Boxing Day

The morning was the Fun Run, but only 3 out of the possible 6 actually showed to take part:

There was a good turnout but I managed to pick out Lucy in this video at the start:

Gary ran a good race and came in 31st in quite a large, high quality field - despite having to stop to throw up! Here he is finishing:

Lucy looked cheerful when she came in:

Gary ran back to join Carole for the finish:

Scott and Chris came along to see the finish of the race:

It was such a beautiful day that Chris decided that, having missed out on the Fun Run, he would climb Scolty instead - but he was back in good time for the arrival of various nephews and nieces, of whom more later.

Xmas Presents

Here's some of mine:

This one caused a laugh. It wasn't immediately obvious what they were, but Jo quickly sussed it out - or so she thought - the holes underneath were for your hands weren't they, so they must be puppets surely? No - head covers for my golf clubs actually!

Xmas Day

No team photo this year, but, in the spirit of 2013, a group of "selfies" from the dinner table:

Xmas Eve update

We all went to Crathes Castle on Sunday, but I headed the Lesinas down towards the Adventure Area, whilst Jo, Kelly, Chris and Miller went in the opposite direction towards the castle - although it wasn't long before they all headed back to Banchory, but the Lesinas and I carried on with Plan A:

From there it was off to Duthie Park and the slides, followed by the Winter Gardens:

Next was the Beach, where we met up with Gary. First of all, the dodgems:

followed by Air Soccer:

Cade posed in the "electric" chair - unfortunately broken down today:

Laser Tag was very popular - and they had 2 rounds of it as well - but whose score card was this, and who was a mere Space Cadet?:

Yesterday (Monday) was my turn to take the other half of the family out for the day. We drove up Deeside, ever nearing the snow line. Crathie Kirk and Balmoral Castle were out of bounds but the nearby Royal Lochnagar Distillery was open, so we went in there and got treated very well by the Distillery Manager, Stuart Adamson, who I'd known from years before when he was mine host at the Learney Arms Hotel. Here's Chris inside:

By now, there was a proper snowstorm outside and so we aborted our plan to have lunch in Ballater and instead headed for the lower ground of Aboyne and the Boat Inn. Chris must have been a good boy and eaten up all his lunch because they ran the model railway round the lounge:

Today we have the annual birthday football match in Banchory - not that I'm playing, but I still organise it and there's a little session in the pub afterwards.

Sunday morning and I'm home alone - Jo's at church and the American and Australian families haven't shown up yet. I think we're planning to head in to Aberdeen this afternoon - Duthie Park has been mentioned. Perhaps Inversnecky (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Inversnecky-Cafe/130026970382457) as well?

Forgot to say that Dad would have been 93 yesterday - the shortest day of the year.

I put the new postbox up yesterday - what do you think?:

For anyone who might have missed it, the intro and outro to my dedication on Radio 2's Sounds of the 60's yesterday can be heard here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEexWhhiwOY&list=UUBDeleoM99bWx2-P6rMydgA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZXcC-cmDNI&feature=c4-overview&list=UUBDeleoM99bWx2-P6rMydgA

Saturday update

It's Saturday night and we've been alternating between Strictly and the Darts - neither of which we ever watch - that's how awful TV is tonight.

Kelly, Chris and little Miller have gone back to the chalet, hopefully to catch up with some much needed sleep. Jo, Lucy & Cade have popped down to Tesco to pick up some groceries, and Scott and Braeden are lying down fast asleep opposite me on the settee. Gary was here for tea but has gone home now.

So they all got here OK yesterday morning. We've since allowed them to take things easy and try and catch up with our time zone. Scott, Chris, Gary and I popped down to the Stag for an hour to watch the first half of the Aberdeen match tonight, but, apart from that, and a few trips to Tease for everyone to say hi to Ross, all that has happened was that I was at the optician this morning for my annual eye test to check for glaucoma - Mum had it and it can be hereditary, so I have to have it checked out every year. I had some error results on my left eye today so they had to do extra tests, which involved putting two lots of drops in my eyes - one with a yellow dye and anaesthetic and the other to dilate my pupils. I have to go back again in next 6 months and do it all again - I'm told this is precautionary as all the other tests worked out OK.

