Saturday blog

(If you're viewing this via e-mail, don't forget it's better viewed on the blog itself at http://ianrstewart.blogspot.co.uk/).

Luca's back in Inverurie with his parents now so our house is a little quieter - and it'll get even more so next week as Ross and Lizzie leave for their big adventure in Edinburgh on Monday. Ross got his car through its MoT yesterday so he'll be selling it to his pal Dan this weekend.

When Luca was here he was quite happy to hang around the house most of the time. Jo suggested taking a run over to Stonehaven one day but he didn't fancy spending any more time on a car journey - "I'm always doing that!". In fact, the only times we had him out of the house was on Thursday when I took him for a haircut when Jo was away getting her hair done. This was how he looked before the cut:

We had to wait for a bit, so Luca grabbed my phone and took a few photos of his surroundings:

Luca was impressed by the framed shirts of two local Banchory lads who play for Aberdeen - and he even managed to get me and him in the same photo!

Post haircut with prize lolly

Luca was very defensive about his long locks - he didn't want to lose them, and he gave the hairdresser specific instructions just to cut his fringe so that it wasn't in his eyes any more. She pointed out that his parting was the wrong way because of where his crown is, making his hair stick up there, but, again, he was having none of it - "it's because I'm left handed" he protested.

Beforehand, he climbed up his favourite little hill at Corsee Road:

Yesterday (Friday), Jo and I took Luca out for another slightly longer walk to get rid of some of his surplus energy. We went along the familiar trail to Morrison's, along the riverbank, with Luca showing us the way. We stopped off in KGV park to let him play on the zip slide for a while:

Last Sunday, Gary did the Loch Rannoch Marathon, which, to nobody's surprise but his apparently, was a pretty hilly affair, but he still put in a very respectable time of 3:38, finishing in 68th place overall and 9th in his age category:

The 5 new houses where the Tor-na-Coille filling station used to be are now complete - just a bit of site tidy-up to do now - levelling off the car parking spaces etc. The show house opened yesterday and it's open viewing all weekend so I popped in to do my nosey. They're very nicely equipped and finished, but I reckon we would have to throw out 80% of the stuff we have if we were to consider downsizing and moving in to them. The upstairs living space is all in one - there's no separation, so if somebody wanted to watch TV and somebody else wanted to do something else like read, then they would have to go to one of the 2 bedrooms. I took this photo in the dark the other night:

Next Thursday we're off to York for the weekend. After that, I've got golf in Tenerife 2 weeks today, then we're off to Edinburgh for the Wine Fair 2 weeks after that. Five weeks later we're off to Oz!

We haven't done anything about our American holiday next year yet. We've left it later than usual and may now have missed out on some Air Miles offers and the better Marriott holidays. I guess we'll discuss plans with Lucy when we meet up with her in Adelaide. I saw an article in the papers recently about a musical odyssey that I've long considered doing:

Definitely on the wish list.

West Country news (3)

We checked out of our lovely hotel in Stratford on Friday morning, but first a couple of last wistful photos:

Before heading off to Cheltenham for the Literature Festival, we took the short drive out to the fifth Shakespeare property - Mary Arden's Farm:

Cheltenham is only an hour away, so we got there in time for lunch - after having again to park our car in a public park, albeit the Holiday Inn at least arranged a 25% discount for us. We were just across the road from the newly developed Brewery Quarter, which, coincidentally, contained a brand new brewpub, the Brewhouse & Kitchen - very nice indeed.

Our first show was foreign correspondent, John Simpson, BBC News' World Affairs Editor. It was a straight one on one interview - very interesting. Our next show was a few hours' away so we went back to our hotel for a while then went out to look for something to eat and stumbled upon The Stable, which advertised "Pizza, Pies & Cider". Pizza was what Jo fancied and I decided that this was a "when in Rome" moment for me and sampled their ciders -very interesting, although not something I would normally partake of.

Val McDermid was interviewed by fellow crime writer Mark Billingham and they were brilliant together. We came across these odd statues before stopping for a nightcap at the local Wetherspoon's on the way back to our hotel:

Saturday morning arrived and we had a free day as the two shows we had booked were both in the evening. We had brunch at Patisserie Valerie then took a stroll over to Pittville Park. We briefly discussed the possibility of taking a drive down to Bath - and we had sufficient time - but eventually opted for the easier stroll round the park:

A mid-afternoon snack back at the Brewhouse & Kitchen, followed by a rest back at the hotel, then off for a nice steak dinner prior to the Festival - Jeremy Paxman first, followed by a very poor panel talk on The Ages of Bowie - our only disappointment of the weekend.

