Sunday at home

Oh dear, Jo - "tawdies" and "whiskey" - I think not. We certainly don't have any of the Irish spirit in our house and hopefully Craig and Kelly also have only Scotch whisky in theirs - and maybe they might enjoy their toddies - but who said I was pedantic?



Last night, Jo, Ross and I watched a great movie - The Counterfeiters - a German film with subtitles about the "privileged" Jews kept in a concentration camp to make forged notes. It's a true story and it was the Nazis attempt to undermine the UK economy by printing millions of Sterling notes - they almost succeeded, but fortunately, they didn't manage to repeat the exercise with the US dollars. Doesn't sound scintillating, but catch it if you can - it was absorbing.



Another pleasant autumn day here - and I enjoyed my golf at Torphins this morning - check the golf blog (http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/) for a photo.



I found the cable for the old camera so it's over to Jo now to colour her blog and enlighten us all with the things she does and places she goes.

Lovely smell coming from the kitchen just now - Jo's busy in there - she's going out for a walk with Anne in half an hour.

I'm off to Dundee in the morning - I've called for an urgent face to face meeting with our bankers after a call I received from them on Thursday. Our contact at the Bank of Scotland is under huge pressure from his bosses to immediately increase the rates they charge us by 50%. The crisis in the world financial sector is huge and wide ranging.

I neglected to add a list to yesterday's blog posting - so, back to music again. I'd previously mentioned the list of almost 100 favourite individual tracks (not albums) that I made up a few years ago - it consisted of 60 separate artistes:

Animals
Beach Boys
Beatles
Bob Dylan
Buddy Holly & the Crickets
Canned Heat
Clash
Cream
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Dandy Warhols
Eddie Cochran
Elvis Costello
Eric Burdon & the Animals
Faces
Fleetwood Mac
Four Tops
Free
Graham Parker & The Rumour
Jack Bruce
Jam
James Taylor
Jethro Tull
Jimi Hendrix Experience
Joe Cocker
Joe Jackson
John Lennon
Judy Clay & William Bell
Kingsmen
Kinks
Led Zeppelin
Lou Reed
Love
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Nashville Teens
Neil Young
Nils Lofgren
Nirvana
Oasis
Otis Redding
Python Lee Jackson
Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Rod Stewart
Rolling Stones
Roxy Music
Sam & Dave
Sex Pistols
Showstoppers
Sly and the Family Stone
Small Faces
Specials
Squeeze
Stevie Wonder
Talking Heads
Temptations
Them
Tony Joe White
Undertones
Warren Zevon
Who
Zombies

Mostly familiar names - but perhaps a few you may not have heard of. Noticeable absence of Radiohead - not quite sure why.

Headbangers

The weather has been lovely and it got up to 18.5 C in Banchory on Friday. Today was also nice, but I was too tired to enjoy my golf properly this morning having been late home from last night's headbang at Dave's - photo on football blog: http://bvetsfootballgroup.blogspot.com/

This afternoon, Colin, Dave and Malcolm came round to watch the Scotland match - another disappointing result - 0-0. Tonight it's a take-away from the Coriander.

I still have to look out the old cable to allow Jo to add the photos she took with the old camera to her blog - look out for exciting times ahead in Jo's world.

Thursday in the Broch

Must have had too much sleep on Tuesday night as I was awake at 4:30 this morning and eventually got up and came to Fraserburgh for our management meetings. Certainly feeling a lot better now - I even cancelled football last night to make sure - I now feel ready for some exercise again - squash tonight, I think.



I'm dropping off some glasses at the local Brewdog brewery (http://www.brewdog.com/) today - first time I've been there - they seem to be fairly successful, but haven't won too many friends in the process, it seems.



I got an invitation to go and see the Man U v Celtic Champions League match yesterday - indirectly from MUFC's sponsors, AIG. Should be good - just waiting for details of travel etc now.



