Here I am again

15 years I've been doing this blog and never have I had such a big gap between posts as now. My last post was on 30th August, so nothing at all in either September or October. I'll never return to my old prolific ways - at one stage I was posting daily - but I would like to at least write something 2, 3 or 4 times a month at least.

We got back from our 2 week holiday on Costa del Sol on Saturday. The travel was easy - everything went smoothly - but - we've both picked up some kind of bug. Chest and head congestion. It's not Covid. Jo's been worse than me so far. I think she's coming out of it now but the last 4-5 days have not been good for her. I seem to have it much milder so far - hope it's not just a delay and I'll go down like Jo did.

Most of our activities when we were away have been posted on Facebook and Instagram so I'm not going to repeat it all here but suffice to say that the holiday went well. The first week was with the boys but the second week it was just the two of us and we managed to get a few nice walks in - usually in the morning, with the afternoons at the pools. It was good to see Jo back swimming again after almost 3 years:

The walks we did were varied - beach, boardwalk and trails. Our first one was really interesting, following an old aqueduct round the Guadalmina basin:

The week with the boys was completely different. Football is Luca's obsession - and both Gary and I are hardly averse to it either. We were really grateful to Ross, however, as he did all the driving that week, including the long drive to and from Sevilla in one day, principally for Luca, Gary and I to watch the Sevilla - Valencia match whilst Ross and Jo had dinner and a walk round the city gardens:

We regularly went to one of the bars at the resort to watch English football on TV - with Spanish commentaries - and much of the rest of the time, Luca kept Gary on the go with football, badminton and table tennis.

We visited the huge Monday flea market in Marbella and managed to find a fairly decent coffee shop for Ross as well. Crazy golf a couple of times and once we went karting - that was great fun:

To continue with the football theme, Luca was playing at Crathes against Banchory on Saturday afternoon - just after Jo and I got home. I went along to watch Kintore's number 14:

Jo and I bought the Marriott timeshare for our silver wedding when it first opened. This year, it's our golden anniversary - I don't know what we'll do this time? The resort is still looking very smart:

The apartment we stayed in this time is marked in red on the balcony.

Moving on to other matters - remember the Be a Brewer for a Day trip that Jo and I went on? Well, the finished article arrived a few weeks ago:

We were down at the theatre in Glasgow a few weeks ago and had a big lunch the following day with Meghan, Ellis and Avery, who were visiting from NYC, plus Dawn, Barry, Helen, Lauren, Malcolm and Ethan (Malcolm's son). I'd taken down a bottle of our brew to give to Barry but forgot to hand it over. Next time if I remember.

Here we are at the theatre and the following morning at the famous duke of Wellington statue with the "traditional" traffic cone on his head: