I Should be So Plucky!

Another festive merriment has been the dreaded school music concert. Music is not a big part of our family. Anyone who has seen my Last FM or Spotify playlists will know my tastes are not very helpful in encouraging my kids to be high achievers in music. That said, Isabelle is doing very well on the keyboard. I have no idea what grade she's at but she played Rod Stuart's 'I am Sailing' the other night, which gets the thumbs up from me! Stuart is also following a musical interest. The violin. It was this devils instrument (not a bad as the recorder or bagpipes) that brought us to his concert. He only knows 3 notes, and he plucks them! So we had to sit through a 2 hour concert to hear his plucking. It was accompanying other violins so it was okay in the end. And actually the concert showcased some reasonable musical ability. The last one we went to when Isabelle was in the choir, forced us to listed to brass and cello's that I would imagine echo's the sound of birthing whales.

The next night was Andrew's school disco. Poor lad had to suffer the same fate as his sister....his dad turning up at the disco. To be fair I was there in a professional capacity, but Andrew made me drop him off and come in at a different time to him. As I am increasingly finding, I knew very few of the popular music they played on the ghetto blaster, so I saved him the embarrassment of dad dancing.



Photo: The plucky young plucker

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The title of this post is not only a great Andy Williams song, it is mostly true or has been for the most part of recent weeks.
I was eventually conned into heading into Edinburgh city centre last Saturday to do the Christmas shopping. We drove in early and were parked up in John Lewis' by 8.50am and had an hour or so of easy going shopping in a half empty shopping centre. After that it was too much for my liking so I took Stuart off to the ice rink in Edinburgh's winter wonderland as I was getting in the way of the spending spree of Isabelle, Andrew and Emma. Stuart has never been ice skating, and being the 3rd child I realised he has probably missed out on a few things like that because the novelty of taking your kids to things has worn off by the time you get to the 3rd. So I gave him my whole hearted attention and hit the ice with him. I discovered Winter Wonderland is actually a hiding place for Aussies, Kiwi's and Poles. Not one of the people I was served by was Scottish. Even the street entertainer was from Brisbane. Still he was very good and much more fun than shopping. We were back in Dunbar by 1.30pm, leaving time to put more decorations up outside. The garage now has a strip of blue lights on it, and looks like a giant sunbed.

Saturday evening was also good. We had arranged with the local caravan park and churches to do a bit of carol singing at their Christmas meal. This all took place in their social club, which was not to unlike Phoenix Nights. There was a DJ booth and bingo machine on the stage and a resident MC fully equipped with 1970's sideburns. On arrival I was shown to the 'artistes dressing room' but moved quickly out of there as there was no way 20 of would fit. We handed out song sheets and we had a good sing a long. I narrowly avoided introducing 'While Shepherds Wash Their Socks By Night'. It almost rolled off my tongue. Anyway, it all went well and we even had drink on the house. Nice touch from the caravan boss, hopefully we will be back next year.



Photo: Stuart takes to the ice like a duck to water
Photo: 'O Come All Ye Faithful' Carolling at the caravan club.

Snow Falls

I was away for a few days last week for Scripture Union Scotland's staff conference over at Lendrick Muir near Kinross. It was a good mix of teaching, strategy thinking, meeting people and grazing on endless supplies of tray bake! The down side of these events is that you can get a bit stir crazy cooped up indoors all day, so I took my running gear to allow a bit of exercise to counteract the perils of tray bake overdosing. Tuesday night brought in the first snow of the winter, which meant a pre breakfast hill run was a must. The village of Muckhart has a nice big hill so I went up that one. Despite it being dark the snow was pretty bright and I got some good views of Grangemouth, Kinross and the Forth from the top. Coming down was fun, my size 12's are nearly as long as a pair of skis so I did a bit of slalom trying to avoid the gauze bushes. Needless to say I eventually crashed and burnt in a Eddie the Eagle style.

Photos: I took these slow exposures of me in my high viz top running in the snow.