A pleasant autumnal week

Tuesday was a sunny and breezy morning and we played Pickleball outdoors, it was excellent fun as always. Then James picked me up and we went straight to Italian Renaissance Art, following the same routine as last week. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi wasn’t working in the dilapidated Sir James Black building, so Sybren had to carry his laptop around the room to show us the slides. It must’ve been exhausting for him. Luckily for me, I had already printed out the slides so James and me were able to have a closer look at them. This week we were learning about the many artists who were involved in creating Florence’s Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral; builders, sculptors, painters and more. Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Donatello were the big hitters in the early 15th century. 
We had dinner at Heather and Ewan’s, the veg lasagne was delicious and so was the apple and blackberry crumble. We had a nice chat and heard about their holiday in Croatia. 
On Friday we caught up with Stuart and Anne for the first time in ages, it was really great to see them and hear all of their news. And on Saturday night we had Gordon and Morag round for dinner with Cornel and Heather. They hadn’t met before, however they all got on extremely well and we had a good laugh. I was gratified at how well the meal was received. Tom and Flora were enjoying the chat and sat in the lounge with us looking around at everyone and being admired (but not jumping up in anyone except James and me.) I’m so proud of how social they are! 

Talking of cats, I was cat-sitting Skye and Harris this weekend; Davie, Chanel and Jessica went to Warrington to visit Chanel’s Grandma who is very ill in hospital. The good news is that she is doing much better and is expected to get out of the ICU tomorrow.

Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks

Our guests left us on Saturday morning to catch the 10.30 ferry to Stornoway where they were going to attend a family party. They will return to the cottage on Wednesday evening and, depending on the weather, may stay for a few days. 
However we won’t be able to join them because today we have headed down the road to rejoin the cats and to go to various events over the next few days. We were unlucky in the way down the A9 to get stuck behind a traffic accident, and we were sent on a long diversion via Dunkeld. * 
It was really tedious. 
We barely had an hour in the house before we needed to set off to see Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks at GRCH. We parked at Cowcaddens and hurried along the road to the concert hall. But when we arrived I realised that I had left my phone at home. My phone had the tickets in it and I couldn’t log into the ticket website from James’ phone because the password was randomly generated and is saved in my phone. We went to ask for help at the box office but there seemed to be no way to retrieve the tickets. 
James immediately plunged into the five stages of grief, but got stuck at number two - anger! Then one of the people at the help desk said that he had the list of tickets bought via ticketmaster and he was able to find our names and reissue our tickets. We got to our seats just as the concert was starting - phew! 
I enjoyed the concert more than I thought I would. The psychedelic music of Jon Anderson is more James’ taste than mine however his voice is still good and I enjoyed the concert. The concert was sold out and the partisan audience loved every minute of it. No one of course loved it more than Jon Anderson himself, who was clearly enjoying the adulation of his fans. It’s hard to believe that he is nearly 82 years old.
* Three people were taken to hospital but no fatalities I’m glad to say. 

The “Lost” Cat

Tom climbed in the kitchen window of 10 Cadzow Drive at some point today. The inhabitants must have assumed that he was a stray, closed the window, fed him a can of tuna and put the word out that they had a lost cat in their house. Christine next door phoned me at about 6 p.m. to tell me that no. 10 had told Brian about it when he was out walking Bailey. I phoned Angela who went round and chapped the door of no. 10. The first thing she saw when they opened the door was Tom, rolling about happily on his back on the hall carpet. The people who live there were very nice, and told her that when they searched Facebook to see if there were any reports of a missing cat, they found a post from Cat five years ago about Tom being lost! He did have a collar on but it may have had the old house phone number on it. Angela had a look but she didn’t have her reading glasses with her so she couldn’t read the number. So we will have a look when we get home and make sure that he has an up to date tag on his collar with my mobile number on it. Tom returned home with Angela unrepentant and I have a bad feeling that he may visit number 10 again! Anyway all’s well that ends well but we will be having some stern words with Tom on our return home! Not that he will either understand or care! 

