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!

Autumnal October

After some excellent weather in September, we are definitely starting to get a bit more autumnal now - at least in temperature. The leaves are, however, still on the trees and the experts are saying this is primarily due to the sunshine and higher than expected late summer temperatures. We're sitting here at home now with no heating or hot water - our boiler seems to have broken down - possibly the pump. We had a plumber out last Monday and he had to turn all the water off. Since then, the system has been gurgling away and no matter how often I tried to bleed radiators, it didn't seem to have much affect, so finally yesterday, I gave in and have called in a Scottish Gas engineer, who's due to arrive tomorrow (Tuesday). I walked up Scolty last Friday with Colin and, on the return trip we noted a field of wild flowers, which I couldn't quite get the right angle on to show nice it was:

Also spotted one of the lighthouse exhibits down beside the Dee bridge:

Other "arty" things going on in Banchory are the violin trail (now finished) and some interesting knitted tops on postboxes:

By the way, my leg has finally healed up after my mid-August tumble from my bike. Last week I spotted a writing desk/bureau on the Banchory Buy/Swap/Sell Facebook page and I knew Jo had always wanted one, so we went for it:

It needs some care and attention but generally it seems to be in good nick. Any restoration advice appreciated. Barry and Helen recently ordered some coffee from the shop that Ross now works at and they got a nice little note back from him - hope the coffee's OK as well! Barry recently sent me a photo of a Scout trip to Lindisfarne half a century ago - he's easy to spot:

That's it.

Update to mid- September

A month on and my bust nose is pretty much healed up - nice stitching job - but my leg is still an open wound - and not a pretty one. I'll spare you the photos I take every time we dress the wound but it still needs to be kept covered. We've had a couple of trips to Edinburgh with Ross' stuff from his Aberdeen flat. It was quite an effort for two old fogeys, repeatedly climbing up 3 flights of 19 steps each armed with as much as we could carry each time. This is halfway up the last flight with the door to Ross' flat on the left:

When we've stayed there, Ross has gone to work so we're last to leave his flat and Jo likes to ensure we leave it a little tidier than before, including making up his bed:

On our last trip down to Edinburgh we took a slight detour and went to see the Kelpies and the Falkirk Wheel. We'd arranged to meet Barry, Helen and Dawn for a spot of lunch - kindly provided by Barry and Helen - Glasgow rolls, a treat for us! Here's Jo and I at the Wheel:

Apart from all that, it's pretty much been business as usual. For me, the golf season is slowly drawing towards its close so the last few weeks have been pretty busy with outings etc as we try and cram in as much as we can before the weather turns. I stopped doing winter golf a number of years ago and don't intend to go back to it. I don't mind doing a bit of hill-walking or cycling as long as it's not horrendous weather, but golf - no. I'll finish with a few photos that haven't been on FB or Instagram. First, Lauren, who's been having major dental surgery:

Meghan was over recently on a flying visit to catch up with Dawn and her siblings. From Scott's recent hunting trip with his Dad:

That's it for now.

Mid-August update

Interesting times. No doubt everyone is fed up of seeing my damaged face after last Thursday's over the handlebar incident, but I thought I'd show some of the photos I took that morning. My car was in Arnold Clark at 8 am sharp for some work and, as usual, I took my (ordinary) bike in with me and went for a cycle while they worked on the car. Down along the River Dee, back to Duthie Park:

From there, I headed downriver and over the old suspension bridge where I came across my first sighting of one of the mini lighthouses in the LIGHT THE NORTH art exhibition going on across the North East just now:

From there, along to Torry and up the coastal path past Nigg Bag golf course and up towards Torry Battery and eventually I would have made it to (the real) Girdleness lighthouse. I was tootling along, taking photos and sending them to Jo at home:

The last one was taken inside the disused Torry Battery and just after I took it I walked up the short slope there with my bike to get a view of the harbour. Coming down, it looked a bit steep so I was sensible and walked my bike down there until it levelled off to what was a much gentler slope, so I jumped up on the bike and had barely settled in the saddle when I came to an indentation in the grassy trail where the front wheel got stuck, and with the forward momentum from the slope the bike reared up and I went straight over the handlebars. It was so sudden I never even got my hands off the handlebars and up to protect my face. The first thing that hit the ground was my nose and there was an explosion of blood everywhere. It's a fairly quiet area so I was fortunate that a couple were out dog-walking nearby and rushed over to see if I was OK. I could tell from the looks on their faces that my nose was busted up pretty bad and I could see my right leg had taken a hit too - probably from the pedal. The couple suggested walking over towards the golf clubhouse and they got me some dressings to clean me up a little and put a temporary bandage on to soak up the still streaming blood:

The girl did the bandaging whilst the man walked the dogs home to collect his car to take me to A & E. We tried the nearby Torry Medical Centre first but they wouldn't take me, so I was driven by my Good Samaritan over to ARI for treatment. He even phoned one of his clients (he's a personal trainer) to put back their appointment whilst he took me to hospital. The wait in A & E wasn't too bad but I was amazed at how many people came to assess or treat me - there must have been 8 or 9 of them at different times. The priority was a CT scan as I'd had a head knock, but once that was done, the most senior of the doctors had a look at the wound on my nose and reckoned it would need 8 or 9 stitches, but when it came to the experienced member of the medical team who did the stitching she said she thought she could pull it together with just 4 stitches - and she did. This was the before and after look:

The leg was a different matter - the wound was right on the shin bone where the skin is so thin and there was nothing much left to stitch anyway, so they could only put butterfly stitches on, which means it will take longer to heal:

I had wondered about how to tell Jo and not cause a panic. In the end, I sent a photo and some messages which hopefully made it clear that I was still compos mentis. My plan was to ride my bike across the city to pick up my car, which was now ready, but Jo insisted on coming in to Aberdeen to fetch me. In the end it was a bit of both as Jo then drove me over to Arnold Clark and I drove my car home - but not before we had some fun with the one way system and newly pedestrianised part of Union St. We await the fine and the photo of us in the bus lane then reversing back up a one way street! Quite an adventure but I feel fine, if a little sore still, and tomorrow (Tuesday) the stitches in my nose come out. Two days before this, Jo and I went back to Ross' flat in Aberdeen and removed all his remaining possessions and cleaned up the flat. There were two items that had to go to the recycling centre - an amplifier and a huge speaker. I was very grateful that Gary and Luca were around to do the heavy lifting - I certainly couldn't have done it on my own. Luca's a big boy now - he and Carole have just been down to Lincoln for Luca's cousin's wedding and Carole sent us this lovely photo of them:

Mary and Brian are coming up this weekend which will be the first time we've seen them in the flesh for almost two years. Jo and Mary have been making up for it every Saturday with their video calls, however, which started out at 2-3 hours and have now extended to over 6 hours! They start at 11 am and when I left to go to the pub to watch the football on Saturday it was after 5:15 pm and they were still going! When we were on our Zoom call on Thursday with Dawn, Barry and Helen, Dawn sent us a couple of photos of her recent holiday in the Lake District with her friends, plus one of little Avery when Meghan and Ellis took her for a little holiday - apparently she didn't sleep at all!:

August update

This blog seems to be taking a bit of a back seat - I've just managed to skip the whole month of July. I used to be able to keep this blog diary up to date - virtually daily when I was working but it seems it is getting less and less frequent. I suppose the rise of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have something to do with it - as has the time I spend putting programmes together every week for River Dee Radio. Anyway, let me attempt to fill in a few gaps in the story with photos that haven't appeared on other social media over the last few weeks. First, the coffee shop that Ross is now working at in Edinburgh - this was just prior to opening when they were painting the walls etc:

The next one is of the new furniture we got for the front balcony, having moved the previous stuff to the back:

Oh - did I tell you that we had put back our USA holiday again? We had originally naively thought it would be safe to go there last September (2020) as by then the pandemic should be over, shouldn't it? Wrong - so we re-booked for March, 2021 - that should be safe? Wrong again. We then tried June, then September - and now it's May next year. On every occasion we thought it would be OK to travel by then, but how wrong we were. I do sincerely hope we can go there in May, 2022, but having already had to cancel 4 times, we can't be sure. Fingers crossed. Avery - Meghan's little girl in NYC - is growing up fast. Dawn regularly sends us photos at our Thursday Zoom meetings. Here's one from a few weeks ago:

Last Friday (23 July) a few of our cycling group rode out to the Deeside Activity Park at Dess and visited the new Lost Loch Distillery facility there. It was a really hot day and when we cycled back to Banchory, a few of us were ready for a quick beer so we headed to the balcony at the golf club. It was so nice that I got in touch with Jo to see if she fancied wandering over - and she did, and we ended up having our meal there:

Over the weekend the news came through from Ross that he was making a quick trip back from Edinburgh to pick up some stuff from his Aberdeen flat and try to clean it up a bit as well. Jo had previously offered to help clean the place and so, last Monday (26 July), after some of the clean-up had been done, 3 of us partially loaded up my car and we all headed down to Edinburgh. We arrived about 7:30 pm in the evening and it was still 26C then, which is pretty hot for that time of the evening in Scotland, and we still had to empty the car and take Ross' stuff up all the stairs to his top floor flat just off Gorgie Road, near the Hearts football ground. We certainly had earned a beer or two so we walked to the "Diggers", a pub we used to visit 40 years ago when we lived in Balerno:

On Tuesday morning, Jo and I packed our bags ready to return home, but first of all we had to pay a visit to Ross at work:

On Wednesday evening, I had arranged another virtual beer tasting with my CAMRA colleagues. This time the beers had come up from Nottingham - organised by one of our regular Zoomers. Some of the flavours were pretty exotic - check out the descriptions - and see our votes:

Meanwhile, I've been re-painting the garden bench that sits at the front of our house. Jo thought the previous colour was a bit drab, so she selected this bright colour:

Looks like we'll be taking another trip to Edinburgh soon.