Nothing else happening so straight on to today's list - as promised, famous (to me) football moments. My Dad was always a football fanatic - primarily Partick Thistle, but he also appreciated and supported Scotland and Scottish football teams against European opposition. His eldest brother Willie was a die-hard Bluenose (Rangers), but Dad had no time for any of the bigotry that went with the Rangers-Celtic scene in Glasgow. He had much more empathy with his other elder brother, Alex, who ran away from home at an early age and joined the Gordon Highlanders - he felt that was where he belonged - and, of course, he supported Aberdeen as well. Indeed, when we moved to Banchory in 1983, I used to get tickets for Alex (who had recently returned from years in USA) and go to the matches with him - although he would never stay with us - he always booked a hotel room in Aberdeen. In those days, Aberdeen were arguably the best team in Europe for a while under Fergie's tutelage.

Sorry - slight digression - writing the above made me think about another retirement project I've been storing away for years - the creation of a full family tree. A few years ago, Scott's cousin, Mark, was trying to make one up and asked for my help with Lucy's side - I had to stall him at the time and have never managed to complete the task since. I have been sitting on the following papers prepared by my Mum and Dad many years ago - I think it was for one of Kelly's school projects:

As you can see, a little less than complete. I started to prepare a full one using modern technology a few years ago, but it's a big task - one day!

Anyway, back to football moments. When I was just 3, we moved to Corby, Northants and a long way from Dad's beloved Jags. Nonetheless, from an early age, he started taking me to the local football grounds - Corby Town, Kettering, Northampton and Peterborough - mostly non-league clubs then. We also occasionally went to see Leicester at Filbert St - Dad sat me on the cinder track directly in front of him. I remember seeing the famous Spurs team about 1959/1960 there.

When we came back to Scotland, we usually went to see the Jags, but occasionally during the first 6 months we were back, and before we moved to Foxbar Drive, we would go and support our local team, Johnstone Burgh - a Junior side who occasionally could attract as many as 10,000 fans for big games.

Enough of the pre-amble - what about the list? Well, there's lots and lots of games I remember - some live, some just on TV, but the ones that come immediately to mind, in striclty chronological order are:

1) c. 1963 - PTFC v Dundee, who were riding high as Scottish champions and went on to reach the European Cup semi-final. The Jags stuffed them 3-0 - what a day it was.

2) 1967 - Celtic beating Inter Milan in the European Cup Final, with a team consisting solely of players born within 30 miles of Glasgow - a feat never to be repeated.

3) 23rd October 1971 - an all-time high - Thistle, newly promoted and with a very young team, hammer the mighty Celtic 4-1 in the League Cup Final.

4) 1977 - having been to Wembley and seen Scotland beat England in an infamous match (remember the pitch invasion?), Scotland went on to beat Czechoslovakia at Hampden in a vital World Cup qualifier, with Joe Jordan scoring a famous headed winner. There then followed the match at Anfield against Wales, with a hotly disputed penalty kick helping Scotland to a 2-0 victory. From there it was on to Argentina in 1978, but, at that point, I draw a veil over the proceedings!

5) Although Argentina was a huge disappointment, nobody can forget the elation around the whole British Isles as Archie Gemmill scored that wonderful goal against Holland to put us 3-1 up and "in dreamland".

6) If I had left Fischer and joined Clipper a couple of months earlier in 1983, it wouldn't just have been on TV that I could celebrate Aberdeen's wonderful European Cup Winners Cup victory over Real Madrid - I could have been there in person - Dr. Clark chartered a plane for all of his management to go to Gothenburg!

7) 1999 - MUFC finally reach their second ever European Cup final. I played golf late afternoon but had to drive to Inverness afterwards. I got to my hotel and looked for a big screen somewhere but couldn't find one, so I dashed to my room and caught the last half hour, including those last 2 amazing minutes when Solksjaer and Sheringham pulled off the miracle.