Anyway, here's what you've been waiting for - some photos:

Just arrived in the chalet - and Miller's the centre of attention already

It had been a long journey

Joe 90

Medical update

We went back to see my surgeon this morning for the first time since the operation, which will be 7 weeks ago tomorrow. He seemed very pleased with my progress and assured me I was well ahead of the norm - that was very satisfying.

I asked to see the X-rays of what my knee now looked like and he showed me them on his PC:

This was taken the day I left hospital. He didn't take any X-rays today but said he would do so on my next visit, which is scheduled for 1st May - exactly 6 months after the op.

We then popped in to my office to pick up the salmon before heading to Westhill to do shops in M & S and Costco. Apart from salmon deliveries that's about it for today.

Tomorrow is the big day when everyone arrives. Kelly, Chris & Miller will probably be on their 3rd flight - the big one - by now, and I imagine the Lesinas might be meeting up with cousin Mark on their long layover in Seattle before catching the big bird to Amsterdam this evening.

Exciting times!

Busy Wednesday

It's been all go today. We awoke sharp at 6:30 and I went through my usual morning routine, all in good time for Jo to head to the hairdresser's at 9 am. While she was away, the Penicuik builder came round, unannounced, to finish off the external work under the window sills after the new ones were installed last week.

I had been invited to join Dan and Archie for coffee at the Douglas at 11 am, but I knew there was a delivery arriving between 11:30 am and 1:00 pm, and I still had errands to do. I dashed to the shops, did my errands and tried to get back in time for the delivery, but just missed it - sod's law, he was a few minutes early. No matter, he had left it with our neighbour, Trish, so I picked up the console that Jo had ordered and carried it home. It's not the same one as was on the blog last week, and Jo's now decided it goes in the kitchen, not the stairway, but here it is anyway:

Jo had been delayed getting home, having sidetracked to Orvis, so I ended up having to miss coffee with Dan and Archie, but I got another invitation a little later to meet up with Colin, Ian Sharp and Malcolm Lodge in Tease after their usual Wednesday cycle. In fact, I had lunch there, as I knew Jo was heading out for afternoon drinkies and mince pies at one of her pals.

It took some persuasion for Jo to allow me to drive her to her friend Jill's little matinee party, but we got there safely and I then went round to the tip and emptied my car with junk from our garage. No sooner was I home than Raemoir Garden Centre's van arrived with the tree that Jo had ordered at lunchtime.

Next was a phone message from TNT - they wanted to come round and pick up the massive drum kit that has been littering our house for 2-3 years now - since one of Ross' pals' pals, a Hungarian, left them here one year when we were away. The only problem is packaging - TNT have had to go back to their contact in Hungary to find out what their plans are here. We really thought this time we were going to get rid of this drum kit - and before Christmas too - but this late snag may delay things further.

So I picked up Jo from her afternoon do and we went straight to Morrison's to stock up on some goods for the chalet that Lucy and Kelly and families will be staying in from Friday. We FaceTimed Kelly this morning for any last minute requests. As I write this, they'll be getting up and heading to Adelaide Airport soon.

That's the story of my busy day.

Sleep returns!

A semblance of normality the last couple of nights. I slept for 3 hours without interruption on Sunday night and then 4 hours last night. After an hour or so of twitching around, I managed to get back to sleep for an hour or two after this as well, so, really, I can't complain this week - yet.

No electronic stimulation, lavender sprinkled liberally around, a chapter or two of my book and, last night, a new trick - smearing castor oil on my eyelids. All of these may be old wives' tales, or sound advice - who knows? - but it shows I'm ready to try any tips I receive.

