Freezing Friday

It's been a great week of bright, sunny and still weather - but freezing. Minus 6C when we woke this morning. Bit tricky cycling, but I've managed a couple of short rides, the latest of which was this afternoon, out delivering CAMRA's quarterly newsletter to the local outlets.

Our new settee arrived yesterday:

Jo much prefers it to the old one, which is now with Ross and Lizzie in Edinburgh.

Dawn's coming up on Sunday and staying for a night or two. She's got a job to do in Aberdeen on Monday afternoon.

Headbangers show 2 is now on River Dee Radio between 7 pm and 8 pm nightly - http://tunein.com/radio/River-Dee-Radio-s274232/. Show 3 is being worked on - hopefully finish it tomorrow afternoon.

The GP had a good look at my left knee on Tuesday. I told her about the problems I was having with it and the fact that the surgeon had told me when I got my right knee replaced that my left knee would eventually need done too - but it didn't feel the same as the right one did prior to the operation. She therefore suggested a period of physiotherapy initially and, if that doesn't work, then it would be the orthopaedic surgeon.

I've finally booked our road trip to USA next year - and it's quite an odyssey:

• Fly to Atlanta 29th June and spend 3 nights there
• Pick up hire car and drive east to Savannah for 3 nights
• Make the short journey over to Hilton Head Island and spend 5 nights there at Marriott's Harbour Club at Harbour Town (http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/hhhht-marriotts-harbour-club/?scid=bb1a189a-fec3-4d19-a255-54ba596febe2)
• Shortish drive north to Charleston for one night
• Drive west to Asheville for one night
• Then Nashville for 2 nights
• Memphis for 3 nights
• Fly to Oregon on 17th July
• Return home - 14th/15th August

I'd always talked about doing a bit of a musical/blues heritage tour - my initial grand plan many years ago was to pick up a Winnebago and drive to all the musical hot-spots, including Nashville, Memphis and Clarksdale, but also New Orleans and Chicago - and possibly Austin as well. In the cold light of day, the logistics of that are pretty horrendous - and the Winnebago idea only works if you can find suitable places to camp/park - and it appears that most of these are well out of town, so I've opted for city centre hotels instead and restricted the itinerary to a more manageable level.

As I've said before, there's no point in us waiting much more at our time of life to do the things we want to do - do them now, while we're still spared!

Edinburgh etc

Got back from Edinburgh on Sunday evening. It was cold down there - but I think it's even colder here - although beautifully crisp, with lovely blue skies. The hard frost put me right off going out on my bike today, however.

We took the train down, arriving just in time for lunch on Friday, which I'd booked at Tom Kitchin's gastropub, the Scran and Scallie (https://scranandscallie.com/) - and it was really excellent - especially the Plum Tatin, washed down with their recommended dessert wine. Here we are:

Anne and Leslie came down later and joined us for dinner at night at the Loon Fung, preceded by a couple of pints at the Cask and Barrel.

On Saturday morning, Jo and I walked down to Ross and Lizzie's new flat. They're settled in now, having been there for 3 weeks, but their work plans have been deferred a little, so they're now looking for some casual work to tide them over until the New Year.

Ross had made some soup for us - and bacon butties - a nice breakfast.

From there, it was the Wine Gang's Xmas Fair for the rest of the afternoon. Some nice Aussie wines there, including Penfolds:

We had dinner on Saturday night at the Guildford Arms. Sunday morning was relaxed - a late breakfast at the Filling Station in the Omni Centre, then coffee and a scone in Jenner's before catching the train home.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I'm off to the Doctor's to see about my knee, then we're off to Inverurie as usual, but I have to be home by 9 pm as we're finishing off our latest recording for River Dee Radio. Apart from that, nothing much else planned for this week other than a CAMRA branch meeting on Thursday evening.

I've booked our flights to USA next year now. We're flying to Atlanta, Georgia late June, then doing a big road trip, which takes us east out to Savannah, then Hilton Head Island and a Marriott property there, then up to Charleston, Asheville and further west again to Nashville and Memphis, after which we fly up to Oregon for a month.

Oh - and we've just ordered a new settee for the TV room - it arrives on Thursday.

Back home again

I got home from Tenerife not long before midnight on Saturday. Nice holiday and travel arrangements all went smoothly but I did have problems with my (unreconstructed) left knee and had to pull out of the final day's golf. It got progressively worse as the week went on - I think 6 days in a row is too much for me nowadays.

