New week, new snow

New post in a new week and we have new show this morning. Proper snow this time. I've just been down to the bottle bank and I had to move several inches of snow from the car - soft fluffy stuff on top, then slabs of frozen snow underneath. It's beautiful outside just now, but it appears there's going to be more snow. Thankfully we have all wheel drive so it's not really a problem getting about - not that we're doing much of that. We're sticking to the essential travel only, including exercising as close to home as possible. I know a lot of people are interpreting this differently - staying within Aberdeenshire but travelling as far as Loch Muick, Dinnet and even Braemar for their exercise. I am making a point of starting and moving the car at least once a week, however, but we don't drive very far at all - just enough to give the battery a little boost and to make sure the brakes haven't seized. Last Monday's drive to Crathes - all of 3 miles - was the longest we've undertaken recently. I can't remember why, but at our Friday night Footballers' Zoom call - and also the previous evening's call with Barry, Helen and Dawn - where Dad and I used to work came up:

I started work there in 1972 - Dad had already been there for a few years. I think the site would only have opened in the late '60's, but not long after we returned from our spell down south, Buchanan's/Distillers/Diageo were out of there - possibly the early '80's? The site and the tower block where I worked for 18 months or so before the move to head office in London, is still there, of course, but it's now a multi-purpose business park. This morning's post brought our new jigsaw puzzle:

I was originally thinking I may keep this one once we've completed it and put it on the wall in the office/studio, but we need to find something to lay it on first. I've just finished another brew with my Pinter kit (https://thegreatergood.co.uk/) so now it's in the garage for conditioning for a few days. The last one I did was a stout and it was good - I'm hoping this IPA works out well. It's kind of cheat/shortcut brewing and not particularly cheap but when the pubs are all shut and there's no real ale available, it's the next best thing. To stave off the continuing lockdown boredom, I've also bought tickets to two upcoming CAMRA (virtual) events: Great British Beer Festival (Winter) - 19-21 March; and Beer and Chocolate Tasting - 4 April

At last

In today's post - 2 blue envelopes. So we're both going to Banchory Sports Centre a week tomorrow (Thursday 11th) to get our first vaccinations and they seem to have co-ordinated the timing for couples as Jo and I are just 7 minutes apart. The envelopes came from Livingston so it's been centrally organised and we can't blame Grampian for the delay. Typically, the Central Belt was dealt with first - friends in Edinburgh and Glasgow got their letters over a week ago. In other news, nothing much else has changed. No surprise there, especially considering it was Groundhog Day yesterday. Surprised the movie wasn't aired anywhere. Same routines for us and the same weather - it remains cold and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while, judging by the forecast:

The replacement rod for my Kickr Snap bike trainer arrived on Monday so the bike's all set up now:

I've had a couple of (very) brief shots on it, mainly to find out how it all works and how to tailor and pair the various pieces of hardware and software. I've been using Strava for my outdoor bike rides so I've now paired this with the Wahoo trainer. Most indoor cyclists use Zwift so I'm also pairing that with Wahoo plus my Garmin Approach watch. Confused? You're not alone. Anyway, back to the daily routine. We awoke on Monday morning to some fresh lying snow. It was another beautiful, still, sunny day so we thought we'd take a walk round Crathes estate. I posted some photos on Facebook, but here's a couple that escaped that medium:

That's about it for now.

Waiting, waiting

I've been told not to be so impatient - by, of all people, Jo. Every day this week I've opened our mailbox looking for a letter from our NHS telling me when and where to go for my first Covid-19 vaccine, but nothing so far. We were told all the over 70's letters would be out this week and my old school friend in Edinburgh got his on Monday and another old school friend in Glasgow got his on Tuesday. We always seem to be the last in line. I'm not really anxious about it - I'm sure it'll come soon, although we never did get our flu jab letters this winter - the new centralised system in Livingston screwed up, but thankfully our local GP practice recognised this and sorted it out eventually. Of more immediate frustration today was that my exercise plans went awry. It's been cold since the turn of the year and the ice won't leave the ground. I was hoping for a short cycle today but we had to cancel again - too slippy. I've only been out once this year - and that was only for a short - and slightly precarious - ride. Never mind, let's resort to plan B then. I had ordered a Wahoo Kickr Snap, just like Barry's got, and it arrived today:

