Much Preparation

My Children’s Panel training has got off to a faltering start. In my defence, I looked at the website before Christmas and did a couple of short pre-training courses, and I assumed that this was the preparation for the first training session of which we had been told. However I didn’t check the website at all in January; I wasn’t well of course but also I just didn’t think about it. I arrived at the training room in the Leonardo Hotel in Glasgow bright and early on Tuesday morning for my first day, only to be pleasantly but firmly turned away because I hadn’t completed the preparation for Day 1 of the training! Oh dear! When I got back home I logged in to the website and sure enough there were the training modules as well as several reminder emails. Mea culpa. 
The kind and efficient admin, Tina, booked me in for the next day’s training and I spent the rest of Tuesday completing the Introductory Preparation. It took ages. I submitted it in the afternoon but found to my horror that until it was assessed I would not be able to access my Session 1 Preparation. I phoned Tina first thing on Wednesday morning to explain and she very understandingly transferred me to the Thursday session. I spent all day Wednesday working on the Session 1 preparation, which included lots of reading, multiple choice assessments and preparing a case study. Wednesday was James’ 63rd birthday and we went out for a nice dinner to Six by Nico, the one in Byres Road. But when we got home I still had about another hour of studying to do. 
By the time I arrived back at the Leonardo Hotel on Thursday morning I felt well prepared, but it was a full on day; there is so much to learn. By the end I was absolutely exhausted and strangely close to tears. James heated up hearty home made bean stew for dinner and we watched the last couple of episodes of the ridiculous Scottish drama The Rig and I felt much better. 

Getting Better

It is taking a long time to get over this chest infection. I’m getting better every day but I’m still wheezy and unfeasibly tired. I have started going out for short walks near to home; one day James and I walked a 5 km round trip to Burnside where we had coffee, and another day I took Vinnie out for a walk around the parks because Rachel and John were at a meeting. It was great to spend some time with Vinnie again, I told him about my grand-dog Whisky but Vinnie was more interested in chasing his ball! Heather and Ewan came for dinner and I made a beef tagine which turned out well; I made myself roasted vegetables using the same spices of cinnamon and ginger. James made his famous crème brûlées for dessert which were perfect, and we served them with pomegranate seeds to give them a middle-eastern twist. I had coffee with Christine in Dunlop and we have had a curry with Davie and Chanel, so I am easing my way back into society! 

Antibiotic Woman

I have just taken my 5th antibiotic tablet and though I don’t feel tip top yet, my ear has stopped hurting and my cough feels less dreadful. I still feel full of cold symptoms but I have high hopes that I’m on the mend. 

We are now back in Cambuslang which is cold and dreich, unlike the beautiful but treacherous snowy streets of Ullapool. Cornel and Heather came to visit us in Ullapool for a couple of days at the weekend and were delightful guests. I put as brave a face on my lurgy as I possibly could and James says that I appeared to be fine apart from a bit of coughing and sneezing. Heather and I went for a walk around the icy streets of the village and we both thought that we were walking at a reasonable pace when two teenage girls just strolled past us much faster! It was very funny! Meanwhile James and Cornel went for a much longer and snowier walk up the valley past Loch Achall and across the hills. We had a lovely dinner at the Caley Bistrot which was the only place open, most restaurants having gone into hibernation for the winter. I really enjoyed Cornel and Heather’s company and we had some great chats but when they left on Sunday morning I kind of virtually collapsed and James had to do all of the driving on the way home. And I have spent the last couple of days resting, mostly in bed, as well as obtaining antibiotics from a very sensible and knowledgeable prescribing pharmacist. Luckily I have had the company of Tom and Flora. Tom has been pulling the cat nip plants out of their wire container; there are bits of leaves and soil all round it. And Flora has been cuddling up to me rather touchingly. 

