When You’re Trying Your Hardest To Be A YouTuber ...... in Scottish Meanderings

...... but your pesky little sister just keeps ......


I suspect she was responsible for that premature cutting out at the end as well.

And don’t worry - Lily’s not doing anything with the videos - Nikki gets a copy of any videos or pics she takes on her iPad just so that she can monitor what goes on - but she has parental controls on her iPad as well.


Well things are fairly moving fast around the world this month aren’t they?? You go to bed these days never certain what you’re going to wake up to next morning - I started writing this weeks ago (as you can see from Lily’s school uniform) and every time I go to update it it’s completely out of date!

I honestly thought I’d do okay with this new way of life because I’ve had to get used to that sort of pace already but I have to say I’m struggling not being able to see Nikki & the kids or touch them - I don’t think that bit had registered fully when I was thinking of the lockdown coming. I had seen them last Sunday, the day before we all went into lockdown and that kept me going for a couple of days then on Tuesday she asked if I had a spare phone charger. As it happened I did so as she was coming in to ASDA (not far from me) for her Click & Collect shopping I said I'd leave it on the doorstep.

I quickly had a look in what Nikki calls Granny's Corner Shop where I keep all my extra presents and spare gifts and managed to scramble together a wee package for the girls to take back home and put that in with the charger and when they arrived I stayed in the sitting room and looked out the window. Nikki took a selfie with Lily & I (trying to make a heart and failing miserably - and please excuse my horrible rotting windows) -


then - no show without Punch - Lilah appeared from the car and the two of them busied themselves making daisy chains from my garden to put on my Jemima Duck ornament at the front door while Nikki & I chatted from a safe distance (Ruari was sleeping) then - the hard bit - we blew each other kisses and hearts and off they went.

This was all that was left :(


I would normally be going out there on a Saturday so yesterday we tried a Zoom meeting but found it a bit clunky (on the iPads anyway) so Nikki said she had found a really good video app called 'House Party' and told me to download it. I can really recommend it. Having used Skype and Zoom this seems much more seamless and there's not that slight delay thing you get with the other ones. You get a half screen each and presumably that reduces in size the more folk that are in the 'house' -


It's free and also has a few simple games on it which is ideal for kids (and adults!).

So at the arranged time of 4 p.m. I went on there and she yapped - and yapped - and yapped. I was starting to feel dizzy after a couple of hours so kind of sighed with relief when she said she was away to make the tea - but she just picked up the phone and took me through to the kitchen with her!! Quarter to eight I finally got away - and only because I said I wasn't feeling so great and wanted to try and still get in a walk before it was too dark - otherwise she'd still be yapping! :)

Today we had a bit of a dilemma. Things have begun to get a bit stricter now and although not all supermarkets are restricting shoppers at the door, Nikki had a feeling the rule of one person going in was being more stringently enforced which meant she might not be able to take the kids in with her. What is she supposed to do? She can't ask me to look after them - or any of her neighbours - and she needed things which her online shop didn't have but there wasn't another delivery slot until next week.

So she asked if I'd be willing to take my car and sit alongside them then we could use the House Party app again - she'd leave her phone with the girls because Lily was able to manage the app and the 3 of us would play the game we were playing yesterday in each car because they could see me and talk to me through the phone.

Sorted.

Ha! Best laid plans ......

I was very relieved when she said she was taking Ruari in with her because I wasn't sure what I was meant to do if he woke up crying so thought we had it sussed - until half way through I heard Lily crying. Lilah's usually the drama queen - it's unusual for Lily to get upset nowadays so I was immediately concerned - turned out she needed a poo and was having difficulty hanging on to it. Granny to the rescue! "Don't worry!" says I "I'll text Mummy then she can come back and take you" then this little voice from Lilah came through the phone "Mummy hasn't got her phone with her Granny"! Doh!🙄

I couldn't sit there in my car and leave her crying in hers so I went into the front seat of their car to try & talk to her and explain why we had to hang on and she really tried but her stomach was hurting more by the second and she was becoming really distressed. (Nikki had the car keys with her otherwise I would have taken them both in myself). At last I saw Nikki walking towards us with a face that said that's not 2 metres away so I bounded out and told her what was wrong but she was all stressed from the shop - Ruari wasn't happy - she'd smashed a whole carton of eggs on the floor and all she wanted to do was get in the car and go home! (30 minutes' drive away)

I managed to get across that this wasn't just a pee situation and she could see how upset Lily was so thankfully she took her in but she had to unbuckle Ruari and take him in with her again because he was cranky and of course I couldn't hold him or go near him. Lilah was happy as Larry though - we fired up the game again and had some gay old Granny/granddaughter time for 10 minutes then they all went off waving and blowing kisses for all they were worth :)

I was out of bleach so popped into ASDA myself then decided to have a walk seeing I was out already (I've been trying to have a half hour one every day if I can) . The ASDA we were at is beside the beach so I took advantage of that and oh man was it good! The weather was blustery but not too cold but the waves - they were just spectacular - dashing up against the breakers and little jetties, getting wilder by the second - it did me SO much good to walk along the prom watching them crash on the shore and feeling the sea spray on my face!

Made me forget the whole sorry débacle we were in just for a few minutes.


It's been quite the month for birthdays. Ruari was one year old on the 5th, Nikki was 32 on the 9th, poor wee Matt was 3 on the 24th and his Granda, Ian, was 74 yesterday. Matt is doing well by the way - they are down in Manchester at the moment about to start week 2 of a 6 week bout of treatment. He wasn't too keen on going to the place he had to get his general anaesthetic in but by the end of the week, he'd got used to it and luckily came out of each one really well. They began restricting parents going through with the kids to one each so as he generally wanted Daddy to go with him, Cat has been staying in the apartment with Ollie and concentrating on him instead. Such a shame they're in a big new city but everything's shut - they could have made it into a fun experience for him.

