The tree - sneak preview

Before Her Majesty has even seen it, revealed in all its glory and nakedness is the Stewart 2008 Christmas Tree:


A "Premium Scottish Highland Nordmann Fir" for those interested. Over to the decorating staff now.

Wet Saturday

Feels like Cornwall here today - warm and wet (didn't I warn you, Kelly/Craig?). I'm up, showered, shaved and dressed - I've even been down to the village for a stroll with Jo - we "posted" our Banchory Xmas cards at the West church and picked up stamps for the rest - job well done.

My quarterly crate of bottle conditioned beers arrived from CAMRA today - 20 of them, but Colin's going to take half off my hands. No Cornish ones this time, but an interesting selection nonetheless:

Do you think this will persuade Craig and Kelly to come up here over the holidays? Jo received her free Flybe flight voucher today so that's both of us got one now. I've given Kelly the choice of us using them to fly down there or, if we can, let them use them and fly up here.

I'm certainly not ready for squash yet - Keith phoned to ask me - so I've agreed to meet him at the Douglas to watch a bit of the Spurs - Man U match at 5:30 this evening instead. Jo's going to a Carol concert tonight.

I noticed that Jo's bought sandpaper and varnish - the bench that was out the back is now in the utility room - you can hardly get in there now. She's obviously planning to spruce the bench up - strange considering I did offer to get Davie the painter from our work back to do it, but there you go. By coincidence, I heard a snippet of Danny Baker and Zoe Ball's radio show this morning and they were featuring great unfinished domestic jobs - could this be a contender?

The Xmas tree has now been at the front door, still in its wrapping, since Tuesday. Maybe Jo was waiting for me to get better to put it up?

If I'd been better, I would have gone to Pittodrie today, but it's as well I wasn't tempted as the damp wouldn't have done me any good. Gary couldn't make it, and Ross was trying to get Thomas to go with him, but couldn't get hold of him yesterday. I'll have to make do with a trip to Dundee next Saturday to see the Jags - the first time this season.

Ross is now off work for 3 whole weeks - a combination of holidays due plus statutory days off and office shut-downs for the holiday. Strangely, he observed normal hours last night - in bed by 9:00 pm and up by 9:00 am this morning!

No change

Still in my jammies and fed up. Trying to keep my mind busy - difficult when you can't concentrate. TV's on but it's mostly background.

I finished Stuart Maconie's Cider with Roadies book that Colin gave me - but this was before I became ill. It was good fun - some interesting musical anecdotes. I think I preferred it to the one I bought for Kelly when we went to hear him at Pitlochry in January. Talking of which, we're thinking of going back there again to take in some of their Winter Words Festival - possibly to listen to Brian Blessed.

I started to try and read the Pink Floyd autobiography that Harry gave me many months ago - I managed a chapter and a bit, but couldn't concentrate any more - which is why I'm now signing off again.

Still alive!

I'm still here - in my jammies and feeling sorry for myself - although not quite as bad as yesterday. I'm not going back to work tomorrow however - I'll leave it until Monday when hopefully, I'll be a bit fitter.

Can't be bothered to write much more - although there's the final episode of Little Dorrit to look forward to tonight. Who'd have imagined a Murder Mystery/Suspense written by Dickens!

Xmas

Jo heard on the box today that it's Cyber Sunday today when everyone goes Xmas shopping on the web. That got me to thinking about what I want and frankly I have no idea other than the usual sweater/shirt/book/CD/DVD choices.

I can't even think of any specific CD's or DVD's that I've been hankering after. Not even browsing the usual end of year "best of 2008" lists that appear in all the papers and music mags can inspire me. Today the Sunday Times published its lists - they had their top 20 rock/pop, headed like a few others by Fleet Foxes - they haven't really inspired me yet, but I suppose I should listen to them a bit more before I write them off.

The Sunday Times also suggested a couple of music books that might be of interest to me - Philip Norman's John Lennon - The Life, and The Olivetti Chronicles by John Peel.

I half toyed with the idea of getting the BOSE DAB add-on to the sound system in the house - but then I thought to myself, how much more radio do I/would I listen to? You can already get all the DAB channels through Sky, albeit not whilst anybody else is watching TV - and there's probably still enough FM channels to keep me happy for now. Maybe one to wait for retirement.

On a separate matter, I've always wanted to go to a gig at the Royal Albert Hall. I tried in vain to get tickets for the Cream reunion concerts last year, but I noticed that Eric Clapton is playing his usual season of gigs there late May next year. I might consider that, although I do find him as a solo act a little on the bland side nowadays - and his autobiography didn't exactly endear himself to me. If it had been in the middle of the footy season I could have tied it in with a trip to the Emirates or one of the other London stadia. Needs more thought.

