Mothers’ Day

What a lovely Mother’s Day I have had. When I got back in from doing a bit of grocery shopping I found that a beautiful box of flowers had been delivered from Ally, really fresh and carefully packaged. There were all sorts of delicate spring flowers; tulips, hyacinths, roses, with small shiny leaved foliage. I put them into my crystal jug and they look wonderful. 

Later, Davie and Chanel came round with a tasty curry for dinner. They also brought flowers, beautiful bright yellow and orange gerbera daisies and green chrysanthemums, and a box of Guylain chocolates. We enjoyed our curry mightily and then sat chatting in the lounge. Tom and Flora were delighted to see Davie and Chanel, as were we! A delightful evening to round off a great Mother’s Day. 

Jonathan Pie

I went to see Jonathan Pie, Heroes and Villains, this evening, with Gordon and his friend Lorna from his hill-walking club. Jonathan Pie is actually a persona created by comedian Tom Walker. He is very political, cleverly lambasting all of the politicians, especially the Tories. He went on long quick fire rants which had the audience laughing uproariously. And the end of his act was very clever too, he sort of switched around to revealing his own hypocrisy which was very funny. We were asked at the beginning not to take photos but inevitably someone did, and he stopped the show, genuinely angry, and called the guilty audience member all sort of names! I hadn’t been aware of Jonathan Pie before Gordon invited me along, but I was very impressed and would definitely go to see him again. 

OMD again!

The highlight of today was going to see OMD at the Royal Concert Hall. We went for dinner to Ask Italian beforehand and it was really busy, I was very glad that I had booked. The service was reasonable though, and we had plenty of time to meet Gerry and Janis for drinks and a chat before the concert. Gerry and Janis are also big fans of OMD, their favourite song is Enola Gay. It was lovely to see them and to catch up on their news. The concert was great. They have so many good songs. I’m sure that I have previously written on my blog that my absolute favourite song is Pandora’s Box, closely followed by Maid of Orleans. James’ favourite is Souvenir. When we left the concert our ears felt quite deafened by the music, although not to the same extent as when we saw Idlewild at Ullapool Village Hall! 

An Officer and a Gentleman - The Musical

It was with the usual mixed feelings that we set off south to Glasgow this morning; sorry to leave the cottage but glad to return home. I do find it a bit confusing to divide myself between two locations. We had done all of our cleaning and packing the day before, so the cats had forgotten their suspicions by the morning and it was a very calm departure for all of us; by the time that Tom and Floof realised that we were about to leave we were carrying them out to the car. As is usual on the way south, James drove the first part on the more windy roads towards Inverness so that Flora could sit on my knee; this prevents her from being sick. We stopped briefly at HIS (Highland Industrial Supplies) in Inverness because James needed to exchange an ashes tray that he had bought for the fire in Cambulang. Flora went into the cat crate without protest and the journey went smoothly. In the evening I met Heather for dinner at Antipasti in Pitt Street before we went to the King's Theatre to see An Officer and a Gentleman, the Musical. It was a great deal of fun; the cast were great and although it did not have an original score it used various 80s songs that were appropriate to the plot. By the end we all cheered and sang along as the young officer appeared to carry his girl out of the factory! We had to move seats at the interval because the people on both sides of us were so “circumferentially challenged” (as my former colleague Des used to say) that they were literally overlapping into our seats! Luckily there were some empty seats in the row behind us. Interestingly, the lady in front of us had an emotional support dog with her. I know that these are used nowadays but it's the first time that I have seen one. She was lifting it up to let it lick her face, which I think is disgusting, my parents never allowed us to do that when we had dogs in the 1970s because it's not hygienic. I don't doubt that a very few people genuinely need support animals, but I suspect that many others have simply leapt into the bandwagon. Heather commented, "Now I've seen it all!" 

Opera in Poolewe

This afternoon we headed south to Gairloch, a pleasant drive that took us about and hour and a quarter. It was a fine, blustery day and we went for a bracing walk on Big Sand bay, from which we could see many mountains; on the mainland, on Skye and, barely visible in the distance, on Harris. We had a pub tea in the Millcroft Hotel which was nothing special but perfectly acceptable. The pub was very quiet, but we were lucky to find it because all the other restaurants in Gairloch are still closed for the winter. From there were travelled the short distance (about 10 minutes) to Poolewe Village Hall, where we had booked tickets to a Scottish Opera Highlights evening. The theme was love, and they had constructed a very loose plot about staff and guests at a wedding to give it a bit of structure. There were a couple of organisers taking the tickets, a piano player, and four excellent singers. They sang a variety of arias and duets and a few quartets, some of which were very familiar to us and some less so. It was a great evening. We set off back to Ullapool on the dark roads. There were a few other cars whose occupants had been at the concert, but by Aultbea the last of them had peeled off and we didn’t see any other cars at all, all the way to Ullapool. We did however see lots of deer at the roadside, so I had to drive very carefully so as not to hit any of them.  

Bruadar Bay

Today was sunny and almost warm so we decided to go for a walk on the beach at Clachtoll. We decided to walk to Bruadar Bay for a change, the colours of the waves were turquoise as they swept over the sand, it was absolutely gorgeous. As James pointed out, it looked like the Caribbean Sea although I bet the water is very cold! I found myself a sunny, sheltered rock outcrop to sit on and I watched the light shining on the waves and took a few photos while James went exploring to the Split Rock. With his love of geology he was so interested in all of the rocks on the beach, there was quartz pushing through the lewisian gneiss, and he thinks that the headland is made of basalt; the fault lines in it are slightly like the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. James arrived back and persuaded me to walk around the headland with him and I was glad that I did; the huge clefts in the rocks with waves crashing through them were spectacular, as were all of the mountains in the distance. 

A break from the small screen

I have decided to cut down on television during the month of March, just to give myself a bit of a break. I actually don’t think that James and I watch more television than most people of our age. And we are much more discriminatory than we used to be; we watch series that we have chosen according to our tastes, which mostly coincide. For example we recently watched all three series of the fantastic Slow Horses. So the last couple of evenings I have been booking flights, making lists, jotting down ideas. I have also started editing my blog for typos, of which it has quite a few. I must clarify that these are not spelling mistakes because I’m an excellent speller (my one talent!), they are errors in predictive text that I haven’t noticed, or sentences that stop halfway through. The idea is to get the printed in book form as a permanent record, in case Blogger disappears from the internet taking my blog with it. This task will take at least a couple of months because I have thirteen years of blog to edit! 

It has all been very pleasant so far: James is starting a new series called Shogun, which is definitely more to his taste than to mine. He also has a World War 2 series to finish and he’s watching a science fiction series, so we are both happy. So far I am not missing television at all.