Christmas Day 2013
Well Christmas day started off with a surprise - Mandy got her Onesy and was ecstatic (as you can tell from the picture)
Then we picked up Aunt Ollie and travelled up to Fiona and Mick's for a fabulous Christmas day - present opening, sumptuous dinner, lots of wine - a really lovely family time, but we did miss staff nurse Kirsten who had to work on Xmas day. Thank you Fiona and Mick.
Velvet Scooter 28th Dec 2013
In between Christmas and New Year we had Carrie and Ian up from Datchet for a festive visit 27th - 29th December.
We had a fun and relatively successful shoe-shopping trip into Edinburgh at the height of the sales, and Ian wondered why all the alarms were going off as he entered and left each shop until he discovered that he still had a security tag on his new shirt!
One of the highlights of the visit was a Saturday night trip to the Stable Bar.
Nice open fire, warm welcome and some good pub-grub and fine local beers.
By sheer chance, it happened to be the last Saturday of the month when the resident band were scheduled to perform - they were Velvet Scooter. They setup their gear while we were eating and began at 10:00pm.
(Picture from their FB site not the Stable Bar evening)
We'd never heard of them, but Velvet Scooter (comprising Ged Swanston, Paul Wilson, Gary Millar and Willie Glass) were excellent. Willie Glass in the pork-pie hat was particularly good on guitar. They did Classic rock covers, featuring songs by the likes of Van Morrison, The Wailers, Bob Seger, Steely Dan, Santana and The Doobie Brothers. So good were the band that we ended up dancing! I'm sure that the four bottles of red wine had some bearing on the impulse to get up and boogie, but the band definitely set the mood. We will definitely return for another "last Saturday night of the month" visit in the future.
New Year's Day
After the Hogmanay Bash at Stirling Castle we stayed over at Fiona and Mick's for New Year's Day. Got up late (as we'd only just got to bed at 3:00am) and had breakfast. Then it was time for the traditional NYD walk in the cold - not too far, but long enough to blow away the cobwebs. Then it was time to eat and drink again! Once again - big thanks to Fiona and Mick for hosting and providing such fab food!
Fergus Sings the Blues
