Is It Bedtime Yet? in Scottish Meanderings

So once again I sit here half dead having had no sleep whatsoever last night thanks to my extremely irritating neighbour, Mhairi, and her Fagash Lil friends who - yet again - opened and shut her noisy back door LITERALLY EVERY HALF HOUR from 8 p.m. last night until 8 a.m. this morning and talked, laughed, coughed and hiccuped (apparently someone hiccupping at 6 in the morning is really hilarious) for 10 minutes every time they came out. That, my friends, is a new record. Normally they shut up shop at 7.30 a.m. which is when I wearily trundle downstairs, shove some yoghurt in my mouth, call that breakfast and trundle wearily back up again.

Oh wait no I tell a lie - I DID sleep for about 20 minutes in the spare bedroom where I parked myself hoping this would be the one time I'd actually get to sleep in there. I don't know what it is about it which makes sleep elusive - certainly the bed's not so comfy and the curtains let in too much light - but I just can't seem to drift off when I'm through there.

So I was delighted to find myself dozing off around 2 a.m. - only to wake up in a cold sweat 20 minutes later having had a horrible nightmare which started out on the upper floor of a shop I was apparently browsing. The main protagonist of the smokers next door came in and I asked her what we were going to do about the issue? There then followed a ghastly vendetta against me by her and her friends involving a car chase, masses of taunting & torture, a (real) dog wearing a contraption with wire spikes in it (which seemed to be Trooper), my mum, one of my brothers, blood, gore, tears - you name it, it was pretty much there. It literally took my heart a full 30 minutes to stop pounding afterwards!

I dragged myself back to my own bed hoping they might have done the same.

No such luck.

But looking on the bright side which, I admit, is just a tad difficult right at this second, I DID manage to get my photo drawer completely re-organised so that all but one envelope is labelled by year and a lot more photos have something written on the back of them. AND I found the mystery castle Nikki was looking for! I got all excited when I came across the photos - only to find NOTHING written on the back of them. Arrgghh! However in another envelope I found more pics of the trip and there were 3 clear photos of the castle itself which I recognised instantly.

Here it is. Castle Fraser. Not nearly as pretty as Craigievar but we'll still take the girls out for a trip one day so that Nikki can revisit her memories.


As you can see it's screamingly, shockingly, pink like she'd thought. Not.

And in that same drawer I also found a small, plastic folder with lots of photos of Mum inside which I'd looked out just before her funeral because my sister had toyed with the idea of making up an album for the meal afterwards which folk could peruse at their leisure. She didn't have any old photos though whereas I have heaps so asked me to look some out and I spent hours one night going through around 15 folders which contain hundreds of black and white Kodak family photos taken in the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s and then searching through all her photo albums, taking out photos of her for Lorna to use.

Then we realised we didn't really have a reliable way of getting the photos to her in time (she was 100 miles away) plus she didn't think she'd have an opportunity to sit down and do it so Nikki offered to take on the job. I was convinced I had given her the folder at some point and we've gone back and forth ever since with her denying ever seeing them and me convinced she was just being her usual careless self and they were stuck in a box under her bed or lying at the bottom of a drawer somewhere.

(Oops.)

I had given up hope of ever seeing them again so was delighted to come across them in the early hours of the morning and spent a nostalgic half hour looking through them.

I miss her.

So we had a gender scan last Thursday whereupon Lily and I won our bet, Nikki & Lilah lost theirs and this was bought the next day in celebration.


It took Nikki a good few days to wrap her head around the fact she's having a boy this time but she's looking forward to it now :) There is a favourite name on the go at the moment which is fairly unusual but it's growing on me. It'll be interesting to see if it's still a contender in March next year!

Had way too much fun putting this together yesterday afternoon ......


Took me a total of THREE HOURS!! Not because it was particularly complicated but because it's so flimsy and more held together with a wing and a prayer than anything else so bits kept falling off, falling over or easily unclipping. It's never going to survive the machinations of a 6 year old and a 3 year old so there are now some strategically placed Glue Dots scattered here and there holding things together for slightly longer I hope!

I've put it in the bottom of the wardrobe so that I (or a stray moggie) don't knock it over inadvertently but I'm a bit worried I might forget all about it until a little voice next Thursday on the way to swimming says "Granny has the fairy garden grown yet?" 😳

Ok I'm away to attempt lunch. It always takes me 2 full days to recover from these sleepless nights so last weekend was pretty much ruined after they kept me awake all of Friday night. I'm supposed to be going to the pictures to see 'A Star Is Born' with Janice tomorrow afternoon and I will be in second-day zombie-mode by then fighting to keep my eyes open so I'm really angry about that.

Plus there's a chance the same rabble might do exactly the same thing again tonight.

And then a couple of hours ago Nikki asked if I fancied going to the pictures with the girls this afternoon and I would have loved to go - I'd asked her just last week if she fancied doing just that sometime soon. But there's no way in hell I'd survive through sitting in the comfy seats of Cineworld for 2 hours watching a huge screen in a semi-lit space - I'd be snoring in seconds!

Surely they wouldn't do the same thing again and stay up for two nights in a row would they??

Here come those murderous thoughts again .......😠