Officially Ancient in Scottish Meanderings

Well I’m officially ancient now. And all those of you who are into your seventies and beyond will be shaking your heads thinking she doesn’t know the half of it! My brother says rather than say I’m 60, just tell people I’m 50 + VAT. I rather like that.

I had a lovely birthday though. I didn’t feel great on the day (Wednesday) itself (although a video of Lily and Lilah singing me Happy Birthday before school helped a lot) -


but went out to Pitmedden later and picked up Lily from school to give her a surprise for which I was rewarded with a huge bear hug and a delighted squeal of “Granny!” Then we walked back to Nikki’s with Lilah proceeding to tell everyone we met “My Granny’s 60 today” and I opened my presents and cards from them.

One of Nikki’s presents was bittersweet. As you can see it’s a glittery frame and inside is ‘60 things we love about you' then it’s all personalised. It’s a brilliant idea for a present and a year ago I would have been absolutely delighted with it but in the present circumstances it’s slightly tarnished I’m sad to say. I do love the 'Mums Are Like Buttons .....' bit at the bottom though!


Unfortunately after I opened it I then had to do an absolute mound of dishes before I could get near the sink to make anything for the tea.

She’s really not coping at the moment. There are clothes littering every surface of the floors and she’s basically flinging dishes into the sink as they are. The girls are being left to fend for themselves at the weekend while she stays in bed the whole day feeling rotten and on weekdays she goes to bed once she picks Lily up from school then they often have to wake her up long past bedtime not having had any tea.

I went out the weekend before last and we made inroads in cleaning the sitting room and kitchen on the Saturday then I went back out on the Sunday but she was back in bed again so I couldn’t do anything but look after the girls because I had no idea what was washing and what wasn’t - she has clothes still in suitcases from their holiday to Majorca in July. I couldn’t even dress the girls.

I made myself ill that weekend and it was so stressful cos the kids were playing up bigtime but I honestly felt awful about telling them off because, to me, they were just reacting to the situation and it wasn’t their fault. I went home and spent ages trying to think of a way round it then the following day she felt a lot better.

We thought she’d turned a corner but a couple of nights later she was sick as a dog again and was in bed all day on Saturday. I was out on Sunday and again had another mound of dishes to do before the girls could get their tea - I suspect it was all the dishes used from when I’d been out on Wednesday!

I know how hard it is to do anything when you’re feeling sick all the time but the girls don't deserve this. And to be fair, she's brought it on herself.

Anyway we had a brief chat about it on Tuesday when at Lily's swimming lesson. I had suggested getting my sister down and maybe between us we could blitz the place and get her back on track then I could go out one day a week and try and help with housework after that. However she told me she got a new tumble drier as her old one packed in and apparently it was making things awkward because it only held half a load of washing whereas this new one holds a full load so she should be able to get on top of all the washing now. She also stops work at the end of this week (she worked part-time 3 mornings a week) and is going to try and not go back to bed once Lily's off to school and Lilah's in nursery as I thought she'd be likely to do.

I've said I'll give her a month then if there's no progress we'll go to Plan B.

Because this is breaking my heart as far as the girls are concerned. In the old days I would have just stepped in and taken over or at least had the girls overnight at the weekends or something but I can’t do that now and that kills me. She may have been rotten to me last year but she's still my daughter and I'm still her mum.

(And looking at that video above you'll think I'm making all this up but the Nikki the world sees and the Nikki behind closed doors are two very different people.)

Anyway I stayed for tea on the Wednesday so that I could read the girls a story and put them to bed but I was beyond exhausted when I got back. Only to find Nikki had chosen that evening to message our family group chat and tell them about the pregnancy! Which meant I then had to field tons of texts asking who the father was and how did I feel about it - I literally didn’t move from sitting on my bed for an hour and a half when I got home replying to folk and then in the middle of it all my friend messaged “Did you get my birthday card?” So I had to go and open the rest of my birthday cards in a rush to find his so that I could reassure and thank him!

I honestly thought she was going to spoil my birthday tea on Sunday as well because on Saturday night she didn’t think she would be well enough to go but the girls were completely hyped up at getting to go to ‘Granny’s party’ so would have been devastated had they not been able to. Again - in the old days - I would just have taken them myself but I could never do that now so got totally stressed trying to think of a way round it. However she managed in the end although we had to take my car and I had to drive but that was okay.

And it turned out a lovely day!

We were here - https://www.gordoncastle.co.uk

It’s a beautiful place - we’ve had 2 lovely family meals there before and Catriona, my niece, got married at the castle in 2012 which was pretty special.