Autumn Visitors

We have had a really lovely autumnal weekend in Ullapool with Christine and Gerry. We arrived on Thursday afternoon, without the cats this time, and the Reids arrived a few hours later. We had a pleasant dinner and evening in the cottage, and then introduced Christine and Gerry to our favourite game of the summer; Sequence. They seemed to enjoy it and Christine and I beat the boys. On Friday James and Gerry went for a walk up the quarry road to Loch Achall. Christine and I strolled into town and had a look round the shops, something I don’t do very often so it was good fun. We had a good chat too. We got a message from James to say that he and Gerry were back in the village so we all met at Cult Café for lunch. After a relaxing afternoon we had some really delicious handmade pizzas at Oak and Grain in the village before heading down to Rhidorroch Distillery for drinks and to listen to some traditional music. Back at the cottage our convivial evening continued with much chat and laughter. 

Farewell to Ally until January

A pleasant and social day. We had brunch with Janis and Gerry at our old favourite All Bar One. It was, as ever, lovely to see them and there was much talk of grandchildren; their wee grandson Rory is about a —— now, and is a handsome wee fellow. Alasdair was in town getting an inoculation for his travels, so he came to join us afterwards; he has known Janis and Gerry since he was a student. 
My next stop in today’s social whirl was coffee with my once-upon-a-time job sharer, Margaret N. We job-shared for eight-and-a-half years in the 1990s into the early 2000s and she was excellent; always very organised and a great teacher. We had a good catch up in Margaret’s beautiful home, lots of family news and some interesting news of former colleagues. 
And then James, Ally and I went over to Uddingston to visit beautiful Jessica - and Davie and Chanel of course. Jessica had just been fed and was quite sleepy, it was lovely to hold her. Davie and Chanel were in good spirits, parenthood suits them. 
Back home we had a farewell curry with Ally. Tomorrow he will drive back to London, then next week he and Cat will travel to Barbados for a holiday together as Ally starts his travels around the world. We won’t see Ally until we all meet in New Zealand for Jamie and Kerry’s wedding - we will miss him. 

More De Gaulle

Today was a sunny day and I went down to pickleball at the tennis club for an enjoyable few games. Then followed James’ and my carefully planned arrangement to get to our Art History class in time. I left Pickleball ten minutes early and James collected me by car from Central Avenue. I changed my top in the car and had a snack before we arrived comfortably in time to park and walk to the class. The tutor is the very pleasant and intelligent art historian Sybren who taught the Northern Renaissance course last year. He was telling James that he did a degree in Geology during lockdown because he was bored - and got a First! The introductory lesson was all about who decided that the Italian Renaissance was so great - spoiler alert - it was the Florentines who thought that everything had been leading up to their self-described perfect art. They discounted or minimised other art movements as inferior. It was fascinating. 
Then off we went in the next part of today’s adventures to see the second De Gaulle film; Liberté. Having almost missed the cinema showings of the first film we booked the second one quickly afterwards. This time we were in Glasgow at Braehead Odeon and we were in nice time to have a cup of tea before our film. It was just as good as the first film. De Gaulle was such a character. Over the closing titles a twenty-one stanza 1942 poem by the French poet Paul Éluard called “Liberté” was read aloud; he names many places, real or imaginary, on which he would write the word liberté. The last line of each verse is J’écris ton nom. Thousands of copies of it were dropped by parachute that same year by the RAF over occupied France. It was a fitting and moving end to the film. 

Football and Pickleball

Sunday was an absolutely beautiful September day. I had brunch with my lovely god-daughter Jennifer at Homegrown Garden Centre. It was really nice to have a proper catch up. I arrived home at about 2 p.m. and asked James what the final score was for the Old Firm game; it had started at 12 and I got caught up in some of the football traffic before I got on to the motorway. Just at that moment the strains of “Penny Arcade” came floating through the French windows from next door and we could hear Brian singing along and shouting “Here We Go!” No need to confirm a Rangers victory when Brian is our next door neighbour and sure enough Rangers had won 1-0! 
Today I had a pickleball coaching session at The Court in Croftfoot and it was really good; I felt like I learned so much. The hour flew past and I was really impressed with the smart air-conditioned premises. Ally and Cat have just spent a week in the cottage in Ullapool; this evening Cat travelled from Inverness to London by plane and Ally drove to Glasgow after dropping her at the airport. He arrived in time for a late supper and we all chatted about his upcoming travels.

