Took Rachael’s car and housekeys over to Glasgow today. Then I went to Buchanan Street to exchange the Kilt Rachael got for D but was too small. Had to get the Lindsay tartan because they never had the other. I was just too late to catch the bus so had to wait the best part of an hour to get it. I got to Glenrothes and had to wait another hour for that bus. What a waste of time. Just as well I had a story tape. I got home and was really tired. I went to bed at 10.30 and tossed and turned. It is now 1.40am and I have just had a hot chocolate so hopefully I will sleep after that.

Tomorrow the temperatures are dropping here… but I am not in Paris and the temp is reportedly 27 degrees Centigrade there. I think it is nearly the same in Farenheit here. Well maybe slightly warmer. W

Went to St Andrews for a delicious Thai meal. Not something we do often. Last time I tried to ge tin it was full. Must do it again sometime.

I have not heard form the kids for a few days and K wasn’t on Skype so I thought her cold had developed into a stonker. It hadn’t Duncan has taken to Skyping and if the people he is trying to Skype are not there he just phones his mum. I missed 2 calls from him on Thursday. I am gutted. He would have been so funny. Fraser is now sitting up quite strongly and almost crawling. That is going round in circles, going backwards and getting up on his hands and knees but never actually getting very far forward. Give him a couple of weeks. He is now starting baby led weaning.Banana and rice cakes. The polystyrene rice cakes were rejected though. He will be on marmite and peanut butter sarnies by the time I next see him.

I have 2 weeks at home before returning to Paris.This time I really didn’t do much. I arrived late on Wednesday. Thursday I decided to chill out, get some groceries in and read. At the weekend Jim knackered his back so we could not walk too far. We had booked a hire car and the info we got was that the place shut at 6pm and we went there at 1pm and it was closed… bummer. So all our delightful plans of Ikea and garden centres were up the spout. Bummer. I so love Ikea. But it also meant that we didn’t have a car for the weekend and pont holiday. on Monday I was dressed and ready to go out when I looked for the keys and his nibs had taken both sets to work. Tuesday was the Mayday holiday so Jim invited a friend round to dinner.I made bœuf bourguignon .But it took an age to cook. I also made rhubarb crumble which was fine. I tasted the crumble earlier and it was too powdery so I had to scrape it off and add more butter to it. Good cholesterol. I like to add oats to the crumble and I didn’t have any so the texture was fine, as in not as coarse.

Beautiful evening this Mayday holiday. The first of 4 holidays in May. Mayday, V.E. day, Resurrection, and Whit.I return to Ecosse tomorrow and have to get my specs fixed.Back in a couple of weeks.

My boys are coming up for the wedding next weekend. They are on a flying visit but Rachael plans to take Duncan to the Zoo on Saturday morning. Sunday is the play area at Muddy boots a reasonable local farm who diversified away from supermarket producing to the more profitable cafe/ play area and barn. The kids love it. They are coming up for a whole week in July, for Rebecca’s wedding then finish off with the Big Tent Festival which is an eco festival which is held up the road. The Proclaimers are the main act but Salsa Celtica are also on and many others. Hope the weather is good. The sad thing is Jim has to work that week as he has a meeting in Lisbon. he will be back for the Big Tent though.

Great to be back home to freezing cold temperatures. The house is messy as R has been here for a couple of days, But the quiet is bliss. In Paris there is SKY telly. That means it takes J twice the time to scroll through the programmes than it would on freeview only to get one from the freeview list for a few minutes before he scrolls again. Drive a person nuts. It is a long time since he has watched anything but the news. His choice was BBC or CNN. We now have internet as well as tv but things need a bit tweaking.

Once again in sunny Paris but like the rest of your places the temperature has dropped drastically for the weekend. No snow forecast though. We are now complete.. we have internet working. Rachael is here for the weekend and is decimating the booze cupboard (the person we are renting the flat from said it is ok to drink). She is having drinks of bright colours. The problems of having a trained cocktail barperson in the family. She has now disappeared into Paris on her own. As an under 26 year old she gets a day ticket at the weekend for €3.5, it would cost us €8.5. It is now very quiet here.

His nibs didn’t want to do things so suggested escape. Breakfast “Muddy boots”, followed by supermarket… didn’t really need anything but it meant escape. Then visit friend 1 ….not in so friend 2 ..coffee and chat back to friend 1 who was in by this time then home. too late to do anything. Dinner wine and nippys. Avoided doing work. grass too wet to cut. C’est la vie. Paris next wee
Paris next weekend tough!

I arrived back from a pleasantly warm Paris to cloudy Scotland. We first cleaned out the fridge in the Patio which was mingin’. It was switched off at the electricity board. Rotten food and out of date drink. Next was to get the TVs working. There is a central unit which controls all the music, tvs (4 huge buggers) DVDs x2 . We managed to get the Tvs working except the one in the bedroom, big deal. The only thing is that we need a cable to let us change channel in the living room so we have to go into the control room every time we want to change channel.
So G&Ts on the patio with the music through the speakers on the patio.