In Lieu Of A Proper Entry in Scottish Meanderings

I'm trying to keep up with all the Christmas preparations and the extra entries generated by NaNoJoMo - and failing miserably - so I went and added two new diarists to my list cos that’ll help!!

I can see the month flashing past without an entry though so have quickly done a survey which is doing the rounds just now instead. I’ve taken out some of the questions because they seemed a bit - well - random.

How many cars have you ever owned?
This is actually quite fascinating because the memory of the cars we owned when I was married is very hazy - I remember a Honda Civic I think and a Fronterra Sport but there were definitely more than that. The ones I owned on my own on the other hand are very clear though. First one was a green FIAT UNO which I bought off Mum when I got my licence and when she changed her car - to another FIAT :) And then after I left Boyd I got a second-hand Peugeot 206 which was a brilliant wee find - I loved it.

I called it Mabel but have no idea why now🙄.


In 2010 the Government brought out the scrappage scheme and I took advantage of that and bought my Nissan Micra which I call my Noddy car.


I don’t know why but it just reminded me of his wee taxi which in my head was red - then later I realised it was actually yellow🙄

Can you do maths in your head well?
Yes - I loved Arithmetic at school. Had a very good teacher which helped. I said to Nikki that’s the first sign that she’ll know I’m heading for Alzheimer’s - when I'm struggling to add up the Scrabble scores!

What’s your least favourite chore to do around the house?
Anything in the housework category. It just seems like such a waste of time - because you have to do it all again a week later. I do love doing it all at once so that everything is clean but I think it’s harder to get satisfaction now because everything in my house is just so down at heel and shoddy and so much needs painted or replaced. You can’t polish a turd as they say ......

What’s your favourite flavor of potato chips?
Salt and vinegar.

Do you ever read the weather forecast?
Only when I’m going somewhere in particular where the weather might make a difference. Otherwise I just look out the window. In Scotland you can have all four seasons in one day :)

Do amusement park rides make you sick?
No thankfully but in recent years some of them have made me a bit dizzy and I certainly wouldn’t chance the Waltzers or The Twister at all now. In fact the only Waltzer I would consider going on now is this one :)


And when I went on the newest version of the chairplanes (which are *nothing* like the chairplanes used to be when I was little!) in my forties I had to look at the ground for the whole of the first ride to get through it - but I had another go and was able to look up and really enjoy it the second time! This pic must be of the second ride because I'm looking around quite nonchalantly :) (I'm the third body from the right).


Who is your favorite Star Wars character?
Darth Vader. That voice! And because it reminds me of my friend Janice’s ex, Graham, doing a skit one night in the pub - Darth Vader marrying his son. After the ‘ceremony’ he said “You may now lightsabre your wife!” - at which point we all went into hysterics. I think you had to be there.

What kind of cheese do you put on your sandwiches?
I like a bit of Brie if there’s cranberry to go with it. If not - boring old cheddar.

What radio station do you listen to the most?I only listen to radio when I’m in the car then it’s BBC Scotland or Classic FM depending on the mood.

Who was the last person to give you a gift?
Nikki and the kids on my birthday.

How old were you when you got your driver’s licence?
17. When I became the very chuffed owner of Mum’s green FIAT. And first drove on my own when Mum and I went on holiday to Skye with 2 of my aunts. She hated driving - only passed her test so that she could be a bit more independent after Dad died - so if there was any chance of anyone else driving she took it :)

What was the first thing you ever learned how to cook?
I think it was macaroni cheese (not counting the rubbish we made at Domestic Science at school). Mum used to take off to spend a day with her sister, my Auntie Nellie, in Aberdeen, every few weeks so Dad and I had to fend for ourselves as her train didn’t get back until after teatime. When I was around 13 or 14 I decided I would cook him macaroni & cheese for his tea and as I remember, it turned out a pretty inedible watery affair (I mean how can you go wrong with mac ‘n cheese??) - I think we abandoned it for cheese on toast in the end!🤢

When was the last time you got a haircut?
What a boring question! Around 5 weeks ago - I get a wet cut every 6 weeks or so from a girl who comes to the house and does it. Much better than going to a salon although I miss that ‘pampered’ feeling I used to have after a salon visit - however Dawn takes 10 minutes tops and only charges £7 so needs must!