The latest piece of advice came from Frances Simpson, and turned out to be a fairly expensive experiment. I went to the chemist/pharmacy to ask if they had any castor oil and was initially told no, but they could order it for me. The assistant then remembered that somebody else had ordered a bottle a few weeks ago but had never picked it up - I soon found out why - it was £18 for a 500ml bottle!

I definitely feel my progress has moved on another notch this week - I feel more able now. Yesterday, I was down the village and popped in to see Ross in Tease - he had borrowed the car on Sunday to go to Costco to buy goods for the coffee shop. Ross had parked it next door in the museum car park, so I asked him to give me the keys and I would take it home - it's only a short drive. I managed fine, and when I got home, I decided to start filling the car with some of the junk in the garage that had to go to the tip.

I'm able to do several minutes on the static bike now and usually I can get it going straight away - that's something I wasn't able to do a few days ago. I managed 8 minutes today - a paltry amount, I know, but a huge improvement on the pathetic weakling who could barely manage a few revolutions before.

Today we were at the physio again and she seemed pretty pleased with my progress and told me just to keep going with what I was doing - and also told me I could ditch the last walking stick, except for when I was planning a very long walk, when she thought it might still be a good idea for me to take it with me as moral support, if nothing else. That's a bit of a breakthrough as well.

She measured my angle of bend again and was a little surprised to find it was still only 90 degrees, but the measurement is done when I'm lying down on the bed and I have to slide my leg up. I find this the hardest way to do it and I know I get more than 90 degrees when I do some of the other exercises, particularly those under stress.

My next appointment with the physio is not until the end of January now, which will be 12 weeks after the operation and she reckons that's the very worst part over then. She hoped too that the fluid/swelling on my knee may have gone down a bit by then, which should also help me get a bit more bend hopefully.

It's Tuesday and Jo's away to pick up Luca from school, as usual. Carole's coming over tonight for tea and will take him home. I've been putting a few pictures etc up downstairs. I had planned to just use tacks/screws/drill as necessary but Jo had bought a little tool which is meant to be a simple, clean way of fixing them to walls:

Simple enough to use, but will it last, particularly with the larger, heavier items? Time will tell. Meanwhile, here's some of today's work in the study/exercise room downstairs:

So Andy Murray easily won the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year on Sunday - I should think so too. I felt I had to make sure there were no last minute anti-Scots votes which might deprive him of his just desserts and, for the first time ever, I went online to vote for him. In the end, it was a landslide.

With Xmas coming up a lot of TV and radio series are coming to an end. On Saturday, it was the last episode of Borgen, the Danish series about politics. I enjoyed it, but I know the principal character (Birgitte Nyborg) annoyed Jo a bit - she's a bit of an idealist and sometimes a bit too good to be true - Birgitte that is, not Jo.

It was also the penultimate episode of Homeland on Sunday - the finale is this coming weekend, and we were left with a real cliffhanger.

It's now early Wednesday morning in Adelaide and Kelly, Chris and little Miller will soon be getting ready for their long journey - they leave there first thing on Thursday morning their time. Scott, Lucy and the boys have a bit more time before they're on their way from Oregon, but both families are scheduled to arrive within roughly half an hour of each other at Dyce on Friday morning.

It will probably be Ross and Jo that will take the cars and pick them up. I'll probably head to their chalet at Inchmarlo and wait there for them, while making sure everything's in order for them.

Countdown - 5 days to go!

Less than a week now until the visitors from Outer Space - sorry, Australia and America - arrive. It's going to be a busy week. Jo's got a lunch tomorrow, then we've got my physio and Luca on Tuesday, salmon to collect on Wednesday and the surgeon to see on Thursday, amongst other things, like more trips to the tip, pictures to put up - and a letterbox too - we forgot about that when we got the new front door!

That's the week ahead, but what has this weekend brought? On Friday night, I had my first night out at the pub since early/mid October, then on Saturday, I paid my first visit to Pittodrie this season. Aberdeen won 2-0 and it wasn't too bad a game considering the windy conditions - it must have been very difficult for the players. Even more so for one poor unfortunate elderly spectator who, with the aid of some friends, managed up the steps in the Richard Donald Stand and then, thinking he was safe being back on the level, promptly put his two walking sticks down on the wet surface and they immediately skidded forward and he took a headlong tumble. I sympathised - and took this as a warning as I gingerly made my own way out of the ground.