8) Scotland met England in the Euro qualifiers (was it 1999 or 2003?). I had watched the first match at a pub in Beijing - Scotland lost 2-0. I flew home the day after, got tickets for the Wednesday 2nd leg at Wembley and booked flights for Ross, Gary and I. We had a great time and Scotland won 1-0 and came so close to knocking England out. We never saw much of the match, however, as we were in the midst of the Tartan Army, who were singing and dancing all the time!

Jordon 13

Happy 13th birthday to Jordon today:

I almost went home from the Broch at lunchtime yesterday as I was feeling so poorly, but I had a lot of work to do and I seemed to get a bit of a second wind so I carried on. Of course, when I got home, only Ross was there - Jo had gone out for another walk with the girls - keep it up! Locking her out of the house wasn't a good idea, however.

I went to bed at 8:00 pm last night - I obviously needed the sleep and feel a little better this morning - fingers crossed.

I'm sure the suspense is killing you so, to put you out of your misery, here's the full agenda for Friday's headbang:

1. Obituary - as described yesterday

2. Then and Now - original footage from 40 years ago and the same bands playing the same songs now - this slot features Cream and Pentangle this time

3. Original and Cover - original versions of songs and their later covers by other artists - featuring Shout (Isley Bros/Lulu), My Generation (Who/Oasis), I Heard it Through the Grapevine (Marvin Gaye/Antonio Forcione) and Gimme Shelter (Stones/Patti Smith)

4. Blues Legends - 2 grainy old black and white clips of Big Joe Williams performing Baby Please Don't Go and Howlin' Wolf doing Smokestack Lightning from 1963 and 1964 respectively.

5. Corny Country - Marty Robbins - El Paso

6. Embarrassing Performances - Chuck Berry performing Memphis Tennessee with John Lennon and Yoko wailing away - from the Mike Douglas Show in 1972

7. Festival Rock - Hendrix at Isle of Wight in 1970 and 2 more recent ones from Interpol and Muse

8. Superstar Gatherings - from the charity Crossroads concert in 2005, Eric Clapton, BB King, Jimmy Vaughan and Buddy Guy playing together

9. Through the Decades - the main part of the show - 41 videos from the last 6 decades - 12 from the 00's, 2 from the 90's, 6 from the 80's, 12 from the 70's, 6 from the 60's and 3 from the 50's.

Hopefully we'll have time to play a few DVD's as well - and some old favourites, including the emotive Johnny Cash video of Hurt.

Tomorrow's list? I'm thinking maybe favourite football performances - still working on which ones to include - don't lose sleep trying to double guess me!

More blues - and it's Tuesday

Drove to the Broch this morning - it's cold, damp and miserable here - just how I feel. I think I must be harbouring a bug - it's not quite hit me yet, but I feel down.

Apart from the drive up and back, don't intend to do anything other than stagnate today. Got some preparation to do for the board meeting tomorrow, but that's all for now. Also preparing for our headbang on Friday - Dave sent me a few more links for me to convert for easy viewing. His taste is a bit more esoteric than the rest of us - sometimes travelling in his car with him can be a little taxing as he blasts us with some new German Neo-funk or other obtuse musical category. Dave has made a request that we include some modern music and don't make our headbang purely an oldies nostalgia trip. Well, as host, I guess we have to pander to some of his whims!

Our show always starts with an Obituary section, to commemorate those famous musical names who have passed on since our last headbang. If you can't think of any, here's who's on this agenda:

Rick Wright - Pink Floyd

Isaac Hayes

Norman Whitfield, Temptations producer and song-writer, whose credits included "I heard it through the grapevine" and "Papa was a rolling stone" amongst many others.

Jeff Healey - blind blues artist

Danny Federici from Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band

Humphrey Lyttleton - famous old British trad jazz man, who turned his hand to radio comedy in later years, as host of "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" - check out full details of his wonderful life at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Lyttelton

We also have a clip of the Dave Clark 5 - Mike Smith, lead singer and keyboard player died just as we were about to hold the last headbang, but we couldn't get a video clip in time.

That'll do for today's list - tomorrow might be the rest of the agenda for Friday.