Have you ever been to a bachelor/bachelorette party?
We call them hen nights over here - been to a couple years ago - and they were nothing like the ridiculous affairs you get nowadays!

How many people can you say you TRULY love?
Roughly about 8. Quite a hard one to answer this - and depends on your definition of real love I think.

Do you like kids?
Love them. Love the way they figure the world out right from the get go - fascinating stuff :)

Is your next birthday coming up soon?
Not for another 10 months but at this stage of life that’s fine by me! :)

What’s the last board game you played?
Trickster Scrabble.


Which Nikki beat me at on Saturday night - again! This version of Scrabble is the same as the normal one except for Trickster squares which means you can pick up a maximum of 3 Trickster cards if you land on any. Each card enables you to do certain things like spell a word backwards, look at your opponent’s tiles, add your opponent’s last score to your own & so on and I haven’t cottoned on to the fact that one of the cards can make a huge difference to your score i.e. it enables you to play a word anywhere on the board so obviously if you pick a triple word with high scoring letters that can net you quite the tidy sum. Nikki, on the other hand, cottoned onto this fact pretty soon after playing it and plays low-scoring words on Trickster squares purely with the aim of getting this card! A strategy which has worked for the last 3 games we’ve played where I’ve been well in the lead then she sticks one of those words down with a score of 180 or something ridiculous and that’s pretty much game over for me after that!

The board itself also makes us twitch slightly because some of the lettering is slightly different in size and some of the words aren't equidistant from the edges. Only the severely OCD challenged amongst you will notice.


Have you ever given someone a fake phone number?
I confess I have used my old house number when I’ve been required to give a phone number to somewhere I don’t want to hear from again - or my landline which is active but only for broadband because I have no landline phone!! I always wanted one of the old fashioned kind of phones in the house - something like this -


and I bought this one once-


but it just didn’t look right in the limited places I could put it (because of the phone points) so I had to send it back :(

Do you have any bumper stickers on your car?
I use to have the old Open Diary one - do you remember? It had the same message as on this sweatshirt which I considered buying but didn't in the end because it was too expensive.


I had the sticker on Mabel until she went to be scrapped - around the same time as OD started to get on the downhill slope itself ironically :(

Do you leave good tips when you eat out at restaurants?
Not especially - just around 10% roughly - although I do give Dawn £10 for the £7 haircut but that had more to do with the fact that I was just so pleased to find someone who would come to the house when I was ill and housebound at the time that it was worth that. I’m not a fan of tips in general - I think folk should do their jobs well no matter how much they’re getting paid.

What’s your favourite thing to eat at a BBQ? Whatever’s going! Years ago when I was a vegetarian, it used to be quite difficult finding decent vegetarian food and I remember at a barbecue at my best friend's I had what appeared to be a delicious veggieburger so asked where they'd bought them. At which point her husband looked very embarrassed and confessed it was a regular chickenburger!! I felt it didn’t count though because I didn’t know😁

Do you still own any VHS tapes?
Yes - heaps! I had some that we had when we were married and inherited some of Mum’s as well after she died. And I have an old video recorder as well but I have to switch the plug at the back of the telly if I want to watch anything and figure out what setting to use which is clearly just too much hassle. I’m going to have a VHS night some night though and see what’s there. There is one hilarious one of the adult kids when they were young - my brother in law had hired a video recorder for a family Easter Day which my sister would put on every year and made the mistake of giving it to his oldest son (who would have been around 10 or 11 at the time) for a shot so we have a record of the kids putting on a play, sliding down the stairs on a tray, mucking about in the bedroom, going on a (very long) car journey and all sorts of random stuff which we’re now using for blackmail with girlfriends etc.😂

How many of your friends have you known for at least 5 years?
I think possibly only around 4 now sadly.

Are you superstitious?
Nope. (throws salt over shoulder just in case)

What was your favourite book as a child?
Oh boy - that’s a hard one. Loved Milly-Molly-Mandy. Loved Jennings and Derbyshire. Loved anything by Enid Blyton. I don’t think I could pick just one. I read a lot!

What’s the most expensive restaurant you’ve ever eaten at?
I’m honestly not sure - I’m quite certain I’ve eaten at a few I didn’t realise were expensive at the time which my relatives on Dad’s side would have taken me to as they were fairly well off. And when we went to Canada I seem to remember a couple of fancy places we ate at there but don’t remember what they were called - I think we ate in the CN Tower one night so I'm sure that wouldn't have been cheap - I’m not much of a ‘foodie’ so the quality side of it tends to be lost on me!