I was told at the time of my right knee replacement 3 years ago that my left knee would also need replaced eventually but it doesn't feel like the same sort of pain I experienced then and I am wondering - maybe secretly hoping - that there's something else wrong with it that doesn't need as drastic surgery as a complete replacement. Anyway, I've decided to set the ball rolling and have made an appointment with the GP next Tuesday.

On the way back from Tenerife, I looked out of the plane window to see the setting sun shining on the wing tip of the plane:

So while I was away, Jo had to cope with the replacement of our hot water tank which we discovered had been slowly leaking for a while. They didn't do it properly at first as Jo awoke the morning after the fitting to find the utility room floor awash with water. The towels she used to mop it all up were then washed and dried and Jo thought the weight of them had then broken the washing machine, but it transpired that it was only due to a lack of water infeed - the water supply taps hadn't been fully re-opened after the  tank was replaced. Cue embarrassed looks from Jo.

It's been a school in-service couple of days so Luca has been staying with us, but Gary will be picking him up tonight as Luca's back at school tomorrow. This afternoon Luca and I went out on our bikes. The initial plan was for us to cycle along to Morrison's/Tesco to get some shopping. Luca was OK cycling on the road that goes through KGV park, but when we turned on to the Deeside Way - a path he's walked many times before - he panicked and said he couldn't do it - the path was too narrow.

In the end we just cycled up and down the road in KGV park and he was very happy to do this - in fact, it was a problem getting him to stop. "Cycling's good fun, Granda, isn't it?". Here we are:

Finally, I've started looking at USA holiday options for next year. I'm currently hatching a plan to travel over early July, flying in to Atlanta, Georgia then over to Savannah, pick up a hire car and on to nearby Hilton Head Island for a week or so.

Then possibly do at least part of the Musical Road Trip described in an earlier blog posting, which would involve driving:

• Savannah to Atlanta - c. 250 miles
• Atlanta to Nashville - ditto
• Nashville to Memphis - c. 200 miles

That's do-able, I think - and it helped my thinking to write it down here. From Memphis, we might make the relatively short trip down to Clarksdale (home of the Blues), or we may just fly from there over to Medford. I wonder how that sounds to Lucy - and Jo? I think we need to book soon - we can't wait until we come back from Australia.

Our first Headbangers show is now on the internet on River Dee Radio each evening between 7 pm and 8 pm (UK time). Have a listen - http://tunein.com/radio/River-Dee-Radio-s274232/. Tomorrow night, we're going to record our second show which should go on the same nightly loop next week.

We've got a funeral to attend on Thursday. Jacquie Howden, who worked for the Clarks for even longer than my 31 (and a bit) years - and is still there - her husband Tom collapsed and died suddenly last week. It was only a month or so ago that I cycled to Garlogie and had lunch with them both there.

 

Eve of golf trip

It's Friday morning and I'm almost packed and ready for my early morning departure tomorrow to Edinburgh to catch the flight to Tenerife for a week's golf. I had planned to go for an afternoon cycle today whilst Jo was at her swimming - yes, she seems well again - but a bit of a spanner was thrown in to the works yesterday when we discovered that our hot water storage tank is leaking and we're now sitting here waiting for the Gas Engineer to come. We have been given an 8 am to 6 pm slot, but they never seem to arrive at the earlier end of this spectrum, so I suspect I'll have to cancel my plans for a cycle and wait in for him this afternoon. Ho hum.

We're wondering whether this leak has anything to do with the fact that we're not all that impressed with how our central heating system is working after installation of the new boiler - or perhaps we haven't quite figured out how best to run it yet?

Other matters on the go include further research in to what we can do with our Florida timeshare - there's loads of companies out there in the market, but we want to avoid the snake oil salesmen if we can.

I've started to look at possible holiday opportunities in USA next summer as well - as usual, dependent on what's available with Avios and Marriott.

Nowt much else to say today, but I thought I'd better add a photo to brighten up my blog a little - this one is a shot of the Brentwood B & B we stayed in last weekend in York:

That's our bedroom window top right - slightly ajar.

Back from York - to a shock!

(http://ianrstewart.blogspot.co.uk/)

Well, that was a bit of a shock today. Jo has been struggling since she picked up a UTI a couple of weeks ago and she had a bad night last night, so phoned the Doctor this morning and got an appointment at 10:30. I was waiting for her to come out when I was approached by an ambulancewoman in uniform - "Mr. Stewart?" "No need to panic" - but, of course, that's exactly what I did. "We're taking your wife to hospital - I suggest you go home, pack an overnight bag for her and then follow us to A & E".