On Sunday we decided to have brunch at the Boston Tea Party, a busy place we had passed several times, but this time it was just too busy and we chose the easy way out and diverted to Wetherspoon's, which turned out to be very nice.

On our way to the Festival, we stopped for a photo in front of a nice street fountain:

On arrival at Imperial Square, we noticed this statue of Gustav Holst:

The Brian Wilson show featured a filmed interview with the great man and was really well done, but it underlined what a troubled man he is. As we came out of the marquee, I was pulled to one side by a BBC local radio interviewer, looking for comments on the festival to appear on Monday morning's news show. I susbsequently picked it up on the i-player and, if you click this link and scroll forward to 55:05, you can listen to it - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p049d2fh#play.

We had a bit of time to kill as the planned George Harrison tribute show, due to feature his widow Olivia, was cancelled "due to unforeseen circumstances", so we headed off to the CAMRA National Pub of the Year 2015, the Sandford Park Alehouse - and what an excellent place it was. So good, in fact, that we had lunch plus 3 pints there - well, I did anyway:

Just 2 shows left - first was Shetland - the TV series that Jo was a big fan of, and, even although I didn't watch it, nor read any of Ann Cleeves' books, I enjoyed it too.

In between shows, we had another nice meal before going in - fractionally late - to the Wilko Johnson interview, which was richly entertaining - and amusing.

Another nightcap at Wetherspoon's and that was our weekend in the West Country over. All that remained on Monday morning was to drive to the airport and catch our flight back to Aberdeen, where Ross met us and took us home.

On Tuesday morning, I drove over to Inverurie to bring Luca over to ours for the rest of the week before heading off for a morning cycle. Now that's me up to date again.

West Country news (2)

When we got up on Thursday morning, we couldn't believe it - the streets were completely clear - not a sign of the MOP Fair, which had run until 11 pm the night before. They must have been working all through the night to clear everything away. This was the view of our hotel from the street:

We had our meeting with SellMyTimeshare in the morning and it turned out much as we expected - they try to suck you in to their system, which smelled ever so slightly of pyramid selling. We weren't comfortable with signing up there and then - we're treating it as stage one in our learning process as to what to do with our two weeks in Hollywood, Florida. We're unlikely to ever use them as they're the Xmas/New Year weeks - premium time in USA - and we've been having difficulty recently in using them for suitable exchanges through Interval International. Meanwhile the maintenance fees are rising, especially after Sterling's recent collapse, so we didn't think that any of our offspring would want to take them on either, so we'll have to find a solution in due course. We're keeping our separate Marriott week and Points however - we like them.

Once we freed ourselves from their clutches we were able to do the Shakespeare thing - 5 separate properties to view, but first, lunch. We chose well - The One Elm was quirky but very good:

We rather rushed through the first Shakespeare property, which was a pity, but we had forgotten to renew our parking ticket. We took a bit more time and had some fun in the second one:

The third property was Hall's Croft:

All three so far had been within easy walking distance but Anne Hathaway's Cottage was a mile away, but worth the walk:

Back in the town, it was time for a beer - and we'd found the Stratford Ale House, a dinky little place but excellent beer. Dinner that night was in Stratford's oldest pub - the Old Thatch Tavern, another Fuller's property.

West Country news (1)

Happy to say Jo's a lot better than she was when I last posted just over a week ago. She's still not completely out of the woods yet - although the initial infection seems to have gone, she's now developed a persistent cough, but she certainly feels a whole lot better. Jo finished her course of antibiotics on Friday night and managed a couple of glasses of wine and a few beers on Saturday/Sunday before we came home on Monday.

The travel was very easy - Flybe from Aberdeen to Birmingham - very civilised times - and then we picked up a hire car and made the short journey to Stratford-(up)on-Avon in a dinky little Fiat 500 - the same model as we drove in France last year:

Perfect for the two of us - very frugal - we didn't even have to put fuel in it - but it's foot to the floor when going uphill!

When we arrived in Stratford, we had some difficulty getting to our hotel as the MOP Fair (https://www.stratford.gov.uk/leisure/the-mop-fair.cfm) was on. It took over all the streets in the centre of town and there was a large carousel right outside our hotel. Eventually we found a way to the car park at the rear, only to discover that there was no private parking - only public at £14 per day.

The hotel itself was lovely - old, but a tasteful update when Fuller's took it over 4 years ago. We checked in then did a short recce round the town, posing in front of the Shakespearean characters before taking a short walk along the banks of the Avon:

Hamlet

Falstaff

We had dinner that evening in our hotel:

So that was Wednesday. More to follow.

