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Everyday Life: July 2015

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July = rose time!

roses

Gareth reckons Neighbour Cat looks like an Angry Bird in this pic. The combo of her face/frilly neck remind me of a black and white cookie.

alfie

We caught the Caledonian Sleeper down to London ready for the cricket. I love the Sleeper. It leaves Inverness at 8.45pm then you wake up in London at 7.45 the next morning. There’s no wifi, so all you can do is get into your little bunk bed and read trashy books then fall asleep. Or if you’re Gareth, have a classy wee picnic…

train-picnic

After the cricket we had a side trip to Bedford to spend a great weekend with friends.

bedford

As mentioned before Rhiannon and I went to Margate to visit the Turner Contemporary gallery. I enjoyed the window views as much as the art.

turner

My friend Frances taught me the sensible travel rule that for every cultural activity there must be a corresponding eating activity…

coffee

We walked past the Tudor House and I was secretly glad it was closed as my peanut brain can’t handle culture and history in one day.

tudor

And then, back north to Scotland. It was cheaper to get the train than fly which seemed sensible at the time of purchase but man, 8.5 hours is a long time sitting on your butt. We got to the Forth Road Bridge and I thought, “Yay! Nearly home!” then the realisation dawned it was still another 3.5 hours to Inverness.

But who cares about a numb arse when the views are so good…

train

Everyday Life: February 2015

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Another month, another snowy jaunt down the A9…

Snow on the A9

I was also back in London to hang out with some our lovely Up & Running Alumni members to celebrate the book coming out, including a DIY 5K that began in front of Buckingham Palace (Rhi and I had planned the route at Christmas).

Buckingham Palace meetup for Up & Running

Julia left Jennie and I in charge of her son Evan for a couple of hours. First act of child minding: “Climb up on that lion, kid!”

Evan in Trafalgar Square

Now here’s the Neighbour Cat photo of the month.

Alfie does the Thriller dance

I like to think she was dreaming of being a dancer in the Thriller video…

Thriller dance

There were glimmers of sunshine amongst the grim and grey. This was from a walk on the Black Isle, not far from the brewery.

Horse on the Black Isle

I loved the second paragraph of this unsubscribe email. When I’m looking for airport parking I’m looking for the bargain of a lifetime!

Unsubscribe

The lovely in-laws Mary and David came up for a visit. I took them to the Botanic Gardens to contemplate the cactii, which I like to do when it’s maximum miserable outside.

The cactus room at Inverness Botanic Garden

ORRIGHT LADS? HOW’S IT GOIN’?

Friendly flower

I’m sorry this is such an uninspired update! Aside from London, February was a real zombie of a month. I’ll make a better effort to open my eyes in March!

River Ness at sunset

Everyday Life: December 2014 and January 2015

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Praise be to Christmas lights, for without them a December 4pm would be so depressing…

Inverness high street at Christmas

I know it looks sad but promise we haven’t resorted to dressing up Neighbour Cat. Her December caper was to come in all miserable from the rain and stare at us until we dried her off with a tea towel…

Be merry

We went to London for Christmas. Just myself, Gareth and Rhiannon, it was the laziest low-key Christmas ever. We had breakfast at 11am, lunch at 4pm and dessert at 10pm, with lots of old movies and rum punch between courses.

Rum punch

Rhi had a real Christmas tree, only the second we’ve had. The first was thirteen years earlier back in Australia, where the needles turned brown after a week and our handmade cookie decorations melted then got scoffed by ants.

Christmas tree

The day after Boxing Day we went for a walk in town, where the crowds had gathered for the Changing of the Guard.

Dudes on The Mall in London

St James's Park, London

Alfie waved hello to 2015…

Hello from Alfie

Gareth really got into his bread making.

bread

As per tradition the first two weeks of January were all about laying low and worrying what a new year would bring. I got myself together and spent the rest of the month focusing on Fitbitting 10,000 steps per day, to rack up a small sense of achievement. The snow made it fun.