I set it all up easily enough and put my mountain bike on and tried it out - all OK. Then I thought I'd try and fit my hybrid to see which one was better to train on. That's when it all went wrong. You have to take out the skewer rod on the back wheel of your bike and put in the Wahoo skewer, but when I got near to tightening it, the rod snapped! I've contacted Wahoo support and hope that they can send a replacement fairly quickly. A much more successful day yesterday - we got our jigsaw finished!:

Tricky one, but very satisfying once it's done. I've now ordered another one. Have you noticed that they - like all other lockdown distractions - have gone up in price? Monday was Burns night, but we didn't have a haggis in the house - the Tesco delivery came on Tuesday. Undaunted, Jo made Scotch Broth, Cranachan and shortbread - lovely. We sat in to Janey Godley's (virtual) Burns Night on You Tube and toasted the bard with a dram:

What was it?:

The chocolate orange and the shortbread took a hit as well, as did the latest brew from my new home brew Pinter:

Last week we had the misfortune to have two power cuts, the latter of which was planned. There was a big blowout in the sub-station at Burnett Park east - just a couple of hundred yards away - and we lost power from 4 pm until after 11 pm, so it was candlelit sandwiches, crisps and a bottle of wine for our tea. SSEN eventually brought along a large truck generator to get power back temporarily, but then they had to switch back to main power on Friday - and that's when we lost power again - once more at tea-time, so it was another sandwich meal for us. It was all very localised - only 55 houses were affected:

As I said at the start,temperatures have been low this year and it's been icy, but we've had very little snow and most days it's been bright, sunny and still. The only morning recently that we've woken up to fresh snowfall was last Wednesday - and even then, it wasn't much:

Ironically, Scotland - unlike England - has allowed us to carry on playing golf. If only - our course has been under constant ice all year:

Too icy even for the families that normally use the downslope at the 3rd hole (opposite us) for ski-ing, snowboarding and sledging. An ambulance had to be called last week when some idiot tried to walk over the above scene and fell and broke their leg. Jo and I have been getting out for walks a couple of times per week and it's got much easier since our over-shoe crampons arrived. When I go for my Sunday paper, Jo's doing a church service online so I often take a bit of a detour to get some exercise. Did you know we had a castle in the centre of Banchory?:

(Just above the Derbar Indian restaurant). To close, a couple of photos of some of the younger members of our extended family. First, Miller and Asher on the new "egg" chair:

Then another one of Avery, chasing bubbles at her playgroup:

That's all for now, folks.

2021 starts here

Is it really 12 days since I last blogged? Let's see if I can remember what's happened so far this year. First of all - par for the course - the gas engineer never showed on Hogmanay. We got a message to say he's been held up at an emergency job, but he did turn up on New Year's Day - partly to our surprise. He soon fixed the radiator which wasn't faulty after all - all that was wrong was that there was another valve on the opposite side of the radiator that had been closed. Who knew? Not me anyway - it must have been the previous engineer that did it unknown to me. Hogmanay was a long session for us. First of all we had our usual Zoom call with Barry, Dawn and Helen, which traditionally involves a G & T for starters followed by wine. Dawn showed us another photo of Avery leaving their apartment block:

Then, at 11pm, we Zoomed again - this time with Anne/Leslie and Colin/Johanne, the couples we normally see the bells in with. More wine, of course, then Prosecco at midnight. We finally got to bed about 2 am - not ridiculous, but much later than normal. We both felt just a touch seedy on New Year's Day, but that didn't stop us from enjoying our traditional steak pie dinner - lovely. With Ne'erday falling on a Friday, the weekend passed as it usually does - lots of football on TV, Sunday papers, roll and bacon for lunch, so it was Monday before we were active again when we went for a walk along the river. Despite the cold and frozen surfaces, the outward part was easy enough on the tracks. On the way back, however, we were mostly on tarmac and that was pretty treacherous in places. The Government announcements of further restrictions had been widely forecast and I had acted accordingly, ordering a 1,000 piece jigsaw to keep us busy during lockdown. It arrived on the 12th day when we were taking our decorations down - all except the external lights on the balcony, which Jo insisted should stay there to cheer everyone up. During our Zoom call on the 7th, Helen mentioned a couple of clever photos Barry had taken:

Look carefully at the reflections in the bauble and the drips. Dawn also showed us DJ's new home:

By now, I was suffering from a new back pain. I had consulted our GP last year about sharp pains I was getting in my upper right back - near the shoulder blade. He thought it was probably spurs on the spine that grow with age and nip away at the nerves when you move in certain directions. He offered me some pain medication and suggested I take up Pilates, which Jo and I have been doing regularly ever since. Whilst that had abated, a new pain near my right hip had now emerged and, despite spending hours on Google, I couldn't find anything that matched the symptoms, until our weekly Zoom call with Lucy on Sunday when she instantly suggested it was probably my sacroiliac (S.I.) joint. As soon as I started reading about it, it seemed to me that this was almost certainly the cause of the pain I was experiencing. If you - like me - didn't know where your SI joint was, this may help:

You Tube is very good at instructional videos, so this is what I'm now working on - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNTwuBUtG24. The issue is not yet fully resolved but, at last, I am getting some relief from the pain - thank goodness. Ironically, it seems that it's been the Pilates that has brought this particular problem on, so I'm taking some time out from it for the time being, which means that Jo's doing it on her own now. I was out for a couple of shortish walks at the weekend but it's been too icy the last couple of days and I don't want to risk it just now. I think that's it for now.

Hogmanay

It's Hogmanay morning and it's still cold here. We're waiting for the gas service engineer to arrive - one of our radiator thermostats isn't working and they're going to do the annual service at the same time. It looks like the cold weather is going to be here for a while. The pavements are pretty icy but the forest trails are all clear - in fact, they're mostly soft, so we're still able to get out for some exercise. It's been an incredible winter so far - I can't remember one with so little wind. It's almost eerie - every day is calm and still. Even yesterday when we had a tiny bit of snow as Jo and I were coming to the end of our walk, the snowflakes were falling so gently and slowly down to the ground - it was like a Hollywood movie. We managed our international Xmas Eve/Xmas Day Zoom call OK, which was nice. It was our quietest Christmas dinner ever - just the two of us:

We drove over to Inverurie to deliver the presents to Gary, Carole and Luca, including Luca's 14th birthday present (30th December). We stood outside their back door and had a chat for 5 minutes before the cold set in and it was time to go - but not before Carole gave us 2 slices of her traditional Christmas desert - lime cheesecake. She hadn't had time to fully decorate it with chocolate sauce but Jo added some sprinkles - and it was as good as ever:

My presents from Gary and Carole were cycling related:

Boxing Day was our 48th anniversary but there were no special celebrations or gift exchanges. Our task was to reduce the pile of excess food left over from the previous day - and we made a pretty good fist of it. We had another go on Sunday as well, so when we awoke on a beautiful clear Monday morning, we decided we needed to get out early for some exercise, so I suggested we take a walk up Hill of Fare. Now Jo is well known for her dislike of any hills, but she had earlier asked me about a hill-walk me and my pals had done earlier this year - Tap o' Noth and the ancient Pictish fort at the top - did I think she could make it up there? So I thought - let's try an easy local hill first. The approach to Hill of Fare from the easterly side near Dunecht allows a relatively gentle spiral approach to the top and I was pretty sure this was well within Jo's capabilities - and so it transpired, despite her usual moans and groans. Here's a few of the photos I took:

Looking north towards Bennachie and south towards Clach-na Beinn:

We could see the snow-capped mountains to the west but my camera battery had expired and all I had was my phone camera which didn't have the necessary zoom capacity. The early start to our walk meant we were back home in good time for lunch. Since then, not a lot has changed to our daily and weekly routines. I had my fortnightly CAMRA social last night and tonight we have our regular Thursday evening session with Dawn, Barry and Helen, after which we are going to see the bells in - virtually, of course - with the Masons and the Kilgours, who we normally dine with at this time. Have a good time everyone - and take care.

Xmas Eve

It doesn't really feel Christmassy to me yet - despite the fact that we had a bit of snow overnight and there's a light covering outside which should hang around all day, given the low temperatures today. Historically, we normally play football today as part of Dave Williamson's birthday celebrations. Last year was our first ever "downgrade" to walking football, but this year we can't even do that due to the restrictions, so we've come up with an alternative - a few of us are going for a walk - from Banchory to Potarch, from where Jo's going to pick me up later on. Tonight's a busy night on Zoom - we have our usual weekly call with Dawn, Barry and Helen and we're going to follow that with a global call, when we're hoping to see the rest of the family (virtually). So - the latest on the observation stakes. On Monday morning, I shaved off the last of my face fungus, so how long would it be before Jo noticed? Answer - two and a half days. She spotted the change on Wednesday afternoon. I had given a hint of it with a photo I published on Instagram, taken halfway through the Monday morning shave:

That was for the record only - my Frank Zappa period. I didn't venture out of the en suite like this, but I emerged like this:

Here's my holiday reading:

A couple of photos of Avery that Dawn sent:

and the wallpaper in Dawn's hall, which she now calls "the library":

Hope to see everyone later - in person or virtually. Stay safe and enjoy.