And then it's Lilah's 5th birthday on Wednesday and I'm not entirely sure what to do with her presents. Nikki lives 30 minutes' drive away and ideally I would like to drive out and leave the presents on the doorstep or at the back door then wave through the window but I'm slightly concerned I might get stopped. There's certainly no sign of that from what I can see at the moment although there is very definitely a lot of helicopter activity just now - I would say there's one goes overhead every half hour/hour in the morning and then it seems to go quiet in the evenings. But everything changes so quickly with this thing - if there are new rules in place this coming week and I can't travel that far in the car I might then be too late to catch the post in time for her birthday. I'll have to have a think about that one.

I was laughing at Ian, my brother - him and I did a Messenger video chat for an hour and a half on Monday and he was talking about our uncle, Tommy, who is 92 and has been pretty much hanging on by a thread for several months now. He's in an excellent nursing home in Edinburgh and is very well looked after but we realised he might well pass while we're still in restricted movement and most of us won't be allowed to the funeral. Ian's the oldest of the family and said "Probably better if I just go and represent the whole family" and I had to remind him that at 74, along with COPD and a good dollop of asthma, he would very certainly NOT be representing anyone or going anywhere thankyouverymuch! He doesn't see himself as old at all and was mortified when a neighbour down the road popped a note through the door for him and Margaret this week to say if they needed anything, not to hesitate to let them know!!

I was just saying to my sister the other day how thankful I was that Mum wasn’t here to go through this and we were laughing at what we thought she’d be saying “For goodness’ sake - what a fuss! How do they think we got through two World Wars?!” But it did make me think - maybe the elderly, although perhaps more vulnerable physically, are coping better mentally with all this because they’ve been through so much worse in their lifetimes - and in a world which wasn’t nearly as progressive!

At least I’ll still have Italian each week - our teacher has had a practise with Zoom and deems it suitable for lessons so we'll have one this Thursday, break for 2 weeks' holiday then Zoom to our heart's content all of next term :)

Thank God for the Internet though - can you imagine getting through all of this without it? Maybe Facebook for all its faults will come into its own now and be a saving grace for a lot of people.

And I firmly believe we'll come out the other side of this better people. Someone called it a 'reset' and I agree with that. We badly needed a wake up call for a lot of things - maybe this will make us see how every action we take affects everybody else and we'll begin to take better care of each other and this planet. We'll have a much better community spirit - in real life - which was something sadly lacking in recent years and a much better appreciation for all the little things we've been taking for granted all this time and which really make us happy. So take heart - there are quite a few silver linings.


I had what I thought was a great wee project to keep me occupied in the long weeks ahead. I’ve been typing up my old private diaries into legible form - putting a photo relevant to the entry at the top - and slotting them into folders to read some day. I wanted to marry my Open Diary/Prosebook entries with the private ones so that I’d have everything in one place but when I got ill, all that took a back seat naturally and I got way behind.

So I've been trying to do a few pages every now & then and had reached 2017 when we went into lockdown. Brilliant I thought - that’ll be my ‘thing’ and I can finally try and catch up with the last 3 years. I had reached February 2017 to be specific - which is when I collapsed and there began the second, much more severe period of illness which had me in bed for months on end and took years to recover from. Leading up to being eventually bedridden though was a period of mass frustration where I had very distressing episodes of horrible symptoms which appeared regularly but had no rhyme or reason to them.

Things got cancelled. Life got very difficult. I got very scared. No-one knew what was wrong. And I was physically becoming weaker and weaker. But Lilah was due to be born in March - I was Nikki's birthing partner - so I pushed myself further and further each week until in August I collapsed properly and literally couldn't get out of bed.

Anyway the other night I was busy working away at it when I realised I’m typing about life coming grinding to a halt - with a frightening illness I knew nothing about just round the corner - everything stopping - not being able to see anyone. While in reality life was grinding to a halt - with a frightening illness just round the corner - everything stopping - and not being able to see anyone!!

Yeah - maybe not one of my best ideas!

One last thing - I was incredibly lucky last week. Remember how I said I had talked with the counselling agency (ACIS) manager, Christine, and she was going to try and arrange a pseudo counselling session with a member of staff to test my stamina and skills? Well that took place on Tuesday of last week and went really really well. The member of staff was a girl I had trained with - Izzy - I'm not sure if that made it harder or easier (it was hard to stay in rôle sometimes!). But I was glad to see that at least three of the topics mentioned were quite sensitive to me and my body didn't react physically at all (that was my main worry) and when I came out I realised I was completely ready to start up again with proper clients.

That was quite a surprise.

We meandered along to the office where Christine had just come out of a meeting with the head of the organisation - and she told us they had literally that second decided to close the agency! So I just made that one by the skin of my teeth :) Shame about the timing but they're going to be offering half hour telephone appointments instead of the 50-minute face to face ones while we're in lockdown so I'll put my name forward to do that if Christine is happy with Izzy's feedback.

It's just really nice to get that over with - it's been hanging about for a long time.

Finally I want to share this (thanks TrilliumZ) - it’s so clever (you may have seen it already - if so apologies):


Onward and upward - at least I have my Coronavirus jumper to wear :)


Couldn't for the life of me work out why I wasn't keen on it until I realised what it looked like!!