW, which was my company car from eight and a half years ago.

That's about it for now.

Day of departure

Tuesday morning and it's our final day of this holiday. Our flight is scheduled for 10:35 pm tonight local time and we're getting picked up at Kelly's at 7:35 pm, so we've got a whole day in front of us - but we're pretty much packed and we've cleared our little Air BnB of our stuff - but we can leave our bags here and return later to collect them.

Just thought I'd update our activities since my last post on Friday. On Saturday morning, while Chris did some more work on their new floor, Kelly, Jo and I took Miller and Asher to a kids' Fringe show. We had to wait a bit prior to the start so we found a shady spot:

We couldn't take Asher's pram in to the show, and, as a result, he spent the hour running around with Kelly helplessly chasing after him. Miller really enjoyed it, however and he got a little treat of "fairy floss" afterwards:

One of the Fringe performers allowed Miller to pose on a little motorbike:

On Sunday morning I bit the bullet and went for a ride on Chris' bike. I reached Glenelg well before 8 am and was a little surprised to see huge crowds on the beach. The signs said it was the World Surf Life Saving Championships, but there were other activities going on prior to the start - like inter-town beach races:

Further on, near West Lakes, I came across a developing incident. There was a civilian lying on the large rocks below the esplanade and he was being tended to by a team of police, paramedics and eventually fire and rescue teams. He was obviously in great pain and was being given shots prior to being raised up in a safety cradle.

On Sunday, Jo and I went to a Fringe show - a Cat Stevens tribute act. Nice place, but the actual performance wasn't great. After the show, we walked back in to the city where we found Rundle St closed off to traffic and all the restaurants had their tables out in the middle of the street. We chose an Indian restaurant and ate our meal as the sun set at the end of the street:

Monday was a public holiday and everyone was off work. Kelly and Chris had arranged for family and friends to come over for a BBQ in the afternoon, so Jo and I took a morning walk down to the beach for coffee and a shared muffin (hopscotch, I think it was described as - we would say butterscotch). We walked back to our place up the "zig-zag" path:

This was the first attempt at our group/team photo after our BBQ:

Chris' parents, Lorene and David, gave us a lift back to Seacliff where Jo and I decided to go down to the local hotel to watch the sunset:

That's about it. I think we'll head to the beach for coffee and return later. The AC man hasn't arrived yet and it's just after 10 am now.