The shortest day

It was on this day 100 years ago that Swanson Renshaw Stewart came in to the world that he departed just over 11 years ago. Here's one of our early times together:

Born not long after the Great War had ended, I can't imagine conditions were all that great then. Here we are at the end of 2020 and so many are complaining about going in to another near-lockdown, but really most of us don't appreciate how lucky we are by comparison with previous generations. Sure, there are many instances of genuine hard luck tales and people stuck in unfortunate situations, but most of us don't really have much to moan about - although that doesn't seem to stop the social media frenzy whenever additional restrictions are imposed by the various Governments. It's an economic tragedy for many businesses however, particularly in the hospitality and travel sectors. Many pubs and restaurants are going to close forever and I imagine quite a few airlines will go bust as well. From a purely personal point of view the main change to our retirement lifestyle is the current inability to travel. Who knows when we'll feel safe enough to fly to distant places to see family again? Perhaps by the time 2021 is over, enough of us will have been vaccinated, but progress is definitely slower than we were led to believe at the time of the announcement of approval of the Pfizer vaccine. It's difficult to look forwards - perhaps that's why I keep looking back. Why, I've even gone retro with my music collection and started buying vintage vinyl recordings again. My old collections have been digitised and are now sitting up in our loft, but the new pressings I've recently acquired needed somewhere to be stored and I thought, why not display them as well, so I bought a few wall mounted holders to display some of the wonderful covers:

They adorn the walls of our ground floor office, cum music studio and pilates room. Talking of pilates, Jo and I have been keeping up our sessions 4-5 times per week. It all started on the advice of my GP. I was having upper back pains and he prescribed some drugs and suggested I should try pilates. Well, the pains in my upper back seem to have gone, but I've now got pains lower down - just above my right hip. Jo reckons pilates caused them - we've been experimenting with different tutors and some of the sessions we did were a bit too advanced for us beginner seniors. Perhaps I'll have a few days off and see what happens. I'm going to pick Ross up on Wednesday - he's coming back to Banchory for a while until he can find some employment - pretty hard in the current climate. He'll be arriving at a house that is suitably modestly festive this year - not quite as many items on display as usual. We have however got a lovely wreath, courtesy of Lucy:

I think that's all for now. To close, another vintage Banchory photo that I picked up from the Banchory Heritage FB page. It shows the old railway bridge at Corsee road - the one that apparently wasn't quite high enough so they had to lower the road under the bridge to let the lorries through, but when it rained this used to fill up - note the vehicles having to drive on the wrong side of the road to try and avoid the deeper bits:

Mid-December report

It's Monday again and Jo and I are back from a walk round Scolty woods this morning - our first proper venture out since last Wednesday when we went round some of the trails at the back of our house and then back down the old railway line:

That was a nice sunny morning but we've had a fair bit of rain in the last few days and the Dee is starting to fill up - but it's pretty mild for the time of year - unlike Kelly and family in Oz where it's been hot at times - so much so that, on their video call on Saturday, Asher complained that it was too hot and he wanted to get on a plane to come to Scotland because it's cooler! It's even colder where Cade and Audrey have now moved to - up in the wilds of Klamath Falls where they had a good covering of snow last week. There's some tentative planning going on now for a wedding in April, when, in theory, we should be there - although, in practice that's now pretty unlikely - but you never know. I wonder how I'll look by then? Here's this week's latest:

The full feral look has gone and I'm back to the goatee again. I did it a week ago when I buzzed my hair again. So far, Jo hasn't even noticed - reading this will be the first time she realises what I've done. We had a brief conversation about observation this morning. Incidentally, our gourmet dine at home meal was excellent - very well presented, including a bottle of wine:

We have the Christmas decorations up now - a bit lower key than in previous years. Specifically, for the first time, no real tree - just the artificial one that used to sit in our back (TV) room but has now been promoted to the front room. Barry and Helen have got their tree up too:

The figures on the outbreak of coronavirus at Inchmarlo House have increased in the last week and there's now over 100 who have it, and, in addition, there's been a similar outbreak at another care home in Cults - 50 + there as well. We're being careful - hope you are too - stay safe.