Yes - tonight our clocks go back one hour. Some people say that means an extra hour in bed but I know it won't make any difference to my sleeping pattern, other than the fact that the clock will say 5 am when I awaken instead of 6 am.
Just over 2 weeks since we got back from Spain – and until this weekend, the weather has been very pleasant, but you sense things are changing now.
So, what have we been up to? Well, on Tuesday 14th October, Ross was good enough to drive me up to Aberchirder again to join some of my CAMRA colleagues at the New Inn's monthly music night. There was a lovely warm atmosphere as the singers, poets and musicians all did their turn - and we got a mini-tour of their in-house brewery as well, not to mention a few of their beers.
Two days later my car was in John Clark's in Aberdeen for the annual service - and it was a big one this time plus a full set of 4 new tyres and a repair job on the spring that was broken when we were in Mallaig. I'm glad I took the chance to book a courtesy car - normally, I would just wait there, but, as I suspected, it took all day - and there was a huge bill to pay afterwards as well. Ouch.
This week a group of us went out for a cycle prior to attending our monthly beer night in Ian Dring's "man cave". Numbers were reduced a little this time but we had a fun time and some nice ales:
Jo and I went along to Taylor's and looked at thermal curtains for the back (TV) room. So many decisions to make. We had to enlist the help of AI to give us some rough idea of what it might look like afterwards:
We've made the choices on fabrics, pleats, linings etc and yesterday they were professionally measured and we have our quote now. We hope they will be in before Christmas but it's all dependent on availability of fabric.
I've been busy looking forward to next year's holidays in Australia and America. We've got the majority of the Australian one booked now. It was a bit more involved this time as Chris and Kelly are in the process of moving from Old Noarlunga up to the hills where Miller's and Asher's new schools are so we had to sort ourselves out with accommodation etc. This is what the programme looks like so far:
Wed 7 Jan ABZ – LHR - SIN
Thu 8 Jan Arrive SIN
Thu 8 Jan – Mon 12 Jan (4 nights) Maxwell
Reserve
Mon 12 Jan SIN – Darwin
Mon 12 Jan – Thu 15 Jan (3 nights) Mercure Darwin
Airport Resort
Thu 15 Jan Darwin – ADL
Thu 15 Jan – Sat 31 Jan (16 nights) Bridgewater
Cottage
Sat 31 Jan ADL – Gold Coast
Sat 31 Jan – Sat 7 Feb (7 nights) Marriott
Surfers Paradise
Sat 7 Feb Gold
Coast – ADL
Sat 7 Feb – Wed 11 Feb (4 nights) The Retreat at Stirling
Wed 11 Feb – Wed 18 Feb (7
nights) Possible road trip?
Wed 18 Feb – Thu 26 Feb (8
nights) Accommodation
still to be booked
Thu 26 Feb ADL
– SIN – LHR
Fri 27 Feb LHR
- ABZ
When we first arrive in Adelaide, our accommodation is a 200 year old cottage which was once the local village's police station!:
We then fly up to the Gold Coast (c. 70 kms south of Brisbane) for a week. When we come back to Adelaide, we have 4 nights here - https://www.the-retreat.com.au/stirling-accommodation
After that, we're planning a road trip somewhere. Kelly and Chris are suggesting the Yorke peninsula (we've never been there). Kelly showed us some of the possible attractions there - https://southaustralia.com/itineraries/yorke-peninsula-itinerary
We've also still to decide what to do and where to stay when we come back from our road trip. By then, the Adelaide Fringe will have started so we might take in a couple of shows.
So, with Australia (almost) sorted, I started to look at USA next year and I managed to book flights out on 6th September, 2026, with the help of some Avios points and a BA Companion voucher. It was too early initially to book return flights - you can only do this 355 days in advance - but on Monday (20th) I started to check out the BA site, just in case.
I input return flights on 20th October, 2026 and was amazed that the site gave me options of flights then. That's when I should have smelt a rat. I jumped at it and booked the flights. As usual I sent the confirmation to Jo to add to her calendar. Thankfully, Jo was on her i-Pad at the time and she said "what's this? Flight from San Francisco to London tonight?"
That horrible sinking feeling in my gut - the booking was 20th October, 2025 not 2026! How could I be so stupid? I didn't notice the year had changed. Frantic phone calls to the BA Club where, after an eternity of waiting for someone to answer, a woman with an American accent responded. "No worries - it's well within the cooling off period - I can cancel it and you'll get all your money and your points back" Whew. "I just need to put you on hold for a few seconds".
Several minutes later - "sorry, but I can't do it this way - you'll need to raise a formal claim with BA". Oh no, here we go.
I've spent many hours this week making the claim, following it up and endlessly waiting on the phone for responses. Thankfully, it looks like we're almost there. We've had part of the money back, with promises of the rest to come, and we've had all the points refunded too.
What a dope I was - I can't believe I would make such a simple, and potentially damaging, mistake. I've never done anything like this before. Hopefully, I won't repeat it - I'll be treble checking everything.
Meanwhile, our American famaily have all travelled down to Louisiana to catch up with Braeden - Scott, Lucy, Cade, Audrey and even little Kendall all flew there.
It's now 11 weeks since my knee replacement and I seem to be doing OK, although I have a slight feeling that the rapid improvement in the first few weeks has now plateau'd out. The early weeks' exercises are now too simple. It was good when we were at our resort in Spain, I was able to use the gym there for specific knee strengthening exercises. Perhaps I should join the gym at the Sports Centre to continue with this?
Our (relatively) local brewery - Burnside - has just expanded in to a new building and I got a couple of their first brews from there:
It was Origami Day - and Asher loves that.