June update

Two-thirds of the way through June and I've just realised I haven't done any blog diary updates yet, so let's try and put that right now. Weather-wise, the month has been good so far - lots of dry, sunny weather - nice temperatures - only occasionally have I heard the standard Scots complaint about the heat as it reaches a relatively modest 20C. We've now passed midsummer officially, so technically the days start to get a bit shorter - although not noticably for a while. We had our second meet-up with Ross fairly recently when we went in to Aberdeen and took a stroll round from his flat to Queen's Terrace for a spot of lunch in the gardens there in No.10's marquee:

There is now a possibility of Ross picking up some work with one of his old pals in Edinburgh - fingers crossed. Jo decided our duvet cover needed upgrading:

Jo liked a picture she saw so it's now above the double bed in one of our spare rooms:

Luca had his first course (since he was a toddler) of laser treatment on his face to help reduce the residual reddening birth marks. It was pretty painful and his face was heavily bruised. Naturally, being a teenager, he didn't want to go back to school and face endless questionning - or worse, ribbing - about it, so Carole and Gary arranged that he could be home schooled for what's left of the academic year - so Luca's been staying with us for the last week. Gary came over on Friday night and we watched the big England - Scotland clash in the Euros. We took Luca back over to Inverurie on Sunday afternoon as he wanted to take part in his old team's end of season celebrations, which included a match between the boys and their fathers, which the boys won for the first time - and Luca scored what he described as a great goal. Gary's description of it was a little less effusive - maybe a sore loser? The bruising on Luca's face had gone down a bit by Sunday and he covered up the worst bit with a plaster. After the match was over, Gary brought Luca back over to Banchory - together with some gifts for Father's Day. Lucy had sent food and a t-shirt:

Recently, STV have been screening an advert extolling Banchory's virtues - check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGsWG2jAP8s. That's it for now.

May no more

After pretty pathetic weather for most of the month, finally May has improved in the last few days, and it's time for me to do a quick blog update. There have been brief moments of fair weather - one of them was when Jo and I went for a walk and ended up at Banchory Lodge for coffee:

We returned to Banchory Lodge just a few days later to have dinner with the Kilgours and the Masons - the first time for about 18 months. I had booked us in to one of the new sheds at the Sitooterie:

We left the door of the shed open early on but closed it later as the evening chill came in - it was very cosy then with the overhead heater on! On Friday, Jo and I did another (virtual) wine and cheese tasting with the Strong Water Company. Earlier I had been out on my bike going past the Falls of Dess:

That's it for now - we're off in to the sun for a walk along the river.

May misery

After the driest and sunniest (albeit cool) April for decades, we've hit the buffers in May, which has been very disapponting so far - particularly given the Covid restrictions are now reducing and everyone was looking forward to things like sunny trips to beer gardens again. Jo and I have made do with a couple more virtual beer tastings via Zoom, although I've actually had one visit to a beer garden for some lovely real ale - my first this year. It followed my first group hill-walk this year so at least we had adequate clothing with us, but my goodness, it was cold. It's been a while since my last blog post so I'll catch up with a few photos, the first of which were back in April when it was sunny:

Jo was doing some weeding and general tidying-up of what she calls the "cavity wall". The next two were one morning when we took a walk along the river:

Jo likes the Uggs that she got for her birthday:

Cade's bun is no more, but, before it was cut off, a photo was taken as evidence:

Dawn bought a pair of Birkenstocks for Avery for her birthday, but the sizes got a bit confused:

The Tor-na-Coille has got its beer garden ready - all we need is some weather now:

The seagulls are still a problem in our street - so much so that our neighbours have now copied our bird scarer, making four in all at our end of Arbor Court - and there's more at the back:

Health-wise, Jo's had her beta blocker changed as the medics now suspect that was what was causing her very low pulse rate - and possibly her high blood pressure too. We are complete opposites in that respect - my pulse rate is almost twice as high as Jo's but her blood pressure is almost twice as high as mine. Anyway, the upshot is that Jo is going through another period of twice daily recording to be sent to her doctor. I got the all-clear after my recent repeat blood tests. This week it was the elections for our Scottish parliament and Ross came through to Banchory to vote (he's still registered here) so that was nice to see him again. He's applying for jobs but employers are getting so many applications they don't even have enough time to acknowledge applications, let alone interview all the applicants, so that's almost a year now that Ross has had no income other than Universal Credit. We really hope this situation changes soon but it's hard to know how things are going to pan out.