Sunday morning

Disappointing start to the day - the golf pro wasn't answering the phone but I thought I would go along anyway as I assumed we would be playing - albeit on a frozen and full winter course. Of course, it meant getting all togged up - thermals, extra sweaters etc - and I went over to the course only to find the Course Closed signs up.

Ah well, back to the house with the Sunday Times to get ready for a day in front of the box - the Nedbank Challenge from Sun City, then Hibs v Celtic followed by Everton - Villa. Hard times.

We had a takeaway Chinese meal last night - crispy duck was great but one of the main meals we shared was pork. This morning we woke up to the news that all Irish pork in the UK has had to be withdrawn from the UK due to a toxin they have discovered - oh dear.

Saturday

Football at Goals went ok last night - and it wasn't too cold. Our headbang went well - check football (http://bvetsfootballgroup.blogspot.com/) blog for details.

Today has been slow - I had arranged to pick up my car this afternoon - I left it at Dave's last night. Unfortunately, this meant me missing out on a trip to Inverurie - Carole called Jo out on a late mercy mission to babysit.

Friday - busy, busy, busy

Still no snow, but some rain on top of ice on the back roads could be dangerous. No problems on main roads or in Aberdeen.


I thought yesterday would seem like a long day to me, being at home and with no time wasted in the car - but it slipped by fairly quickly. In the evening, we managed to completely catch up with our backlog of Little Dorrits - an intriguing tale and one that's got our resident Poirot/Sherlock foxed for now - if you know the story, don't tell her!


I went to the optician and got the all-clear again on the glaucoma tests - I've been getting annual tests done for years because Mum had glaucoma. All Scots also now get free two year eye tests, so that was also done yesterday. She said she could tweak my prescription a little on my distance (driving) glasses, and she asked again why, as both prescriptions are only minor ones (0.5/0.75 + 1.50 for near), I didn't go for varifocals - I said I'd done that before and didn't like them much, but we'll see - I might try again some time.


Playing footy again tonight - it's normally at the Beach, but it's not available, so it's outdoors at Goals - brrrr! From there, it's straight off to Dave's for a headbang.


Spare a thought for Jo and Mary - their Mum would have been 86 today. I like this photo from our trip to Spain in 1999:

Dawn

John phoned to let me know that Dawn had her knee operation this afternoon - he was heading off to the hospital to see her. She's in the Golden Jubilee hospital, Clydebank - East Wing, Level 2, Room 217 and will probably be there until Monday. Phone number is 0141-951-5000.

Thursday working from home

As I half suspected, having re-arranged everything to work from home today, the snow never arrived - I feel like a cheat!

We watched the final part of Stephen Fry in America last weekend and this one covered the West Coast, including the drive-through tree that we were at a few years ago and the Rogue River, where we went on one of the Hellgate trips last year. Here's a snippet:

Haven't seen Q magazine's 50 best albums of 2008, Gary, but I've just glanced at its sister paper Mojo's one - I think I've only got one of their choice - Beck.

I played football at Banchory last night - mistake. Somebody decided to play with an outdoor ball which whizzed around like a dervish - maybe the youngsters enjoyed it but I certainly didn't. What's wrong with using an indoor ball for indoor football? It was made worse when Stephen Thomson - half my age and twice my size - banged one at me and it caught me full on the side of my face - boy it hurt!

In between work today, I'm preparing for our headbang tomorrow night. The beer has been delivered to Potarch and I'll take the projector and screen out to Dave's later on today - probably when I go for my optician's appointment later on.

Old cliche but, as if to prove the point, Jo said to me last night when she spoke about getting our Xmas tree and wanting me to go with her - "I thought when I retired I would get to spend more time with you?". That was last night - this morning, it's "you're upsetting my routine with you being at home"! Fickle or what?

Preparing for the onslaught

Getting home before 4:30 pm yesterday meant an evening of telly watching. Jo had been saving up the Little Dorrits for me and I finally got round to watching a few episodes. Dickens' tales wander and weave in a slew of characters, many of them eccentrics - and the BBC's production emphasises this trait - good viewing. OK, I'm hooked now - perhaps a few more tonight.

My journey to work was OK this morning but everyone else seems to be complaining about the roads. We've had dire warnings about tonight's weather and I've already cancelled one of our management meetings in the Broch tomorrow. Bring it on - I'll just work from home.

It was my pal Dan Corbett's 66th birthday yesterday - you all remember him? He left Banchory over a decade ago and now lives in Linlithgow, although we still see him at various golf outings etc. You might remember what he used to look like before the beard came off - this rather grainy one came from 1993:


More recently, at Chicago airport on the way home from Florida:



The one constant, however, is Dan's "lazy" right eye. He told me yesterday that, after all these years, he was in hospital last week to have it sorted. Dan reported "That is the right eyelid that has been more or less closed for up to 60 years. One opthalmic optician had told me that I had probably been uniocular for all that time.