Monday blues

We keep getting glimpses of an Indian Summer, but yesterday's fine weather has again turned to today's cold and damp. Allied to which, the continuing financial woes throughout the world only add to the gloomy feeling. They always say your should look to the long term when investing - particularly for pensions - but it's a bit harder when you're knocking on 60 and beginning to plan for retirement and seeing your investments crashing in value. This will be greeted by scorn by our offspring who are still at the borrower stage of life, but there does come a point in time when the mortgage is paid and you begin to save a few shekels to enjoy your later years. If you're lucky, your investments will be at a high when you need them most - and not at the lows we're experiencing now. How much further will it go? Who knows?

Nothing much else to say today - hopefully some squash tonight.

Today's list was prompted by listening to Sounds of the Sixties on headphones. Brian Matthews introduces a Beatles A-Z each week and it got to Paperback Writer - a Paul McCartney song (with a great John Lennon B-side, Rain). Listening to Paul's bass playing on headphones for the first time was amazing. You often hear Noel Gallagher of Oasis going on about how great Paul's bass lines were, but I'd never really appreciated them until now - I was always a John fan - I thought Paul tended towards tweeness at times. I guess they were a great bitter/sweet, sugar/spice combination.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about bass players. My favourite is still Jack Bruce, sadly overshadowed (in some people's eyes) by Eric Clapton in Cream. Jack was the singer and songwriter but still EC was God to most. Next would be Ronnie "Plonk" Lane of the Small Faces - probably my second favourite band of all time. Again he was overshadowed by his song-writing partner, Steve Marriott, who handled most of the lead singing plus guitar.

Is there a theme here - is it the underdog I like? Is that why I support Partick Thistle and Aberdeen? Answers on a postcard, please.

Well, last night's dinner party went very well - or so I thought. Jo wasn't so sure however - she's beating herself up about serving up cold vegetables and chicken. Yes, they could have been a bit hotter but it was only fractional, but her self esteem is low this this morning - she even thought her individual pavlovas - which were delicious - were too large. Here's the assembled throng:


It was a late night and it's going to be a slow day, but the sun's shining and I'm not playing golf till this afternoon. Gary and Carole will probably be over for dinner later on. Gary and I were at the football on Saturday afternoon - the Dons lost again - 5 in a row - but it was definitely a case of we wuz robbed.

When I went to see Dad on Tuesday I took him in to the garden. He wouldn't wear his coat at first, but only lasted a few minutes before going back inside:


Today's (very short) list is favourite photos. I always loved the one of Lucy and Gary sitting on the front window ledge at Caldecot Way back in mid 70's. More recently, the one of me flanked by Jo, Lucy and Kelly sitting on Lucy's settee was particularly good I thought. I can't think offhand of the others - I'll need to refresh my memory by going through the old photos again - oh, and that's another retirement project - to digitise the photo library.

Jo's clear-out has uncovered some old photos and she regularly changes the pictures in the frames on display in the house. Talking of which, Jo now has the old Fuji camera and will be using it to add some photos and videos to her blog.

The weather outside looks fabulous and I must get myself ready soon. I'm just catching up on some old Sky + Jools Holland to see if there's any music there that I should add to our video show for this Friday's headbang.

Make your pick

Which look do you prefer? Sarah Stewart?:

or Jo Palin?:

Wednesday/Thursday down south

My golf blog contains details of my trip down south to Wentworth and The Grove, but here's me in my room at Pennyhill Park Hotel - the Yew Tree room:

It was a great experience and, although I was a little uneasy about the occasion at first, I did enjoy it. I even managed to get on a slightly earlier flight home last night, but, despite this, I still felt knackered this morning and, for once, could easily have stayed in bed for an hour or two longer.