Snow in the

Speaking of snow, there were some cracking Highland views from the Perth – Inverness train!

Highland views from the Perth - Inverness train

Everyday Life: September 2014

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Just to clarify, we haven’t moved again – the Brown House was our house in Dunfermline. We rented it out the past year then decided to sell. We’re still in Inverness in the same rental place, where the awesome Neighbour Cat still sneaks through the bathroom window and falls asleep in random places.

Marcel the Cat

Catching up on September… it was one of those months that make it look like I have an actual social life! It started with the annual Jocktoberfest at the brewery. The theme was Wild West and the place looked fab.

More Jocktoberfest

More Jocktoberfest

More Jocktoberfest

We had a weekend in London to see Rhiannon. I’m sure we didn’t just talk our heads off and eat cake but the photo library says otherwise.

London cakes

Spotted in Islington I think…

Joan Rivers

As well as saying goodbye to the old house we had to let the old car go, too. It had done nearly 220,000 miles (354,000 km), the gears were slipping and it couldn’t go over 45 mph which is no bloody use on the A9. We’d inherited it from Gareth’s dad – it was his old company car and they let him keep it when he retired. Since it was a FREE CAR! we kept it alive for as long as possible but when the repair estimate became way more than the car’s value we had to let go. Talk about emotions this month, jeezo!

Goodbye car

Speaking of emotions, that referendum happened!

The day before

The month ended with a bunch of beloved Up & Running friends coming to town to run the Loch Ness 10K. And to drink lots of wine. I’d got myself a bit isolated these past few months, so Social September was the perfect (gin and) tonic.

Jocktoberfest

Two weeks with Vitamin D

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We’re back to default grey and miserable today, so I’m not jinxing anything by mentioning out loud: the last two weeks were… sunny.

It started with the Edinburgh Marathon Festival weekend. I’d warned my visiting Up & Running pals to expect hypothermia, windburn and/or bad hair for the race, but the blue skies made a fool of me.

Victoria Street, Edinburgh

While I was on cheer squad duty, Gareth lounged in the back yard for six hours listening to the England v New Zealand cricket test. It was cool and windy, so he had a hoodie on his top half, but he’d unarchived his shorts and sandals for the bottom half. This was the result:

g-feet

“So I guess my theory that wind blows away UV rays is unfounded,” he said, “Besides, it’s your fault for leaving me at home unsupervised!”.

London

A sunny midweek followed, then I went to London to visit my sister and go to the Cybher blog conference. It’s in its second year and there were some great sessions, but the absolute highlight was randomly meeting three brilliant ladies: hilarious Caitlin from How To Play House, knitting maven Helen from Curious Handmade and photographer Kirsty Barton. I want to frame Kirsty’s business card… check out the eyes on the wee dog!

Business cards from Cybher

The next day I finally met the magnificent Sas in person for breakfast and yammering on. She is the bees’ knees and I grinned like a goof all day. #gingerpower

sas

(Photo nicked from Sas.)

Back to Scotland for another sunny mid-week, including an impromptu drive to Anstruther…

Anstruther fish and chips

… then on Friday night we spent an hour cleaning the BBQ (untouched since the “heatwave” of 2010), an hour waiting for it to heat up, then twenty minutes incinerating our dinner.

Summer BBQ

Finally on Saturday Gareth and I worked at the Farmers’ Market. He’s been helping out a local brewery lately, so we manned the stall while the brewer was on holiday.

Are you the farmer?

We made a pretty good team. He handled the beer chat and tastings while I handled the dosh and made sure the beer labels were perfectly aligned on the shelves. I recommended beers to unsuspecting locals as if I actually drank the stuff. We only had one moment of deranged, panicky flapping when we had a sudden run on gift packs and neither of us could work out how to fold up the boxes. We ended up selling all but four bottles! Score.

You may be scratching your head at this indulgent photo fest,  but you must understand the rarity of two consecutive non-grey weeks. Now the clouds are back and I’ve got nowt but freckles and memories…