Birmingham forever!

Gordon came to visit us in Ullapool for a few days and he and James did some hill-walking. Having already completed his Munros and Corbetts, Gordon is currently aiming to complete his “Grahams” (Scottish mountains between 2000 - 2500 feet tall) so those are what they climbed. The weather was warm but it was quite windy and even more so at the top of the hills. They said that Beinn Gobhlach was hard-going but the views from the top were amazing. On Monday James and Gordon took the day off from hill-walking and we all went to Lochinver where we had a walk through the Culag Woods and then a delicious lunch at Peet’s. The staff were very friendly and helpful; the waitress was telling us that she had meningitis in May and it has left her with vision problems, which is why she was wearing yellow tinted glasses. At the end of the meal she was wearing differently shaped glasses to see if we would notice - which we did! We then chose pies from Lochinver Larder (which we had for dinner later with mash, gravy and green beans) and we called in at the Rhue Art Gallery on the way home. Then in the evening we watched the Closing Ceremony of this year’s Commonwealth Games which has been held in Birmingham over the past couple of weeks. It was very good with lots of musicians that I hadn’t even realised were from Birmingham, like Dexy’s Midnight Runners and UB40. The handover to Melbourne in Australia took place and then surprise guest Ozzy Osbourne closed the ceremony by singing Paranoid with Black Sabbath with accompanying fireworks. The surprise was probably that Ozzy was still alive for the ceremony; his drug and alcohol associated health issues are manifold. While the boys went hill-walking during the days I had some very pleasant “Susan time” during which I went swimming, read my book while sitting on the bench in the garden, and even unprecedentedly mowed the lawn! (Although when I was about three-quarters finished I accidentally ran over the cable and broke it.) On Gordon’s last morning we had coffee in the garden; the weather continues to be very warm and somewhat humid, perhaps the edge of the much hotter weather that has recently arrived in England. I’m happy with our sunny and mild weather in Ullapool which is plenty hot enough for me; I had enough heatwave when we were in London in July!