De Gaulle

Ewan recently mentioned a new French film about De Gaulle that has been released in the UK recently; in fact it’s two films, one called De Gaulle: L’Age de Fer (also called Résistance) and the other one called De Gaulle: J'écris ton nom (also called Liberté) we intended to go to see it last week, but with all the excitement about baby Jessica’s birth it went out of my mind. However James reminded me about it yesterday so we looked up where the first film was showing, only to find that we had just about missed it; the only place that we could find that it was showing today (within travelling distance) was the Vue Cinema in Edinburgh near the Playhouse. Nothing daunted, we booked the 9.40 a.m. showing and set off to Edinburgh in good time this morning by train. What an excellent film. The actor who plays De Gaulle, Simon Abkarian, was fantastic. What a character De Gaulle was, he can’t have been an easy person to be around! He and Churchill (played by Simon Russell Beale) had such great chemistry. I learned lots about De Gaulle’s part in the war that I didn’t know before, and about how the French Resistance began, and I can’t wait to see the second film. 

Meeting Jessica

James and I met Jessica for the first time this afternoon. It was truly amazing to hold my granddaughter in my arms. James held her too and was terrified of dropping her! My son’s daughter. She is so small and pretty; her nose and lips and chin and forehead and little ears are all perfectly proportioned. She slept throughout our visit so I still haven’t looked into her eyes, which I am told are hazel coloured. Her baby hair is dark brown on her beautifully shaped head. After we took some photos I just stood beside the pram looking at her while we chatted with Chanel and Davie. James and I were careful not to stay too long; her mummy and daddy need their rest because she is of course keeping them up at night. It was so great to meet her. 
In the morning James and I had been over to the south side; James had his second physiotherapy session for his sore knee at Hampden and I had a chest x-ray and a hand x-ray at the New Victoria. What a pair of old crocks we are! Afterwards we had brunch in the Brooklyn Cafe which was very pleasant. 

Kilt!

It has been a busy week; quite social and also quite useful, which is always satisfying. Socially I have met up with quite a few of my chums and also played Pickleball which was most enjoyable. We had an interminable meeting with a bathroom designer on Monday. It had to be done because the en-suite really needs redone, but James and I both hate planning this kind of thing. The endless choices and decisions are exhausting, and by the time we went home we both had headaches! Much more satisfying was my visit to the dentist. I have been nervous about my fragile feeling front teeth for years, they have been increasingly thin at the tips and I have been expecting one of them to simply snap off at any moment. In the other hand I didn’t want John McG to stick big veneers on to them which might fall off themselves. However he reassured me that the new material that he uses is fantastic and will work well. I am particularly pleased that my teeth feel very normal and not too thick in my mouth. 
Another useful event was a very overdue appointment at the hairdresser for me, the lovely Britney smartened me up quickly and pleasantly, and I was home in plenty of time to accompany James to the Kiltmaker in Giffnock. Yes it has finally happened! Former kilt hater James has decided that with three weddings next year (and perhaps more on the horizon) it will be sensible to buy a kilt to match those of our sons. It will also be cost effective compared to hiring a kilt. So James will be sporting a kilt soon for the first time in more than fifty years. I can’t wait! 

Baby Dreams

After all the excitement we had a pleasantly quiet weekend. Saturday was another beautiful sunny day and we had breakfast in the garden with Ally and Cat, all of us so happy about the safe arrival of Jessica. Ally and Cat packed up and set off after lunch to Ullapool where they will be spending the week. I hope that they will have a lovely relaxing week; Cat will be working but hopefully will also have some time to enjoy being in the north-west. 
Today James and I had a video call with baby Jessica (and her Mummy and Daddy of course!) Chanel and Davie are having a week with Jessica to settle in at home after their long haul in hospital last week, so we won’t meet her in person until Friday. They are very happy although somewhat sleep-deprived! Oh she is so very sweet! She was fast asleep but we could see her eyes moving under her eyelids as she was dreaming. I wonder what a two day old baby dreams about? Her features are so neat; she is a very attractive baby. 

