Fiona's Quiet Life

went uptown yes­ter­day to take part in the ‘biobank’ www.ukbiobank.ac.uk they are study­ing the impact on health of life­style in 500.000 people aged between 40 and 69 all over the UK. a com­puter touch­screen asked all sorts of ques­tions about diet, exercise,smoking, age of par­ents etc, then a memory test ( me bad) and a reac­tion test ( me good) . then weight, height, body mass , bone dens­ity, lung func­tion blood pres­sure etc. then blood tests and urine tests, all for a cup of tea or cof­fee. oh what an excit­ing life i lead. but hope­fully after a couple of dec­ades it will be use­ful to know what happened to us all.

but before that i did some shop­ping as i wanted a suit­case large enough to put my back­pack and a small bag in as well as a ‘posh frock’ for the night in a good hotel and the visit to cirque De soleil. and my climb­ing poles. also i wanted some­thing decent to wear at the con­sec­ra­tion of basil’s head­stone on Sunday, the shops all seem to be full of party dresses as the run up to Christ­mas has star­ted so i even­tu­ally said ” right Basil i want to do you proud on Sunday you find something”..he led me straight to a trouser suit made by Basler, that spooked me , but i refuse to wear a trouser suit so i argued with him ..not out loud you understand..i am not quite that mad..yet.….….…so after the biobank thing i real­ised my car park­ing fee had just gone up another ?3 so i decided to stay uptown to use some of it. and there was the per­fect hat for Sunday AND it was reduced in price and also a lovely black and cream skirt also reduced, excel­lent result.

i have packed most of my trek things now.……nearly for­got the boots , oops!

today i went uptown again to meet Sheena and Claire for lunch, Clair is house sit­ting and house hunt­ing while i am away. she is mov­ing up from Southamp­ton soon. went into Man­dors to choose some cur­tain mater­ial for the lounge and din­ing room, such lovely fab­ric i am very temp­ted to start sew­ing again. my cur­tains look lovely but they don’t meet in the middle as they came from a dif­fer­ent room .

spent ages hunt­ing for my dollars.…found them among the spare birth­day cards.

am study­ing pos­it­ive thinking.……not that i need to as i am usu­ally positive.

i am pos­it­ive it is now bedtime

No Comments »

It would have been much cheaper to give the char­ity lots and lots of money.….……i have been adding to the col­lec­tion of things needed on this trek, that is a grow­ing heap on my bed­room floor. and then of course there is some­thing to wear on the plane, some­thing that will be com­fort­able and look good for many hours. and there is some­thing to wear in posh hotel? for the night before the great trek, some­thing that will not crush in my suit­case. and? some­thing cas­ual but smart for the less posh hotel? on the last night of trip. AND what does one wear? in a sleep­ing bag amongst strangers. then there?are the plasters for blisters,? re-hydration tab­lets just in case and all sorts of odd things like that.

the trouble with not want­ing to look like every­body else is that it is dif­fi­cult to buy ready made clothes, the shops are still full of things that look like mater­nity smocks to me.….……perhaps i will dig out my trusty sew­ing machine again, the trouble with that is? you can pay a lot for fab­ric then spend ages mak­ing it up and then dis­cov­er­ing that it doesn’t suit you and you look like a ragbag.….…this has happened to me so i know.

i still haven got the food sor­ted out for after Basils? memorial?? ser­vice, my mind refuses to think about it because every time i start a list it reminds me of this time last year and the excite­ment of his party..silly of me really as it was such a great party that he lit­er­ally talked about for the rest of his life.….….…i have a feel­ing i have said all this before, sign of extreme old age-- repeat­ing? myself? such a lot.

No Comments »

Blue and sweat­ing, sick and dizzy, ?i was? after the first 20 minutes of today’s climb, i felt so ill i thought? i would have to give up but once i had had a rest and some fluid i was fine espe­cially as the climb became very much shal­lower and the endorphins kicked in , in the end we walked for 4 and a half hours? up hill and down dale , through bog and stony? ground and it was great..i now have less than two weeks to get fit.photo is a zoomed shot of people? some dis­tance away at one of the cairns in the hills

even the dogs were tired tonight, him upstairs cooked? pasta and i provided a melon and cheese­cake which we ate in the new dining?room in front of the new fire burn­ing the logs given me yes­ter­day on free­share.….….i can’t believe the heat that comes off that fire, we kept retreat­ing across the floor pulling the din­ing table with us,?then we watched Anger man­age­ment on DVD, good film.

now i am tired

No Comments »

Went to a funeral yes­ter­day, not a good idea , stirred up all sorts of feelings.

Played with my new printer later which helped dis­tract me.

It is a good thing i havnt? valeted my car recently.….…i appealed for some logs and hope­fully a fire­guard on free­share and? a guy called Garry in?Dumbarton offered me some so after deliv­er­ing? elder daugh­ter and her fam­ily to the air­port this even­ing i went and col­lec­ted the logs.….….Cameron’s encyc­lo­paedic know­ledge of maps extends to Dum­bar­ton? so i found the house? without trouble, he is bet­ter than sat nav…most of the logs are still in the car as i wanted to watch? strictly come dan­cing? and the rugby.and they had star­ted by the time i got home.

have been look­ing at my backup cds of old pho­tos? to see what i could? turn into art work, it is amaz­ing how much actu­ally went on here des­pite basil being so ill.? one series of pho­tos was from when a bus load of people arrived , all des­cend­ents of the? fam­ily who lived first in this house 100 years ago , the Boyle fam­ily was their name and they had hired a double Decker bus, they wandered all over the house and garden..never heard a word from them since, it would have been nice to? have seen some of their photos.

No Comments »

you are right Cherie, no pho­tos, i haven’t taken any for a few days so here is small grand­son on large beach.

but i got my new printer today an Epson R1800 it prints up to A3 size. superb qual­ity prints once i had got its nozzles clear.

i had wanted to enter some prints in a com­pet­i­tion but the cut off date was tonight and i couldn’t find my photo edit­ing soft­ware so i decided to get a new down load­able copy of adobe photo-shop ele­ments 6 but for some reason my ‘super-fast’ Inter­net con­nec­tion was creep­ing along snail-like and the thing kept shut­ting down mid down­load, so i have all the mounts and the pho­tos in the com­puter but i can’t re-size them..i am hop­ing it is down­load­ing the soft-wear at the moment.

there was a great talk tonight by a real pho­to­grapher at the cam­era club, ( Wil­liam Ellis http://www.thejazzphotographer.com/ )he pho­to­graphs all the Jazz play­ers and the pic­tures were superb. .……i have a lot to learn.

later.….…..it is still down­load­ing, i may be up all night.…..i was stay­ing up late to get used to USA time but then i found out Ari­zona is 8 hours dif­fer­ent from Scot­land so i gave up

No Comments »