Today, I'm just catching up after 3 days out of the office. I've declined to play football tonight and have cancelled my golf tomorrow morning - although I may go to Pittodrie for the first time this season - with Gary, hopefully. We're hosting our first dinner party for years tomorrow night, with the Pages, Grays and Bhagraths all coming round. It's proving to be a bit of a logistical nightmare for Jo, having 8 at the table, which has been expanded to its full size for the first time since the Lesinas were last here. Tablecloths and undercovers are not big enough and we are short of crockery and place mats, but I'm sure Jo will get it all under control and it'll be alright on the night!

Today's list was going to be favourite holidays - but when I started to get down to it, I realised I didn't dare include any of my golfing holidays with the boys for fear of offending Jo, and to put anything ahead of our holidays in USA would offend Lucy! Despite these risks, I'm going to name a few vacations that come to mind, in strictly chronological order:

Folkestone in 1972 with my Mum and Dad before we were married.

Benodet in the mid-late 70's when we had Barry's car, which broke down at the port before we were on the ferry - you should have seen Lucy's distraught face!

Port Grimaud a few years later.

Spain in 1999 with Lottie.

Kauai in 2003.

Boston in 2005.

No doubt I've forgotten a few that I should have included, but hopefully this will stir some memories.

Gary's new blog

http://garycaroleluca.blogspot.com/

Quick Weds blog

Old pedantic here - they weren't singles - just favourite tracks - and the order was all wrong - it was only when I read it again that I realised that the top 15 were inverted - i.e. they should have read:

1 Try a Little Tenderness -Otis Redding

2 Tin Soldier - Small Faces

3 Up the Junction - Squeeze

4 Psycho Killer - Talking Heads

5 Route 66 - Rolling Stones

6 Teenage Kicks - Undertones

7 Dazed And Confused - Led Zeppelin

8 Please Please Me - Beatles

9 Like a Rollin' Stone - Bob Dylan

10 Alison - Elvis Costello

11 Maybe I'm Amazed - Faces

12 In a Broken Dream - Python Lee Jackson

13 Need Your Love So Bad - Fleetwood Mac

14 Badge - Cream

15 Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon

16 Keith Don’t Go - Nils Lofgren

17 Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix Experience

18 House of the Rising Sun - Animals

19 London Calling - Clash

20 Anarchy in the UK - Sex Pistols

That's better - must have been having a bad day on Monday. Of course, I would still change it now - maybe even including Teen Spirit and Creep. One day I'll bore you with my complete 100 list!

Just back from Edinburgh and Glasgow - saw Dad - we went in to the garden there - he was fine, but definitely going downhill mentally and not getting any exercise - a couple of quick strolls was all he could manage. He always says no to any activities - he wouldn't even go to a little concert they were holding upstairs today.

I took back the display cabinet - we managed to squeeze it in the back of the Volvo and although it rattled all the way home, it was intact when we got here and Jo helped me get it out and put it in the garage for now. The only things left at Ochiltree now are the mattress - which Dawn's taking - and the bureau - hope somebody takes this - would hate to see it go to the tip.

Got a last minute invitation to join Michael and go to the holy grail of Wentworth tomorrow with John West - the largest customer of our cannery - they're entertaining top brass at Tesco - their biggest customer and also the biggest customer of our smoking factories. One of the Tesco guys pulled out at the last minute and it's a very discrete 8 who were supposed to be playing so they were desperate to get a late replacement and Michael suggested me - so off I go for the next 2 days!

Second post Monday

Pleased to hear that Gary's going to change his blog site to the same as ours - hopefully this will make things easier all round for everyone.

Sorry to go on about the Useless Facts, Gary - but Old Testament an autobiography? By whom? The big G? The earlier one about the 50 greatest grossing movies of all time doesn't need much thinking about either - this is when us auld fogies bore you lot with our tales of inflation. Eeh lad, I remember when a tanner used to get you to the movies on the bus, entrance with your "bird" (sorry - Glaswegian expression from the '60's!) and treat you both to a poke of chips on the way home - weren't life grand then? (Answer - no!).