I just had time to shower and change and then we headed next door to the Tor-na-Coille Hotel for our annual Xmas dinner with the squash/golf crowd - and very good it was too.

When we got home after the dinner, we prepared carefully in an attempt to avoid yet another sleepless night for me. We'd had lots of advice - much of it from Jo's sister Mary. Lavender oil was liberally sprinkled everywhere, all electrical stimulation and LED lights from TV's, phones etc were doused and I took all my meds, including Nytol again. I read a couple of chapters of my book and then settled down for the night. An hour and a half later and I was up and awake again. I probably spent a restless 30 - 60 minutes after that, but then I must have fallen asleep. I awoke at 6 am, but stayed in bed until Jo got up at 7 am, by which time my leg was crying out for some pain killers. I actually felt quite sleepy at this time, but I knew I had to sit up to take the pills.

Today, I've done my exercises twice, including a couple of reasonable spells on the exercise bike, and I've walked to the shops and back, but the rest of the day has been a typically lazy Sunday watching sport on TV and reading the papers.

So that's my weekend. My other blogs contain most of the photos of this weekend, but here's the selfie I took of Jo and I last night:

Friday 13th news

Black Friday, but no disasters yet - fingers crossed!

So I did take 2 Nytol tablets last night, but I awoke after just an hour or so's sleep, thinking it must be 5 or 6 in the morning. I was mortified when I realised I still had the whole night to go.

It seems the tablets give me a relatively deep, but short, sleep - they haven't stopped me from waking every hour or two. Another thing - why does my leg begin to hurt when I'm in bed? I had no pain at all prior to going to sleep. Note to self - ask the surgeon next Thursday.

I must also ask if he has a copy of my post op X-ray - I'd like to see what it looks like. I should also try and remember to get a letter that I can carry on my travels through airports to explain why I'll always be beeping the security machines in future.

That's about it for today. I spent most of this morning - after the Test Match from Perth was finished - writing Christmas cards, so I'll head out this afternoon and post them when Jo's away to Costco.

Think I'll manage out for a beer tonight with the Friday night boys - it'll be the first time I've been able to join them since mid/early October.

Got an invite to go to Pittodrie tomorrow afternoon as well - I think I can manage that now too, but I'll need to hurry back for our Xmas Dinner at the Tor-na-Coille - it looks like we're up to 24 now.

Broch trip

It's Thursday afternoon and we've just arrived back home after our trip to Fraserburgh. We got to my work just after 10 am and left again just after 1:30 pm, stopping for a late-ish lunch on the way back at the new Formartine's (http://www.formartines.com/) cafeteria/shop/visitor centre at the entrance to the Haddo estate between Oldmeldrum and Methlick - and very nice it was too. We even brought a doggy bag home, so that's tonight's tea sorted.

Now for the (lack of) sleep report. In short, even the Nytol didn't work last night. In fact, I was so bad that Jo gave up on me about 4 am and came downstairs to watch TV and lie on the settee. Partly on the suggestion of the pharmacist, we had bought the 2-a-night pills, rather than the stronger 1-a-night, and I only took one of them to start with - but, by midnight I was already up and rolling around, so I took another one, but even it didn't seem to have much effect until after 3 am. We'll try again tonight - but I'll definitely be taking 2 pills this time.

My leg was sore during the night and we wondered if I'd done a bit much yesterday, with 2 separate walks, plus the usual round of exercises and also 3 short stints on the exercise bike. Today, I'm easing off a bit - I still need to stretch and exercise a little, but I'm not going to push too hard - and we may ease off a little on the leg massage as well.

My exercise regime is now geared towards strength and balance, and Jo managed to acquire proper sand-filled ankle weights at Tesco on Tuesday:

Much easier to use than our mocked up efforts.

