Jo's trip

Well, we got up this morning and headed for the airport through the snow - it was a little slippy but we got there in good time and Jo checked in and we said au revoir at security.

I headed off home via Westhill - thought I would get some grub from M & S' Simply Food but it didn't open until 8:30 so I opted for Tesco instead. Bought some meals for Ross and I for the next week. Of course, I hadn't checked the fridge before I left home, so it was sod's law when I got home and discovered the fridge was already full of eggs, cheese and butter!

Just got a text from Jo to say she's landed at Heathrow - now she has to get to Terminal 3 for her United flight to SFO.

Jo got a birthday card this morning from her old college pal Sadie, who shares the same birthday - Jo hasn't seen it yet, so here it is above. Hope you can read Sadie's horror story OK.

Jo's birthday + Good Friday

Well done with the slack line Craig - Billy Smart's Circus are recruiting, I believe?

Kelly's pained expression in the Bath Half Marathon reminded me of somebody - I couldn't find photos of any of the half marathons I did when I started running in my 40's, but came across this one as I completed one of the Aberdeen 10K's - spot the similarity?

We had a really nice meal at the Milton for Jo's birthday - Ross, Gary, Carole and Luca came along as well. I thought this was a nice photo of Luca and his Dad.

I sent flowers to Jo's work - and so did Scott and Lucy. The game now is to guess who sent which one?

Holy week

Since I started the competition for most posts, I've gone quiet - this is my first post since Saturday. I guess I've been busy - booking Jo's flights to go and see Lucy, Scott and the boys in the first week of her Easter break. It'll be the first time she's ever travelled alone, but she's done the journey several times before and knows the airports well and I've left plenty of time in between flights so she doesn't get too harrassed. She'll be able to spend Easter Sunday there for the first time.

Happy birthday to Jo - it's today (20th), Kelly - not yesterday - but Jo appreciates your wishes anyway. We're going to the Milton for dinner tonight with Gary, Carole, Luca and Ross.

The blacksmith has finally been and I took a couple of quick photos of the stairs last evening in the gathering gloom. The central pillar and handrails appear to be of mild steel and will require to be painted but the rest is galvanised. Jo's a little concerned about the sunken screw holes where water may gather - not sure what we can do about this - whether any grommets can be fitted or not? Stan also needs to remove the old radiator from our porch.

Been an interesting week/season for the football underdogs - first Aberdeen shocked Celtic by beating them 1-0 in the Scottish Cup quarter final replay at Parkhead - sorry Celtic Park - on Tuesday. Then, almost the shock of shocks last night when Thistle went to Ibrox and had the temerity to actually lead Rangers 1-0 at one stage before settling for a draw and a replay at Firhill. The prospect of an Aberdeen-Thistle final is still alive and well!

Saturday Luca

Gary brought Luca over this afternoon - and we saw his 2 front teeth with a gap between them large enough to drive a bus!

Luca took delight in knocking over the blocks that Jo set up time and time again - see video.

Headbang

Had a great headbang last night - Dave and Colin were there but Malcolm was in Wyoming ski-ing and Gary was double booked, but we had Jeb Tyrie and Andy Marshall joining us for the first time, so it was still a full house of 5. We got through lots of great old video files in the 4 hours that we were there before taxis at 11:45 (Dave had an early start on Saturday).

It was the first time I had sampled the take-away from the new Coriander and it was pretty good - as were the mini-casks of Macbeth and Brude from the local Hillside Brewery at Lumphanan. Team photo above.

Favourite video is still Johnny Cash's "Hurt" - if you haven't seen it yet - why not?

I see Lucy has got BBC America back again - I had taped last weekend's omnibus edition of Eastenders and was planning to send it to her in DVD this week - I guess I don't need to do this now?

Friday

Pleased to see Kelly's quick response to my suggestion of a competition! Over to you, Lucy!

Got a panic phone call from Dave W last night - he was setting up the equipment for tonight's headbang and his amp blew out! - could he borrow mine? Well, our house has an inbuilt BOSE sound system so all I could do was look for my old NAD amplifier. It was upstairs in Jo's office but I couldn't get any power to it - perhaps just a new fuse plug required. Anyway, Dave is now looking at it - let's keep our fingers crossed for tonight.