Jo's home now and seems OK, but Dr. Rough (the GP) was concerned when he examined her stomach - he thought she might have an Aortic Aneurysm, which made it an emergency. He phoned the hospital and an ambulance whisked Jo away - blue light flashing all the way!

By the time I got there, parked the car and walked over to A & E, Jo was being examined. I was eventually allowed in and was relieved to see that all was well - they had scanned her and there was no aneurysm. Her blood and urine test results were all positive too, as was her ECG, so she was allowed to come home.

Jo will go back to see the GP and continue to investigate her symptoms unless they go away soon - they suspect that it's all a left-over from her UTI.

So, we thought we were going to have a very quiet day at home today after our weekend in Yorkshire, but certainly didn't expect this. Here's some photos from the weekend:

We'd travelled all morning on the train - First Class! - with the Masons and Kilgours and we were all ready for a beer. This was in the Three Legged Mare 

Just along the road from the pub was the magnificent York Minster

Dinner on Thursday night was at Raj's Indian restaurant - a celebrity hotspot allegedly. Well, Dame Kelly Holmes was there once anyway.

On Friday, we took the train down to Harrogate and had coffee and cakes at the famous Betty's Tearooms, where we were joined by Linda Elgie - she and Colin moved down to the area from Banchory 16 years ago.

After Betty's we went for a walk round the Valley Gardens.

The short walk was enough to make us all thirsty again so we stopped for alcohol top-ups in the Old Bell Tavern

We stopped off briefly in lovely Knaresborough on the way back to York.

Dinner on Friday night was at the lovely, atmospheric Star Inn the City, where this caricature of all the celebs that have been there was displayed.

 Unfortunately, Anne got food poisoning and most of Saturday was a write-off for her. The rest of us spent the morning going round York Minster and the afternoon at York's Chocolate Story - the history of Rowntree's and Terry's etc. Anne managed to crawl out of bed and join us for dinner with the Elgies at the Lamb and Lion - I should have taken a team photo here, but forgot!

On Sunday morning, Johanne, Jo, Anne & Leslie went to Mass, whilst Colin and I took a stroll around the city.

Colin at Clifford's Tower.

After church, the girls hopped on a tourist bus, whilst Leslie, Colin and I went to the National Railway Museum. Here I am with a replica of Stephenson's Rocket.

Lunch was at the Hole in the Wall - Yorkshire Pud for some - and then it was the train back home. Nice trip - and good to catch up with the Elgies again.

Eve of next holiday

It's just over a week since we returned from our last mini-break and it's the eve of our next - we head to York tomorrow morning - by train - first class.

Ross and Lizzie got away in good time yesterday and made it down to their new home in Edinburgh. I drove them in to Aberdeen to pick up their self hire removal van first thing in the morning and we helped them load it and they were on the road south by noon. They got help to unload at the other end and apparently even had time to hit the pub last night after unloading.

Today Ross is bringing the van back and catching the train back down.

Our house is much quieter now - but we've got a lot more space! We donated the brown leather settee that sat in our back (TV) room to Ross and Lizzie. We never really liked it much anyway, but hopefully it will help them settle in. Temporarily, I brought down the chair that used to sit in our bedroom, so now we just have 2 chairs in the TV room - and nowhere for visitors to sit now! We'll get round to doing something more permanent soon.

Last night I booked - through Airbnb - somewhere for Jo and I to stay near Kelly for the 4 nights we overlap with Lucy and the boys - https://www.airbnb.co.uk/reservation/itinerary?code=B3FNQW&eluid=3&euid=01a439b0-e529-923e-8348-3b8c4b621a5c&server_side_login=true&trip_token=DSM83QW5&view_only=true. It's near enough that we can walk over to Derby St.

We watched BBC Scotland's programme on Timeshare on Monday night (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b080dfy2/bbc-scotland-investigates-2016-5-the-timeshare-time-bomb) with great interest as the investigator went through the exact same experience with SellMyTimeshare (https://www.sellmytimeshare.tv/) as we did in Stratford two weeks ago. They seem to be legitimate - huge full-page adverts in the Times and even advertising on TV now - but we could smell the whiff of pyramid selling about their proposal and retreated as quickly as we were allowed to. I've today written to Fergus Muirhead, the BBC investigator, to tell him about our experiences.

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.