September Scatterings in Scottish Meanderings

I'm going to have to write differently soon 'cause I'm running out of alliterations for the months! :)

So I turned 65 in September - and somehow 65 sounds a lot older than 64😳 I had a lovely birthday though - on the weekend after my birthday Nikki bought cakes for a cream tea which was rather delicious and on top of that we had a carrot cake for a birthday cake so I kind of waddled home afterwards!


We also did the annual birthday photo which I inadvertently started 5 years ago when I realised I hadn't really got a good photo of myself with all of the kids so got Nikki to take one. Then the following year I thought it would be fun to take another one to see how they'd all changed - then realised actually it would be a great thing to do on each birthday and see the changes every year.

This is the first one in 2019.


And this is this year's.


And I got some lovely presents, 3 of which were books - I still get really excited when I get presents of new books even though I can't read them properly yet - but one of which is quite poignant now as it was Matthew Perry's biography. F.R.I.E.N.D.S was something Nikki & I used to watch on a Friday night when she was growing up - we'd go over to the local Blockbuster and get 3 DVDs on a Friday night with a cache of sweets and then have a F.R.I.E.N.D.S fest till we'd watched them all in sequence so we were really sad to hear of Matthew's death. It didn't sound like a natural death to me but I suppose it'll be a while before full details are known.


I've just started the book (managed to do a couple of half hour stints on better days) and it's actually quite good.

One of the nice things which happened on my actual birthday but which wasn't planned was that my friends and I set up a Zoom peer support group for people struggling with prescribed drugs and/or withdrawal. We'd been working on it for a few weeks and then came to a point when we felt we were ready to have the first meeting and the best night for everyone was a Tuesday.

I had offered to host it as no-one else had experience of doing that and it was only when the summerhouse guys e-mailed me and said we could come and build it on Tuesday 5th that I realised that was my birthday but also the first night of the group! So yeah - a summerhouse would have been a nice present right enough but I felt there was enough going on with the first meeting as we were still finalising things during the day and I was meeting a friend in the afternoon so postponed the building till the 7th.

And that first meeting went really really well! We were all stoked with how smoothly it ran and how everyone was so grateful to have the support there and appreciated the work involved behind the scenes. We had 15 folk come (we hadn't advertised it much as wanted to control the numbers as much as possible so as not to be overwhelmed) and that has reduced now to an average 9-11 each week which is manageable for the format we're adhering to so we're not advertising it anywhere else at the moment but if we come across anyone we feel would benefit from it, we give them details.

It's been a bit of progress for me because the hosting was nerve racking but really went well and I've become Treasurer now too and set up a Paypal account for any donations. We really only needed the amount for the Zoom subscription each year so didn't think we needed a Paypal account but the Institute of Prescribed Drug Withdrawal got in touch and offered a donation of £150 which was unexpected so we realised we should really set up something to deal with anything like that.

It's UK based obviously but open to anyone - we would have had a lot more that first night but world time differences prevented several people joining which was a shame. So if you know anyone who is struggling on any (prescribed) medication or struggling to come off anything and you think it might benefit talking to others in a similar position, leave me a private message and I can give more details.


So yes there is a summerhouse now in place but not much in it because the paving has still to be done outside so I don't want to track mud and dirt into it. And yes it's an incongruous size for the space so don't worry about your first reaction to the photos - I was the same but I've got used to it now :)

This is from my bedroom window which gives a better idea of scale.


And from the back door.


I'd have to stand in my neighbour's garden to get a decent photo of it from the front so this is the best I could get!


I'm sooooooo glad it's built that way though because I realised with the windows all being at the front and front/sides, when you're sitting at the back of it inside, no-one can see in so it's quite private. And the first time I went in it (so nice to be in a big empty clean space not surrounded by 1000 things needing done to said space!) I was standing there and thinking wow this would make a great writing area!

I was kind of shocked by that thought and how it came so naturally almost like I had nothing to do with it. So we'll see. It's lovely to have the bike and lawnmower and shed stuff out of the house at last and get the sitting room back looking like a proper sitting room again but I'm not sure what to do with the shed stuff in the summerhouse i.e. whether to block it off with a partition or something but risk that spoiling the look of the summerhouse or just leave it. It doesn't actually look too bad at the moment - maybe I'll wait till the summer and try sitting in it and see how much it bothers me.

Although I'll have to put something to sit on in it first😂

Next job is the paving - the Landscaper did say he could get to that in a couple of weeks about a week ago but I'm guessing the weather may have delayed work a bit as it's been raining a lot here and we've had one bad storm with another on the way. I'm not too bothered - it's not like I'll really get to use it much until the weather turns again.


We did manage one day at the beach in September - we had a sort of last hurrah of summer for a few days - and I was in paddling!


Even managed to get Lily in for a couple of minutes - she's just reaching that age where she's a bit 'too cool' for running about in the waves but Lilah made up for her!


Ruari became a mermaid.


And did some cool artwork.


We investigated every pretty shell on the beach.


And someone was fascinated with a dead crab :)


Nikki had brought their wee tent with them but the sun was shining down at the shoreside and not where she'd pitched it so she sat and froze in it!


I did manage to convince her to shift it to a sunnier spot later on and at exactly the point we'd got all the stuff moved over, the clouds appeared in the sky and the wind got up so it was all for naught! You can see it threatening to take off in this video where Lily has hit on a novel way to make train tracks :)

Now we're well and truly into Autumn judging by the pouring rain and grey skies for the past week or two but at least the leaves are pretty!