Whey, hey - finally finished my audio book of Bleak House this morning - over 35 hours of it! I enjoyed a lot of it but it's really hard to concentrate on all of it, particularly given the Dickensian language and huge cast of characters. I discovered a back-up on one of the digital TV channels, who were re-running a fairly recent TV adaptation of it - a stellar cast, including many of Britain's finest actors and comedians (even Johnny Vegas is in it!) - it's done in almost soap-ish fashion but it's certainly easier to follow than the book. I missed the first few episodes but I'm now watching the rest - hopefully all the way to the finish - it'll help me pick up some of the bits I missed when my attention wandered as I was driving around listening to the audiobook.

Now need to choose my book for this month - I'll be trawling the web site this weekend.

Carole's horse riding again tomorrow so Gary's planning to bring Luca through some time.

Blogs

Let's have a competition - see who makes the most posts to their blogs - I've already got 7 to mine this month, not including the 2 other occasional blogs I run for the golf (http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/) and football (http://bvetsfootballgroup.blogspot.com/). Lucy and Kelly a long way behind! Must set one up for Jo - she's going to have plenty of time on her hands soon when she retires.

Played football last night - felt like a really old man - stiff and tired - even more so than usual - hope it's better tomorrow.

Up in Fraserburgh today but I'm meeting up with Ken Page at the Legion for a couple of beers after work - he's on one of his brief trips back from the Gulf.

Change of venue for tomorrow night's headbang - Gary was "double-booked" - don't know if this is code for Mel not wanting us in her beautiful new house/castle - but anyway, it's back to Chapel House, Potarch, chez Williamsons once more. Prompt start straight from football because Dave and Jayne have an early start on Saturday morning so it's carriages at 11:45 for us. Take-aways from the new Coriander are being arranged to be picked up on the way through Banchory.

The start of the week

I went down to Glasgow yesterday and met the lawyer re potential Guardianship. Met Dawn afterwards and took Dad out of the Gatehouse and off to Erskine Glasgow. The poor soul was mightily confused - he could not remember Dawn and Barry mentioning this to him before and was initially reluctant. When he got there he wasn't quite as negative but when he got home again, he was asking us where he was staying that night - was it at home or that other place?

I hope he can be persuaded to go there for his own safety and that we don't have to do anything legally. Dawn and Barry will continue to work on him.

Kelly - we're staying at Trevose (http://www.trevose-gc.co.uk/) and also playing at St Enodoc (http://www.st-enodoc.co.uk/) in July. Check out the local areas!

The P & J had another article about the Tor-na-Coille development and it appears that one or two of the public bodies are also now opposing the application for change of use:

The second application for 3 houses in the lower part of the car park has now been submitted and separate "representations"/objections are required for this before 24th March.

Ross

I tried hard but Ross would not pose in his shirt and tie when he came home from work tonight - but I did manage to snap this as he turned away:

Weekend past

A couple of photos from Cape Town first - both taken by Syd. The one on the right was taken at the fish restaurant at Hout Bay. I wanted a glass of red wine - just the house wine would do - and they produced this fish-shaped bottle. I should have known better - the wine was as crass as the bottle!

The photo on the left was taken outside the Groot Constantia winery - and, for the record, I was not at all tipsy!

Ross was feeling better and went back to work on Friday - he has to wear a collar and tie (my old ones) - must get a photo of him! - as soon as he's home, he's out of his work clothes and on with the dressing gown - just like Jo!

I think I finally sorted out our surround sound on Saturday, but there was a no-show again from the Blacksmith on Friday, so we're still in a bit of a state of limbo with the house.

Gary was on a stag do with his mates in Sunderland this weekend, but Carole's mum came up and they drove over to Banchory to have a belated "Mother's Day" lunch at the Milton with Jo. By the time they got through with nattering and noshing, I had gone down to the pub to watch the Scotland-England Calcutta Cup match, so I never even saw Luca!