The procedure that the doctor followed was to chop a bit from both eyelids and tie them up a bit higher by shortening the tendon that works each eyelid. It was a terribles 2 hour ordeal but the results are, in a word, spectacular; that is from what I can now see vis-a-vis what I could see a week ago.

I will have the external stitches out this evening and the internal ones will dissolve in time. The photos are quite horrendous and I will not be circulating them; it did look like I had gone a few rounds with a particularly hard-hitting boxer. But I expect there to be an improvement before the end of this year."

So there you go - there's always hope!

Finally booked our flights to Tenerife for the February golf trip - phew!

Start of the week

Routine Monday - although I did squeeze in a game of squash doubles before going home to a lovely stew followed by another helping of conference pears in red wine - lovely!

I also managed to catch up a bit with Lucy's Eastenders recordings - I sent off 3 DVD's for her yesterday - but, with an apology - I'm missing 16th November - what happened then? - did we have a power cut?

I also found a download of Seasick Steve for Kelly - it's called Cheap and according to Wikipedia, it was released in 2004 - it's the first time I've heard him playing with a band (the Level Devils) - usually he's a one man band - although he did have a drummer with him when we saw him at the Music Hall recently.

We're going to have a very quiet Christmas - we knew Scott, Lucy and the boys weren't coming as they're here in March, and we also heard last week that Kelly and Craig couldn't make it, but, on Sunday, Gary told us that they wouldn't be coming over either. Was it something we said? Perhaps we'll pop over to Inverurie for a little while to see them before Jo, Ross and I have our Christmas dinner.

More snow overnight meant I had to change my plans for driving up to the Broch. Instead I went in to our Aberdeen office via the North Deeside Road - avoiding my usual route over the moor to Garlogie. The roads were fine, but the traffic was awful and it took me almost an hour and a half to get here. I'm definitely not hanging around until it gets dark again this afternoon.

Nothing much else on the agenda this week - perhaps another game or two of squash - optician on Thursday, headbang at Dave's on Friday.

I finally got a booking for the annual golf/squash Xmas dinner - usually we go to the Derbar, but there were several requests to change it this time, so I tried, but failed, with the Milton. I did manage to get Franco's (Italian at By-Dee Inn) on Friday 19th December - a great date I thought - until I went home and told Jo and she said whoops - she thought she was going out with the girls that night! Ah well - I'm committed now - numbers are rising as well - 28 at last count.

I'm also edging ever nearer to getting our golf trip to Tenerife sorted out for February. It looks like we're going to leave on Friday Feb 27th - which means I will be back in Banchory for my 60th birthday - but only just! It was pointed out to me last night that I could be in Tenerife 3 times next year - February, March and possibly October as well!

Seasick Steve

Sorry, Kelly - despite being a fan and recently going to see him, I don't have any of his albums. Got a few videos for our headbang, but that's all.

Another superb day today - very cold but bright and windless - see my golf blog for a photo.

Knees

No advice from me about knees, Kelly - I inherited my weak joints from my Dad. Playing football for years didn't help, but the worst was when I ruptured my medial ligament back in 1970 at football training - just after Jo and I met. No keyhole surgery in those days - I was put in plaster - hip to ankle - for 3 months and was unable to go back to work full-time for 6 months. I remember my boss, Duncan Crawford "thoughtfully" brought some work out to our house to keep me occupied during my convalescence!

My first meeting with the future in-laws was on crutches - and it was a year before I played football again. Of course, I retired from football when we got married and Lucy came along, but took it up again when we moved down to London in 1974 - although I didn't do any training then - I only played on a Saturday during the winter.

I retired again by the time I was 30, but I started off the Veterans 5-a-side group in Banchory a decade later in 1988 as I was approaching my 40th birthday. By this time, I was playing squash regularly and I also took up running - taking part in some great events like the Great North Run, the Great Scots Run, Aberdeen Half Marathon and lots of other events.

It was a couple of years later that I really started having problems with my right knee - the one that had been operated on when I was 21. It was during one of my frequent visits to the hospital that I discovered the real reason for the pain and the fact that I've never been able to fully straighten my right leg - the surgeon who had operated on me in 1970 hadn't noticed that my cruciate ligament had also come away. If I could have remembered who he was I would have sued him!

The road running was not a good idea in retrospect - I wish I had taken to cycling to keep fit instead. But Kelly, you're made of sterner stuff - you certainly don't have the Stewart legs so shouldn't have the same joint problems I've always had. The only piece of advice I would offer is not to take too much notice of your GP - not unless he or she is into sports. Best to see a medic who specialises in sports injuries. I certainly know that everytime I ask a doctor for advice on injuries, their usual riposte is simply "how old are you?", as if to say you shouldn't be doing this at your age!