October week 1

The weather's held fair even although it's October now. The only change has been in daylight hours, which are noticeably shortening.

It's Saturday night and Jo's still not well. She's struggled through this week - managing along to her swimming sessions on Wednesday and Friday but she was pretty poorly last night. She attended the cardio clinic earlier this week and the nurse noted that her sample was cloudy and offered Jo an antiobiotic, suggesting that she may have a UTI. Jo turned it down, but now wishes she hadn't, so she's been in bed all day today (Saturday) and is surviving on Solpadeine and Cranberry Juice.

I've been OK so far - 3 days of golf and 2 days of cycling. Now I'm sitting here watching Scotland toil against Lithuania in the second match of their World Cup qualifying section. What a wonderful Saturday evening - not. Just as well Gary and Carole decided not to go out tonight and leave Luca with us as originally planned.

We're due to head down to the West Country on Wednesday - let's hope Jo's better by then.

October arrives

It's been a fun - and busy - week. Dinner at the Kilgours on Saturday night was followed by a lovely afternoon at the golf club after our annual Scotland v Rest of World Challenge match. Cycling on Monday, Inverurie with Luca on Tuesday, golf on Wednesday, rest day Thursday then a hill-walk on Friday.

In amongst all that were another couple of training sessions for River Dee Radio, which had its first official live broadcast on Saturday morning, introducing all the presenters and their programme plans. I couldn't make our scheduled interview time, but Andy Marshall went along to represent us. Listen to what he said here:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsOWKBxougg, and
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKj7gMfYss

Saturday afternoon was another lovely social occasion. It's Les and Angela Gray's 70th birthdays (soon) and also their 50th wedding anniversary and they had a lunch for 50 family and friends at The Cowshed:

We arrived at 1 pm and didn't leave until after 5 pm - and the champagne and wine flowed all afternoon. We're not quite so sprightly today - although I did manage along to golf this morning on what was another beautiful day. Jo's been taking it easy as well - although she thinks a contributory factor was getting our flu jabs yesterday morning - plus, in her case, the one-of pneumococcal vaccine, which everyone gets after they hit 65.

This week it's golf Monday, Wednesday and Friday, weather permitting and hopefully a cycle or two sometime. Luca's staying with us on Saturday as his parents are out at a show.

September week 3

Another week flown by - and you can now sense it's getting autumnal - definitely not as warm as it had been recently - and we notice the leaves are now spotting brown a bit.

My week went virtually as planned - and as outlined in last week's blog - a couple of cycles and 4 games of golf. Definitely going to be a slow one today - newspapers, TV - to allow my body to recover from the stiffness I feel just now. Got a big match tomorrow - can't let Scotland down in our annual Challenge match v the Rest of the World!

I went along to the Legion on Thursday night for a hands-on training session at River Dee Radio. the tutor/presenter, Richard, was keen for us to try out the mixing desk and do a test broadcast using the Zara Radio software, but I'm not ready for any live broadcasting - I would rather pre-record shows, but this means using a different piece of software (Audacity) and Richard didn't know much about this, so I'm going to do some training on this next week.

Incidentally, next Saturday morning (1st) from 10 am to 1:00 pm there's a live show going out, featuring all the volunteer presenters, each of whom has been asked to provide two tracks to demonstrate what their show is likely to be about. I don't think I'll be able to make it along as we've got our flu jabs and then we're going to the Cowshed for lunch (double 70th birthday celebration and 50th anniversary for Les and Angela Gray). Andy Marshall is going along to represent the Banchory Headbangers. Don't forget the link to listen to River Dee Radio is http://tunein.com/radio/River-Dee-Radio-s274232

Tonight (Saturday) we're going to the Kilgours for dinner - that should be nice.

I've enjoyed the two rides I've had on my new hybrid bike so far - it's definitely easier than my mountain bike, which is going in again to the bike shop on Monday to try again to have its squealing brakes fixed.

I noticed an article in the press giving a link to a web site (https://qrisk.org/2016/) on which you can input some of your personal details and it gives you your risk of heart attack/stroke in the next 10 years. I did mine and it came out at 20.4%, which is above the 16% norm for someone of my age etc:

I played around with it a bit to see if I could get the risk factor down - I immediately thought perhaps weight was a factor, so I lopped 10 kgs off my real weight, but it made very little difference to the overall score. What did affect it greatly was the tick box for Atrial Fibrillation - if I unticked it and pretended I didn't have AF, my risk fell to 12% - well below the healthy average. Scary thought - that's something I can't do anything about.

That's all for now folks - until next week. Take care.