Played golf in fine conditions at Banchory yesterday - it felt like spring was coming - the competition sheets are up at the golf club so it's not long to go now until the start of the season. It was Jack's 60th birthday yesterday so he bought us all Drambuie's after golf and Frances came down with a cake and candles and we all had a piece. Had a second bite later on after playing squash doubles when Jack came to the Legion and did the honours again!

It's going to be a busy week again - I was planning to go down and stay with Dawn tonight before heading off to Edinburgh for a breakfast meeting, then back to Glasgow to see the lawyer about Dad, before taking him out to Erskine House with Dawn, to see if we can persuade him to move. However, the weather warnings are pretty severe and I may just skip the breakfast meeeting in Edinburgh and leave it until the morning before I drive down.

We've also got our first headbang of 2008 planned for this Friday - at Gary's fancy new pad near Inchmarlo.

Birthday

Thank you all for your best wishes. Cade and Braeden tried to talk to me on the phone but I was driving in the car from Fraserburgh when Lucy called and it was very difficult for any of us to understand each other on such a poor line.

Gary came round after work and gave me a bundle of presents from he and Carole. Amongst his usual boyish humour gifts (silly games etc), there were actually a couple of things I can use - such as a CD. Jo didn't invite me out for tea but went to all the trouble of heating up pizza! (She also bought some cake and bakewell tarts and I was quite happy to stay in and feast on them). Jo also gave me a box of 8 "Rat Pack" CD's - and then told me she thought we would enjoy listening to them! - Gary and I just laughed.

Ross didn't go back to work yesterday - even though I thought he was well enough and he had indicated he would be. Hope he managed along this morning OK.

We got the sound system fitted up again although I'm not sure we've wired it properly yet for the surround sound.

Stan's blacksmith is supposed to be back today.

Jo's out with the teachers tonight so it's fend for yourself time for supper - I'll go to the pub anyway after football and buy the lads a dram for my birthday.

First week back - so far

Just to prove Table Mountain isn't always covered in low cloud, I managed to get the photo above - taken on a perfectly clear day on Saturday from the V & A waterfront. Incidentally, there's a prize for letting Jo know who the Alfred (not Albert) of the Victoria & A is?

Monday was a bit of a blur, having gone straight to the office from the redeye from Heathrow. Of course, there was a mountain of work to be done and even when I got home, our house isn't exactly somewhere to relax in just now - in fact, it's in a bit of a state of chaos, with boxes everywhere - can't wait to get everything back to normal.

We've stalled the return of our painter until the better weather when he can do the outside window frames. We'll pick the colour from the charts so that he can do the inside kitchen window and door frames again - for the 3rd time - having got it wrong twice already!

We've got the big TV back in the room and Jo tried her best to put a few things in place to make it feel more homely but it's going to be difficult until Stan's men finish off the stairs etc.

Ross has now got the same bug that Jo had last week - he was supposed to go to the Stonehaven office on Tuesday but couldn't make it in. I had to phone his boss this morning to let him know he couldn't be in today either.

I haven't been feeling too great either - don't know if it's the after-effects of the trip or whether I'm coming down with something as well. Went to the gym at lunchtime today to see whether a bit of gentle exercise would perk me up a bit - didn't really work, but we'll see.

Planning to go down to Glasgow on Tuesday - Dawn and I will try and take Dad to Erskine House and I'll also try to see the lawyer re Guardianship etc.

Cape Town and home

Well, I'm finally home but my golf clubs aren't - not yet at least. We had a great time although the journey home was a bit fraught, involving an unscheduled night in London.

Sorry I haven't managed to keep the blog going every day - been too busy. We played golf 6 times and also had an overnight at a safari park so it wasn't always possible to keep the admin up to date.

The photo on the left is of me at Aquila Game Reserve - a two hour drive inland from Cape Town.

On Friday, we had a bit of time early in the morning, so Malcolm and I decided to climb up the kopje at the back of our villa. The photo shows me rather nervously standing right at the peak.

Tuesday

It was raining today - not an uncommon feature in Cape Town where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans collide. Table Mountain is often covered in cloud and we're half way up there in Constantia. We went down to Boulder Beach after the golf at Clovelly to see the penguins - see photo of Richard and I.