Last week in October

Good morning all - Jo and I have just returned from our booster and flu vaccinations. I wonder if we'll get any reactions? The booster was Pfizer this time (having had AZ the first two) so I asked them to put it in my right arm for a change, with the flu jag going in the left. I've now got a busy day in front of me - soon I have to drive in to Aberdeen and take my car in for its annual service. The last time I took it to Arnold Clark (for some non-routine work) was when I had my little incident with my bike - so will I take my bike with me today? Probably not, erring on the side of caution, but there's nowhere to walk round there so what am I going to do for 3 hours or so? We've got Luca with us for a few days and I'm taking him to his football training in Kemnay tonight. I watched his match on Saturday against his old team Colony Park (lost 1-3) and then brought him over to Banchory after a quick lunch at Inverurie Garden Centre. He's getting big - here's a photo Gary sent me from his previous match:

Our weekly Zoom calls with Barry, Helen and Dawn continue. Last week Dawn was heading to bed as soon as we finished as she had an early morning start on the Friday as she was accompanying Lauren down to London for another check-up on her dental work. Dawn had to miss the week before as she was out with Lauren, Malcolm and Jordon on the eve of the latter's birthday:

Jo and I had our first night away for over a year when we drove up to Nairn for the Bandstand Hotel's beer festival. We bumped in to CAMRA colleague Richard Jones and his wife, Donna and joined them in the nearby Havelock Hotel for a couple of beers:

The view from our hotel dining room and bedroom:

Jo's been working on our rockery at the front of the house recently:

We're really pleased that Australia appears to be catching up on their vaccination programme and are planning to open up their borders gradually, but as cases are still rising in the UK we have to remain cautious, although thankfully our triple vaccinations will hopefully save us from some of the worst effects should we be unfortunate enough to contract the virus. There's still a fair amount of hassle (and cost) with international travel which will hopefully ease in 2022 and allow us to return to Australia - and USA, where we still have our Air Miles bookings for May next year - although we've already had to cancel these flights 4 times - September, 2020 then March, 2021 followed by June and then September, 2021. Fingers crossed for 5th time lucky!