Jessica’s Birth Day

At about 4 a.m. in the morning we got the message that Davie and Chanel’s baby has been born at 00.46 a.m. Her name is Jessica Anne Anderson and she is 5 lb 7 oz / 2.475 kg. It is the most wonderful news. I won’t give details of the birth here because that is Chanel’s and Davie’s own story for them to tell, however I can report that Mummy and baby Jessica are both doing well and that Daddy is very happy. And James and I are grandparents! Jessica is absolutely beautiful. 
Jessica has been born on a lovely sunny early autumn day. The leaves are not yet falling from the trees but the berries on the rowan trees are very red. Chinook helicopters were flying over Uddingston as part of a training exercise. 
James, Ally and I headed over to Uddingston in the morning to finish off a few tasks in Davie & Chanel’s house. I did the second half of the stencilling while Ally and James put up shelves in the nursery. We had a break for lunch and nipped to the café in Sterling in the Birkenshaw Industrial Estate. We then pressed on and got finished by tea time. 
Cat arrived by train and the four of us had dinner together and raised a toast to baby Jessica. Welcome to the family Jessica! 

Stencilling

We are still waiting for baby but keeping ourselves busy. I don’t like to contact Davie too often to check on progress; he is being very good at keeping us informed. I was at a very eventful Children’s Hearing on Wednesday, and today I was stencilling all morning. This has been organised by Ally; he is being such a fantastic uncle to his niece even before she is born! Davie mentioned to him that it would be great to have a stencil of safari animals on one of the nursery walls. So Ally searched online and found an attractive large stencil and then he and James shopped for paints and stencilling brushes. They used the laser level to affix it to the wall and the rest was up to me. I was quite nervous because I haven’t done stencilling for a long time, decades in fact. I did a sheep jumping over fences frieze for Davie’s own nursery (with one little black lamb among the white ones!) and I did quite a time consuming frieze consisting of several colours of flowers in our old bedroom. Both are long gone due to room changes; although some golden stars that I stencilled on Davie’s bedroom ceiling still shine faintly through the paint that was painted over them! 
There was nothing for it but to get started; I worked all morning bring while listening to Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast. Meanwhile downstairs James and Ally were building a flat pack dresser for the kitchen; it was more complicated than they thought and it took them more than five hours in total! 
The three of us later had a convivial lunch with Christine and Gerry at Caulders Garden Centre, it was great to see them. Still no baby news. 

Waiting for baby

Chanel is now in hospital, having been induced yesterday, so we are excitedly awaiting baby news. On Saturday evening we went over to Gordon’s for dinner with him and Morag, and also Pamela and Alasdair who live near us and kindly gave us a lift there and back. Alasdair goes to Australian Pink Floyd with James and Gordon every year. We had a very pleasant evening. 
Ally and I have now moved all of the food that we made into Davie and Chanel’s freezer, and Ally had been doing doing model aeroplane construction and painting. 
On Sunday the weather was beautiful so James, Alasdair and I decided to go for brunch in Troon and then for a walk along the beach. We saw kite surfers scudding along in the sea, and there were lots of people out enjoying the sunshine: 
Later we watched a film recommended by Ally called Masters of the Universe which is a recent reboot of the old franchise. It was good fun and sent itself up nicely as well as relating a good yarn. 
Yesterday I went to the Burrell Collection with Sue H to see their current exhibition, Drawing Inspiration. It consists of thirteen drawings, by artists such as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Édouard Manet and Jean-François Millet. You can see close up the pencil or charcoal strokes on each drawing, so it demonstrates the techniques and process of drawing. We both enjoyed it very much, and we also enjoyed our brunch in the Burrell Café! 
The impending Anderson baby is in our minds at all times. At Pickleball today I had my phone handy just in case there was news and during one of the games it rang! I rushed over to answer it and the whole room fell silent - it turned out that it was Ally phoning about some stencilling he is planning! 

Batch Cooking

Heather and Ewan set off home on Tuesday; we did a bit of tidying and cleaning around the cottage before heading home with the cats on Wednesday. And now we are on the countdown to Davie and Chanel’s baby! 
Ally is in Cambuslang, where he has been working with Davie to paint and decorate the baby’s nursery. He has been a bundle of energy and has worked really hard. He has done work in our house two; replacing the hinges on the utility cupboards to make the “soft close” again, he cleaned and fixed the gutter at the back of the house, and fixed the security light on the garage. Now that we are back home, Ally has also been encouraging James and I to join in the preparations! So for the last two days Ally and I have been batch cooking meals to put in Davie and Chanel’s freezer for after their baby is born. We have made chilli con carne, basque chicken, boeuf bourgignon, and lasagnes. They are all in freezer to oven containers ready to be transported to Uddingston. If it hadn’t been for Ally’s insistence I would probably have put this task off, but he was so keen to get going that I was swept along by his enthusiasm and I actually really enjoyed it! Hopefully this will be a good help to Davie and Chanel. It has also been great to spend time with Ally. James too was engaged in culinary activities; he has made some delicious damson jam from our own tree. 