There were 18 of us altogether in the end - unfortunately my brother, Mike, who lives in London, couldn’t make it up as he had heart bypass surgery in May and although he was recovering well, he’s had a bit of a relapse recently - there’s an annoying cough which has returned and which they can’t seem to find the source of as well as pain around his chest and ribs. So all that is being investigated just now and he's only allowed walking exercises which pains him muchly as his one great passion is swimming. Which he's not allowed to do at the moment. His wife, Jennie, also hasn’t been well with a very bad urine infection otherwise she might have flown up on her own.

So that was a shame but it It was lovely to see everyone else. We opted for an afternoon tea in the end as we were meeting at 2 so that gave the little ones a chance to have an early lunch/naps etc beforehand. The goodies were delicious - tiny treats of all descriptions - there were gorgeous fresh cream meringues as well which I didn't manage to get a pic of.



For my birthday cake I had decided to get a carrot cake from Costco - my sister, Lorna, had bought us one literally about 20 years ago one New Year and I remembered how delicious it had been so really hoped they were still using the same recipe! Lorna actually makes a mean carrot cake herself and my first thought was to ask her to do one for me but she was away in Harris (an island off the west coast of Scotland) for a couple of weeks and was only getting back a couple of days before our get together so I thought that might have been a bit much!


Just before I left home, I grabbed what I thought were a '6' candle and an '0' candle just in case Nikki forgot to take any with her. I was slightly perplexed why I had them in the first place knowing I hadn't been to anyone else's 60th where I'd had to supply candles but the mystery was solved when I got there and discovered my '6' was actually a '9'!! They were the ones I'd bought for Mum's 90th because I was in charge of the cake! So we stuck them on anyway for a laugh! But now that I think about it, its kinda nice because it makes me feel like she was there in spirit (which I'm sure she was anyway) and I wouldn't have put it past her to have planted that thought about the candles in my head :)


And that cake didn't disappoint. It was absolutely delicious and there was more than enough for everyone. The Walled Garden Café provided cute little boxes for us all to take the goodies we couldn’t manage home with us and I made sure everyone went off with a piece of cake as well. There was a natural play area for the little ones and the sun shone the whole time so they were able to get out in it when they got fed up of us adults so it really couldn’t have gone better! I was so pleased.




Driving up and back also gave me a bit of a trial run for this weekend. I’ve got a school reunion on Saturday up in Inverness and I’ve been really stressing about it for months. Obviously plans to organise it happened a while ago and I said I would go thinking (then) I’m bound to be a lot better by the middle of September! But the furthest I’ve been able to go in the car so far is Banchory which is an hour there and an hour back and then I can’t get past 8.30 in the evening before becoming ill so I was terrified that the 3 hour drive up on Saturday would knacker me so much that I wouldn’t be able to go to the reunion itself - or get there and have to leave an hour later!

It involves an overnight stay so the only way I could think of doing it so that I wouldn’t be completely exhausted before I got there was to book into a hotel nearby and have no contact with anyone. That’s hard because my sister and 2 nieces stay there and it meant having to fork out £99 to stay in a Travelodge whereas I would normally have stayed with one of them - however they all understand (I hope).

I was hoping I would get a room in the hotel the reunion is in but there’s been no rooms for months - maybe just as well because they’re retailing at around £260 a pop normally!! That would have been ideal though because I could have used the room to go and have a rest in if I became exhausted then may have been able to rejoin the festivities later on. Where I was on Sunday - Fochabers - is around an hour and a half from Aberdeen so I was driving for 3 hours altogether which is the same time to Inverness. I was exhausted, sure, when I got home but that was after 2 hours of being with folk as well as doing housework at Nikki's and putting the girls to bed. So I’m hoping that’s a good sign.

And having the birthday tea on Sunday also assuaged some of the guilt because both Lorna and the 2 nieces who live in Inverness were there so I was able to catch up with them then and will therefore not feel so bad for being a recluse this weekend!

One of those nieces, Marina, has this cutie of a daughter, Jessie (she was the baby born just after Mum died and is called after her) - Marina sent me this on Sunday morning at 8 o’clock because Jessie insisted in putting on her party dress as soon as she got up and wasn’t to be swayed and Marina didn’t think it would last out till 2 p.m. :)


She is such a cutie and the dress was still on at 2 o’clock and still clean at 4 o’clock despite her little brother doing a most spectacular spew beside her!

So it's all over bar the shouting as Mum used to say. I got lots of lovely presents, and enough money to start the Italian Trip Fund. One of my presents was a rather beautiful digital red record player - I’m really looking forward to having fun with that and just hope my ancient LPs and all the crap that’s on them don’t ruin it! It’s been years since I’ve heard any of my records :)

But of course the wonderful NHS saved the best present till last - my 'poo kit' landed on the mat yesterday.

Joy.