It will be 6 weeks tomorrow that I had the operation, which means that I'll finally be able to ditch the compression stockings I've had to wear - that'll be a relief. When I went in to hospital, I promised Lucy that I would do a blog every single day with an update on my progress. Looking back, I didn't quite manage every single day, but 38 postings in the last 40 days is a pretty good effort I feel. Of course, I'm far from finished yet, but there may be a bit of a tailing off in blog postings now, back to more normal levels.

To close, we noticed one blemish after the windows were installed on Tuesday - one of the new kitchen doors was smeared with what looks like some of the glue the window installer used:

Barely noticeable - but we know it's there now and it's annoying - and we don't know how to remove it without damaging the door. Suggestions on a postcard please.

Wednesday's news

Let's start with the usual moan about lack of sleep - yup, it was another bad night last night. Enough is enough, we decided, so we went out this afternoon and bought some Nytol (http://nytol.co.uk/) for tonight. I've never in my life felt the need to use sleeping aids in the past, but after 5 or 6 consecutive nights of very little sleep, I've had to resort to desperate measures. Look out for tomorrow's exciting sleep report.

What else has happened today? Lunch at Tease while Jo went swimming - I met up with Colin Kilgour, John McWhinnie and Ian Sharp after they had finished their regular Wednesday cycle run. They have been doing this for a month or so now - today they caught the bus to Culter and cycled back along the Deeside Way to Banchory. Wish I was fit enough to join them - not yet, but the good news is that I jumped on the exercise bike this morning and got my knee going immediately, with little hesitation or preparation - another small sign of progress.

Kelly FaceTimed again this morning/evening and Chris demonstrated Miller's latest trick - holding his bottle himself - with all fours! (Miller, that is, not Chris).

Tomorrow, it's the long drive up to Fraserburgh for a key meeting with the Union. Jo's driving - in her car. I have to confess, however, that I stepped in to my car this afternoon when Jo was out, just to see if I could manipulate the pedals OK - and I could, so my next trick was to let the car slide down the driveway, then reverse it back up - no problem. Next stage will be to take it in to the Tor-na-Coille Hotel car park and drive around a bit.

Jo's been toying with buying this console for the hall over the last week or two:

What do you think? Should she buy it? Available for Christmas.

On Saturday night, it's our annual Xmas dinner with our golfy group and wives - and we're returning to the Tor-na-Coille Hotel for the first time in many years - the scene of former crimes. Just dinner - no dancing, no party.

Tuesday week 6

I thought last night was a little better - but Jo didn't agree. We stayed up fairly late - for us - watching some of our TV recordings (Borgen, The Blacklist) and settled down about 11:30 pm. By 12:15 am, I was up again - no pain, just awake. I took a couple of Paracetamol (it was time to) and decided to read a few chapters of my book before putting the bedside light out some time between 1:30 and 2:00 am. My next awareness was just after 5 am, so it seems I had 3 hours + of sleep.

I lay awake until precisely 6:30 am when I thought it was a decent time to get up. Jo's first comment was that it had been a bad night for me again, but that hadn't been my perception - it had been the least troublesome night I'd had for several nights - not great, but a slight improvement.

Anyway, after the usual 3 hour routine of meds, breakfast, exercise, shower, massage and ice treatment, I headed down to the village where I'd arranged to have a coffee with Dan Corbett and Archie Cook. On my way back, I took a photo of the latest hole in the ground to appear at the former Tor-na-Coille Garage, which has now been lying vacant for over 2 years. Gleaner Oils are having to clean up the site before they can complete the sale to a local builder, who plans to erect houses there. It looks like they are having problems with the underground tanks and/or seepage in to the ground. Will they ever complete this - or even tidy up the site a little?:

Back home, here's the new front of the house, from the outside:

The old windows in the kitchen and study were removed this morning, leaving a rather nice panoramic view from our kitchen:

It's now finished, however:

That's about it for today. Jo's away to Inverurie now to pick up Luca, so it's just me and the window installer here now.