Caravaggio’s Shadow

Sunday was drizzly but that didn’t stop James, Heather and Ewan from walking up Ullapool Hill. I met them at the Cult Café for lunch by which time the weather had brightened considerably, in fact it was even dry enough to sit outside the cottage for a cup of tea. 
After dinner we watched a film - Caravaggio’s Shadow. I had seen it advertised a while ago but couldn’t find it online so I ordered the DVD instead, especially for this weekend. This is because all four of us like Caravaggio, Ewan in particular. I had pre-watched it a few days ago to make sure that it was suitable for viewing with our friend; there was an orgy scene but it was brief and there was nothing too graphic! It was a good wee film presenting a theory about Caravaggio’s mysterious death at the age of thirty-nine, with flashbacks to his earlier life. It was in Italian with English subtitles, deliberately filmed in colours typical of Caravaggio’s paintings. The actor playing the title character bore a startling resemblance to his self portraits. I enjoyed it - both times! 
Today we returned to Inverewe Gardens, on what turned out to be a sunny morning. Heather and Ewan have been there before, including a visit with us, however enthusiastic horticulturalist Heather was keen to return. The gardens were looking good and the Eucryphia was still in bloom although some of the white blooms were beginning to fall. We had lunch in the self-service restaurant. On the way back to Ullapool we stopped at the Arctic Convoy Museum at Aultbea. We have driven past it many times but this was the first time that we have visited it. There was a guide, Jenny, who gave us a short talk about it before we browsed around. Apparently Loch Ewe was a very busy place during the 2nd World War because it was the point of departure for many of the convoys bound for Russia. The stories of the people involved were so interesting, and the tiny museum was fascinating, much more so than I thought it would be. 
Dinner later was at the Ceilidh Place and when we got back to the cottage we played our board game of the summer - Sequence! Heather and Ewan seemed to enjoy it and we played a couple of games. 

Handa Island and Pies

 The weather forecast for the weekend of Heather and Ewan’s visit to Ullapool was dire. But we didn’t want to stay indoors so on Saturday we decided to head for Handa Island, clad in waterproofs and our trusty walking boots. We were so lucky because although the skies were grey it didn’t rain, so we walked the 7 km around the island without getting wet. James and I have visited Handa Island a couple of times before; it is reached by a fifteen minute ferry journey in a small boat. The puffins for which it is famous in the early summer have long departed out to sea but there were plenty of other seabirds to watch, including fulmars, kittiwakes and great skuas (aka bonxies.)
The sea cliffs were spectacular with birds wheeling round from their nests, and we were surrounded by many smaller islands and we could see Lewis in the distance. There is a Rangers Hut where we were given a little talk before we set off along the path. I felt a bit conflicted about the well maintained path which included long sections of duckboards. It all felt a bit too curated. On the other hand, without it we would never have been able to traverse all the marshy bits of the island. 
Back in the mainland we headed to Lochinver to purchase pies for dinner, and we planned to have a light bite to eat at one of the several cafés in the vicinity. It was by now about twenty to four, and the pie shop was due to close at four, but I thought that it would be ok for us to have a quick soup and a roll, or a scone and a cup of tea, right? Wrong! The lady who was serving in the café told me that they had “run out of nearly everything” and when I returned briefly (while the others were queuing for the pies) to ask if we could just have a coffee with biscuits she made an exaggerated face of disappointment and slumped her shoulders when she saw me approaching and told me that they were no longer taking orders. There was no point in arguing but as James commented later, I wonder how the owner of the shop would feel about customers being turned away when it would have been so little trouble to serve us four coffees - and to receive our money! We made our way to Delilah’s where we were able to get coffees but there was no food being served apart from a few biscuits which we devoured. 
We were certainly more than ready for an early dinner of pies and mash when we got to the cottage! In the evening we went to see the traditional music group Ape House at the Ceilidh Place venue. They were very personable and i liked their music but all the fresh air and walking had taken its toll and a couple of us (who shall remain nameless) were snoozing, so after a quick confab we slipped away at the interval to have a nightcap back at the cottage. 