Are you keeping a secret from anyone right now?
Yes. And I’m amazed at how many of us are answering positive to this question!

What’s the smallest town you’ve ever visited?
No idea - there are lots of small villages and towns all over Scotland and especially around the north-east coast where I live but it's actually quite difficult to ascertain what the difference is between a town and a village. They're all really pretty though. One not too far away from here is Stonehaven where one of my faves comes from.



Have you ever gone golfing?
Mum and Dad were keen golfers and I can remember Dad teaching me the game at one point - and Boyd and I played a game here in Aberdeen once as well but that’s all.

What’s your favorite kind of soup?
Something like carrot and parsnip or potato maybe. Not sure. I like the thick, stodgy kind.

How old were you when you learned how to ride a bike?
Gosh I’ve no idea - around 6 or 7 maybe? I do remember the feeling of freedom of being able to ride without the stabilisers - wheeeeee!

Do you know any sign language?
Yes - I had thought of becoming a translator at one time but discovered it’s quite a difficult language to learn. I did up to Stage II but had to leave it after that because it got too expensive and time-consuming to continue with. I still remember quite a few of the signs though. One of my friends in the same class went on to do it for a living. I loved learning it - you have to understand the whole deaf community not just the language and I found it fascinating.

Do you ever read the newspaper?
Nope - or watch the news. I made a conscious decision years ago in the seventies to stop reading the newspaper because I was becoming so upset by stuff I was reading. Once I was married to Boyd, he would get the local paper and read me out significant stuff but nowadays the only time I hear the news is if I’m in the car and it comes on. It’s funny though - I rarely miss anything important - when you have a social media presence of any kind, you usually pick up on anything which is happening pretty quickly.

When you’re having a bad day, how do you make yourself feel better?
Read Prosebox! I make myself do something - however small - just to realise some achievement of the day. For instance I had a bad day last week but waded through a large basketful of ironing while watching stuff I’d recorded on the telly. If it’s really bad I’ll stick on a washing or write my diary - do the dishes, feed the cat and call it a day!

Did you have a swing set in your yard when you were a child?
Yes - just a swing.


Apparently I got it for my fifth birthday. I absolutely loved it though and can remember hours of delicious swinging and turning upside down and all sorts of acrobatic feats on it. Although I also remember lots of chafing and burns from those ropes - they were changed for metal chainlink after a few years which made my hands all rusty instead!

If I sat on the swing the other way round it faced our neighbour’s back garden and when I was going out with one of the kids there when I was around 12 - Brian, who was a year older than me - which wasn’t approved by Mum in the slightest - he used to stand under cover of their shed talking to me over the fence while I pretended I was innocently swinging. He wasn’t visible from any of the back windows of the house that way which drove Mum bananas!

What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?
I remember being pretty frightened by The Exorcist when it first came out in the seventies.


I was going out with a really cool guy at the time and he wanted to take me to see it as a date so I was worried I’d act like a wimp in front of him! However in those days you could go into the cinema at any time and stay there for hours - it was quite common for folk to watch films more than once (you got 2 films for the price of a ticket - there was always a ‘B’ film on as well before the Big Picture).

There were massive queues for the film when it came out and the La Scala in Inverness was no different - the line of folk snaked up the street, round the corner and almost round the whole block. We’d been waiting for 10 minutes when an usher guy came out and said if anyone wanted to go in now they could. This meant you were going in half way through the film but we decided to opt for this rather than wait for ages - which meant I got to see the worst bits straight away and then we watched it from the start all the way through again! Which kinda took away the scariness element a bit and saved face thankfully!


And while searching for some photos to accompany this, I came across a pic of my Granny and Granddad’s (on Mum’s side) headstone which made me really sad - not because of their deaths - I never knew them although sometimes feel strangely close to Granny for some reason - but because of a realisation looking at the dates.


Mum had her first baby, Ian, exactly 15 days after her own Mum died. Can you imagine?? She had Mike 13 months after that then, just 5 years later, she had my sister, Lorna, and a month later, her Dad died.

And in those days there was no counselling or taking time out or any of that stuff - you just got up and got on with it.

Tough times.