Even more snow

It’s still snowing in Ullapool and I still have the lurgy. At least I’m warm and cosy, and I think I’m getting a bit better apart from my wheezy, rattling chest and sore ear. The road from Ullapool to Inverness varies between “passable with care” and blocked by snow, but we won’t be heading home until Sunday when it should all be clear. 
James is being particularly pleasant to me as I recover; last night he found a French film on some obscure television channel for me to watch and today he brought in potato scones for lunch. The French film was Maigret Se Trompe and was excellent, one of a series of 1990s Maigret films made for television starring Bruno Cremer. 
The trouble is that I’m currently a bit wary of going outside. You would think that a healthy walk around the village would be beneficial to a chest infection but every time I have done so (about every second day) I feel more wheezy and out of breath when I get back, and my ear gets sorer too. Maybe it’s the cold air - the temperature in the north of Scotland is due to drop to -16 deg tonight!  

Snowy and Lurgy

The weather has continued to be cold, with snow showers and icy pavements. Despite having at least a dozen woolly hats at home in Cambuslang I had neglected to bring even one of them to Ullapool, so today James kindly spent £4 on a sparkly purple beanie hat in the Woollen Mill sale. Despite the name of the shop there is no wool in the beanie; it is 99% polyester and 1% metallic thread so no sheep has been near it! It feels very cosy, and also necessary because I have developed a bad cold which is lingering annoyingly, particularly in my chest which is rattling, my stuffy nose, and strangely my right ear. James also got me a hot water bottle yesterday which I have been holding against my ear. 

So because of this horrible cold I have been having an enforcedly quiet time here in Ullapool. I have encouraged James to enjoy himself, go for walks etc but I feel bad for not joining in. This morning we were surprised to see Calmac’s new ship, the Glen Sannox, sailing along the loch outside our window, heading westwards. This ship is currently nearly seven years late after many problems, both technical and financial, during its build. It is also way over budget (from £97 million to more than £400 million so far) and doesn’t even fit Ardrossan Harbour so it will need to sail from Troon to Brodick instead until Ardrossan Harbour is upgraded - which will be years away. And apparently the liquified natural gas that it runs on (as well as marine gas oil, a low-sulphur type of diesel) is not even as eco friendly as promised. It was up here to conduct crew familiarisation trials before starting to take passengers to Arran, and needless to say more technical issues were found, however I think that they are determined to start service on 13th January.

Pulling Mussels from a Shell

The snow continued during the night and we woke to a winter wonderland, with the village and mountains clothed in a snowy blanket. We walked around the village in the afternoon and enjoyed the snowy views. We watched the seagulls at the harbour to see where they were finding mussels to drop onto the pier to crack open, and realised that they grab them off the wooden legs underneath the pier at low tide. Then they fly around a bit with the mussel in their beak before choosing a good place for the big drop, and swoop down to feast on it. As we walked back to the cottage the sky over the Summer Isles was an amazing dark grey-blue and violet; James said that it looked bruised and I think that’s a very good description. 
In the evening we watched a film called “The Killer” starring Michael Fassbender; it was a sombre but quite compelling thriller and we enjoyed it. The reason that I wanted to watch it was that it was being filmed in Paris when we were there in May 2023 on a street on the Île Saint Louis. I could see that some of it was filmed in a street near the Panthéon but I didn’t really recognise the streets that the main character then raced through on a motorcycle. And I didn’t see any sign of James and I strolling along in the distance! 

The Northern Lights welcome 2025

It has been a delightful start to 2025. I still have a very rattly chest cold but I decided to accompany James on a walk around the village to get some fresh air. The village was very quiet and the few people who were strolling around were all wishing each other a Happy New Year. The weather was sunny, in a window between the rain and sleet that began and ended the day, and the sea was very calm and the mountains looked beautiful, dusted with snow. When we were walking on the pier a Norwegian fisherman on his ship called down a New Year’s greeting to us. We walked along to the creel Christmas tree and then found that the Ceilidh Place was open for lunch (about the only place in the village that was open) so we popped in for coffee and fruit scones before heading home. 

Later on there was a bright pink aurora borealis in the skies above the village which seemed like a rosy welcome to the New Year. And later still the sleet turned to snow for a little while and lay rather prettily on the garden. A good start to the year.