Music Quiz

Margaret set off homewards on Wednesday, we really enjoyed her company. We then had a quiet couple of days; the good weather lasted and I spent time in my hammock. I was delighted to have been awarded a 2nd and 3rd place in the photography section of the Ullapool Craft and Flower Show; I had entered various photos of the local area and my winning photos were of a dolphin jumping out of the water with a fishing boat in the background, and a sunny view of the Scoraig peninsula from the lighthouse at Rhue. Not bad for a first attempt. 

Heather and Ewan arrived to visit us today; we had lunch and sat outside the cottage to have a cup of tea before we walked down to the village. After dinner we went to the Arch Inn to take part in “Mr Murray’s Music Quiz,” a raucous event run by the eponymous Mr Murray, a retired teacher from the local High School, to raise money for a forthcoming school trip. We were very impressed by both Ewan’s and Heather’s superior knowledge of songs from every decade, and if the competition had been based solely on song and artist we would have definitely won. However we also needed to pinpoint the year that the song was released in the UK, and despite being able to guess within a year or two, we rarely got the year exactly correct, which was frustrating. We ended up somewhere in the middle of the scoreboard. The locals became increasingly loud as the evening progressed and sang along with all the songs and kept on singing after each excerpt was finished, which slowed down the quiz considerably! To be fair we sang along too! Soon many people were dancing on the chairs and the tables! Despite its excessive length it was a fun quiz and a happy evening. 

Brilliant boat trip to the Summer Isles

Today, Margaret and I decided to go on the Shearwater boat trip. It was an absolutely beautiful and sunny day; market has brought us brilliant weather during her stay, much better than was forecast. We armed ourselves with coffee and sweeties and soon set off into the loch towards the Summer Isles. We had a fantastic trip. Not only did we see lots of seals, we saw the two sea eagles flying around the cliffs and landing on the rocks. We spotted lots of seabirds including a mummy and daddy guillemot swimming along with their cute baby guillemot between them. We also saw dolphins which came really close to the boat, and even a Minke whale, black and sleek, which was amazing to see. 
We met James for lunch then had a relaxing afternoon sitting outside the cottage in the sunshine. 
Ruth, Donald, and Donald’s sister Sandra arrived later and we all sat outside for pre-dinner drinks. Margaret and the Watts all got on really well (as I had expected they would) and we had a fun dinner at the Ceilidh Place together. When we walked back to the cottage we saw a beautiful sunset but we didn’t linger too long to watch it because the midges were out in force! 

Margaret and James climbed Stac Pollaidh

Sunday was a cloudy and slightly drizzly day but energetic James and Margaret climbed Ullapool Hill anyway. They met a rather eccentric man who is in the process of climbing every hill in Great Britain - all of them! We then met in the Cult Café for a tasty lunch. We had such a relaxing afternoon reading the Sunday papers. 
In the evening we played Sequence which Margaret picked up very quickly and in fact won! 
Today the weather forecast was very good today so we set off to Coigach and James and Margaret climbed Stac Pollaidh. My intention was to go for a short walk and find somewhere near the loch to read my book but it was too midgy and after a while I retreated to the car. The intrepid hill-walkers returned after a couple of hours; they said they had a great time and when I saw Margaret’s photos from the top they were absolutely beautiful. We drove to Achiltibuie and purchased sandwiches from the village shop, which we consumed while sitting in a bench in the sunshine, looking over towards Tanera Mor. We then drove the short distance to Achnahaird Beach which looked stunning with the mountains behind. We took some deckchairs down to the beach and sat and chatted. I went in for a swim which was delightful, at this time of year the water doesn’t feel too cold and I enjoyed being lifted up and down by the waves. Back at the cottage later we all had showers and relaxed. When I was upstairs getting ready for my shower I could hear Flora talking to Margaret who was sitting outside on the bench, and Margaret replying, which was very sweet! Tom spent time with Margaret outside too. After dinner we were all rather exhausted from all the fresh air and had a fairly early night.