Tuesday 28 September 2010

An audience with a rottweiler.

After months of frustration with my solicitor (male, pompous, overweight and coasting to retirement), I have taken the plunge and moved to a new one (young, petite, female, Glaswegian and scary as hell!).
I spent 90 minutes with her this afternoon (that's £225 worth by the way) and left with a completely different impression of my position.
Now that I have a rottweiler on my side maybe things will look up............

Friday 24 September 2010

Photohunt - natural (curls!)

I haven't posted a photohunt for a couple of weeks, mainly because I've been so busy.
I had to rack my brains to come up with something for this week, but I like these less obvious themes :-)

I decided to go for this picture of my teenage sons because their expressions are very natural and it shows the younger one's beautiful natural curls!

A Grand Day Out

Last Friday, on my first day off after working 11 days on the trot, I had a day out with an old pal.
We met at Kinross, at the edge of Loch Leven, and walked 4 miles round the loch to the fabulous Loch Leven's Larder where we ate a yummy lunch rounded off with very refined cup of Earl Grey tea, then 4 miles back again.
Unlike Andrew I'm a little too shy to take pictures of my food in cafes so you'll have to make do with the pictures I took of the beautiful scenery.......


The weather was glorious, the food was delicious and the company was great.

Monday 20 September 2010

Sunday 12 September 2010

Exhausted!

I'm going to have a moan!
It's exam setting season again and I've been working all weekend. Yesterday I started at 9.30am down at Stirling Uni, finished there at 7.30pm then came home and carried on until 11.15pm. Then up at 7 this morning, at Stirling for 9am and finished at 2.30pm. Home in time to do about an hour of associated paper work.
I could almost cope with that, if I wasn't then faced with a mountain of ironing.

I would really just like to sleep for a couple of days, but tomorrow morning it's back to college and start the week all over again.

Anybody want to trade places?

Monday 6 September 2010

The Tarmachan Ridge

Yesterday the BF and I decided to tackle a slightly more challanging climb than our last effort.
The aim for the day was the Tarmachan Ridge.
My guidebook describes it as "an entertaining ridge walk".  It says it "curves in an S-shape above the blue expanse of Loch Tay, at some points narrow and rocky, at others broad and grassy. The traverse of its four tops provides a scramble which is unfailingly entertaining"
The weather was lovely in Perth when we left, but by the time we got to the starting point at 10.30am it was dull with low cloud and mist obscuring the tops.
Undeterred we headed off up the first summit - Meall nan Tarmachan at 3421ft.


The cloud was unrelenting, and as we traversed from east to west reaching the summits of Meall Garbh (3366ft) and Ben nan Eachan (3264ft) we saw precisely nothing except the ground 3 feet in front of us!
The first part of the ridge (between the first 2 peaks) is broad and straightforward, but between the second and third peaks is narrow, rocky and requires some fairly extreme scrambling. I will confess to being shit scared at times, especially since the wind got up considerably and we estimated was gusting to 40-45mph at times!

With no sign of the weather clearing we bailed out without attempting the fourth peak.
True to form, as we descended, the clouds began to clear and by the time we were only 1km from the car, the sun was out and 3 of the 4 peaks were clear of cloud...I think that's what they call "sods law"!!!

We also got a beautiful view of Loch Tay in the sun .......
So, we'll be back to do it again....in better weather.

Saturday 4 September 2010

Photohunt - Hot

My youngest son cooling down on a very hot day at the beach (yes we do get those very occasionally in Scotland!)

Friday 3 September 2010

Growing old

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years.
We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul." - Samuel Ullman

Thursday 2 September 2010

Creativity

Tonight, from this -


and this.......



I created these......

and these......