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.