OK - today's list - this was made up a couple of years ago for one of our headbangs - we all had to list our all-time favourite individual tracks (not albums) and this is what I came up with at the time:

1 Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon
2 Badge - Cream
3 Need Your Love So Bad - Fleetwood Mac
4 In a Broken Dream - Python Lee Jackson
5 Maybe I'm Amazed - Faces
6 Alison - Elvis Costello
7 Like a Rollin' Stone - Bob Dylan
8 Please Please Me - Beatles
9 Dazed And Confused - Led Zeppelin
10 Teenage Kicks - Undertones
11 Route 66 - Rolling Stones
12 Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
13 Up the Junction - Squeeze
14 Tin Soldier - Small Faces
15 Try a Little Tenderness -Otis Redding
16 Keith Don’t Go - Nils Lofgren
17 Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix Experience
18 House of the Rising Sun - Animals
19 London Calling - Clash
20 Anarchy in the UK - Sex Pistols

Funny looking back - I always used to say Otis was my favourite - but this was done at the time from a list of almost 100 I put together, with the intention of having no "repeaters" (although 4 & 5 have the same lead vocalist). They also had to be from tracks I currently possessed that were in a format acceptable to the headbang at the time - i.e. CD or .mpg.

Tomorrow it might be favourite artistes - or maybe albums?

Back to work

I seem to recall some time ago Gary made some comment about the Easybeats - a band from Down Under who were (briefly) popular in the 1960's. Their big hit was Friday on My Mind (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7zB0RygrYy8) and it starts "Monday morning feels so bad" - today I empathise. I've got a lot of work to do and little energy or will to do it - but I'll get there.

We usually play squash on a Monday - usually you feel better for doing it - like Kelly's running - but sometimes you've got to force yourself out of your lethargy to actually get out there and do it.

It was an interesting observation of Kelly's that I didn't have any complete Roxy Music. I did like them, but they probably sound a bit '70's now. I think I may have one album of theirs somewhere - either in vinyl or cassette format - but I haven't got round to digitising any of their music yet - although I do have some video tracks on DVD and .avi files that we use for our headbangs (the next one of which is scheduled for Friday Oct 10th). Early Roxy Music is much better, Kelly - the later stuff after they re-formed following Ferry's lounge lizard period is pretty M.o.R.

Incidentally, Kelly - did Ross phone to fix your sound problem? We reminded him several times, but you know what he's like! He did make comment that the basic problem you have is that the webcam you are using is not compatible with Windows Vista.

We've never had any strange intruders on Skype - only Lucy and Kelly.

Bad weekend for the Dons and the Jags. I still haven't been to Pittodrie this season and I'm not sure when I'll next be tempted. Perhaps with the weather changing as we move in to October and the clocks going back at the end of the month, I might start thinking about watching footy again.

Gary - try changing your blog site to the same as the rest of us (http://www.blogger.com/home) - it's much easier to use and you shouldn't have problems uploading videos and photos. It's also an easier web site for us other viewers - no irritating "congratulations" pop-ups and no need to switch screens/tabs and scroll all the way down to view photos and videos.

I'm in Edinburgh on business tomorrow, so I think I'll take the chance to pop over and see Dad and Barry again.

Sat/Sun

Been another nice weekend. Did pretty well at golf on Saturday morning - Dan Corbett made a surprise first appearance in a medal at Banchory, having just joined the club. He still lives in Linlithgow, but is retiring in January and has notions to come back to the North East. Dan also joined us for drinks at the Douglas on Friday and even came along to squash on Saturday too.

Saturday was busy but I was still up early on Sunday in good time to watch the recording of Match of the Day, get showered, changed and make what must have been about the 13,000th morning coffee for Sleeping Beauty.

Today was the day of our annual Scotland v the Rest of the World Challenge match, which is always followed by a nice long liquid lunch with the "W.a.G.'s". I'm happy to say Scotland won yet again - and we have the Gauntlet Trophy back in our house again. Thankfully, it's one trophy Jo actually likes - unlike all the others! See the golf blog for details and photos.