September week 2

Another week has flown by - and the weather has been great. When Brian and Mary were here last weekend we went out to the Derbar for a meal - our second visit there in a few days - and it was just as good as the first time.

Ross and Lizzie seemed to enjoy their weekend in Hamburg for Lizzie's young brother's wedding - although Lizzie seemed to pick up a bug and has been a bit poorly these last few days. If you didn't see the photo of the two of them on FaceBook, here it is:

On Monday afternoon I went for a bike ride with Colin and Dave. We drove up to Aboyne and cycled along the Tarland Way, doing a couple of loops of the Tarland Trails when we got there, before heading back down through Dinnet and along the Deeside Way, stopping at Deeside Gliding Club. Nice ride.

Tuesday was a Seniors match at Royal Aberdeen, where the normal green fees are now £172 - glad we didn't have to pay that! It was a lovely day and we experienced the phenomenon of having a light breeze behind us on the way out, which turned right round and followed us on the inward half. Normally at least 9 holes are played in to a howling wind - what a pleasant change.

Wednesday was golf at Banchory while Jo was away on her usual swim session, then on Thursday we decided to go in to Aberdeen to watch the world premiere of the new Beatles' documentary Eight Days a Week.  I thought I would take the chance to do some bike shop browsing again so we headed to Evans Cycles near the Haudagain roundabout - and this time, I jumped - I bought myself the new hybrid I'd always promised myself:

Friday was golf again - this time at Arbroath, a course I'd never played and it turned out to be a wee gem.

Saturday was quiet - Jo and I strolled down to the village in the warm sunshine. The Farmers' market was on and we had a look but didn't buy anything. We watched the second episode of The Night Of in the evening - looks promising.

Golf again this morning (Sunday) then crispy aromatic duck for dinner - lovely.

Busy week coming up again:

• Monday - gas service + our IFA arriving to update our finances, followed by a game of golf
• Tuesday - cycle in the morning, Inverurie in the afternoon/evening
• Wednesday - golf in the afternoon
• Thursday - cycle in the morning then local radio training session in the evening
• Friday - last Seniors match of the season at Scotscraig (Tayport)

We've got our annual Scotland v Rest of the World Challenge match on Sunday - traditionally the season ender.

The more observant readers will have noticed the reference above to local radio training on Thursday. River Dee Radio has started test transmissions - check it out at http://tunein.com/radio/River-Dee-Radio-s274232/ - and they are looking for volunteers to help out. We - the Banchory Headbangers - are considering putting a programme together. I've done some online training and am booked for a hands-on session on Thursday night. I'm not sure about the presenting bit, but I like putting programmes/themes together. We'll see what develops.

Ross 33

It's now Thursday morning and Ross and Lizzie have set off on their journey down to Edinburgh and onwards to Hamburg to attend Lizzie's brother's wedding. Ironically, they'll pass Gary who'll be on his way back from Hamburg tomorrow.

Last night, the 4 of us went out for dinner to the Derbar - and very nice it was too. Ross had just had his hair cut and he's removed his facial hair now as well:

Ross doesn't think he's very photogenic and I kind of half agree that this photo of him and Lizzie doesn't quite do him justice. We thought he looked very smart and we look forward to seeing photos of him when he's got his new suit, shirt and a tie on at the wedding.

Lizzie had brought along the beer mats game, which we all tried out:

Not sure who won that contest!

The boiler installers are working away downstairs as we speak. They've sprung some small leaks in a couple of radiators already - let's hope they get it all sorted out today. Apart from this, so far, so good - Jo seems happy that they're following her instructions anyway. Perhaps our "dummy run" last year when we almost got a new boiler installed only to pull the plug at the last minute has helped.

That's our flights to Australia booked now. The Amex card has taken the hit - we're going Emirates again, leaving here on Boxing Day, which necessitates us having to go to Gary and Carole's for Christmas - hope they don't mind! Our trip includes a visit to the Red Centre in the middle of our holiday and a few days in Brisbane at the end.

Tomorrow (Friday) I'm meeting up with my old work colleagues Jacquie and Nikki for a spot of lunch. We've arranged to meet at Garlogie and if it's dry again, I'll cycle over there. I cycled on Tuesday morning but perhaps it was too soon after my golf weekend at Boat of Garten, because I certainly felt tired at golf yesterday afternoon. Today's very much a down day, however, so that should help.

Brian and Mary are coming up on Saturday - but just for one night. Jo's busy changing the bed linen just now in the room where Ross and Lizzie normally are - I guess it's quite convenient that they're away this weekend.

That's about it for now, I think