WE’RE off for a day in Edinburgh today finishing up with Miriam Margolyes’ Fringe show. A joint birthday treat instead of buying each other presents…my birthday was last week and Margaret’s is on Saturday.
Rather than drive all the way and contend with traffic jams and parking we’ve decided to use our old folks’ bus passes and get the bus from the Park & Ride at Stirling. Free parking, free bus…what’s not to like?!?
The whole process goes to plan and the electric bus is comfy and efficient.
We alight at Haymarket and wander to Vietnam House restaurant for lunch. We share summer spring rolls then Margaret enjoys Co’m Su’o’n – grilled pork loin marinated with lemongrass, garlic and shallots served with salad and steamed rice. With an egg on top!
I have seafood Xao Sa O’t – squid, prawns and mussels stir fired with lemongrass and chilli. Delicious!
Next we have a wander about, stop off for a drink then make our way to Edinburgh International Conference Centre where Margaret has an Aperol spritz and I have a coffee before joining the huge queue to get into the ‘room’ for the show – more like a 1500-seater theatre with comfy seats and great sound. Could be an awesome venue for an acoustic-ish kinda show/festival.
Margolyes is good – my only annoyance was needing a piss and not being able to go during her 70-minute show.
Then it’s back to the bus, a drive home from Stirling and an early-ish night.
THE DAY starts off with a session with one of my regular online guitar students…then I get the next single – MacPherson’s Lament – delivered to my aggregator (digital distributor) ready for release on Friday 26 September.
Next job is to move on with my accounts. Yeuch. Determined not to be leaving my tax return ‘til the last minute this year and get things back on track.
Mid-afternoon I take a bus to the village, pick up my prescription at the pharmacy and walk back home in the sunshine. Listening to some podcast on BBC Sounds.
After a little more work on my accounts I start the edit on the official video for MacPherson’s Lament. It becomes clear I ain’t gettting anywhere close even to a first cut for tonight’s Wildcats’ livestream on Facebook so I scour some backup drives for some bits and bobs of archive video to spin into the livestream instead.
The livestream goes fine and Margaret’s got dinner ready when I get back to the house shortly after 9pm….
Fiona rocks up and we go for a paddle. The village and bay is busy and suspecting same up the lochside toward Milarrochy we head up past Inchcailloch.
On to Torrinch where we stop at the far end for break from paddling.
It’s windier and we head back and there’s a fair amount of wake from random boats and stuff. I’m having trouble keeping my board straight and on investigating I’ve lost my main fin. 🙁
That makes paddling home a bit of an ordeal but a ‘side by side’ paddling between us helps a lot. We’re both pretty knackered when we get back.
Back out in the garden I get some more work done then make some stuffed burgers (mozzarella inside!) which I grill on the Ninja Woodfire with a touch of smoke. The mince was too lean to make smash burgers so I decided to try something new and different….it worked 🙂
AFTER a relaxing morning I venture onto the loch for a paddle. It’s pretty busy with lot of speedboats and jetskis but I have a nice paddle up to Milarrochy and back regardless.
Margaret’s away to the village hall to set up for a local place plan community engagement event – I have a quick shower then take a walk to the village hall and join her.
I walk back home and set up a website for my Love Balmaha idea. Photos, e-commerce and a Facebook page. I’ll get more socials set up in due course.
I finally get my settings right to make these….on sale soon…
AFTER coffee and emails/socials etc in bed we get up and I spend some time getting Margaret’s new iPad set up so it will work best for her.
In the office I work on a couple more items for my new local gifts idea. I’m planning to launch a small range of standalone local items that I will slowly – and strategically – add to.
The office is a bit of a mess, partly because I attempted to engrave a big 40oz insulated tumbler a few weeks ago and failed miserably. I have some time today so work on my set up and get it locked in.
Before I do a proper engrave I spend some time messing with my new(-ish) logo and trying out different fonts and text for the logotype. Once I’m happy I get busy and am pretty pleased with the results. I’ll likely get ‘em on sale soon.
The sun’s splitting the sky so I take a wander up the lochside and chat to ranger Louise up at Milarrochy.
Matty’s arrived when I get back and we chill the rest of the evening.
CHILL day today…it’s my birthday. Fucking 61. Mental age about 14. Age in my head 22.
I do minor amounts of work to avoid a backlog and kick off some ideas for coming weeks. Mostly, though, I sit the garden, play guitar and sporadically go onto Facebook a nd ‘like’ all the birthday messages.
Betty comes round for dinner and we have a nice evening and then a relatively early night. Be fucking Ovaltine and early bed soon!
FUNNY – used to be Monday that was my busy guitar lesson/workshop day but it’s kinda moved to Wednesday.
I have an online session first thing and my next student arrives just as the online session is winding up.
There’s about 20 minutes between the next two sessions then I get on with some routine admin stuff.
I have to nip into Glasgow and decide to kill two birds with one stone and get one shopping too. I also wanna pick up an iPad for Margaret. Her 10+ year-old MacBook Air is still going but it’s starting to flag a bit – I’ve replaced my laptop with an iPad Pro and (Logitech) keyboard case and haven’t looked back. And iPad OS26 (still in beta) has brought it even closer to a laptop experience.
I reckon the new ‘basic’ iPad with keyboard/trackpad case would not only be a more productive tool for Margaret being faster and more intuitive to use…but also comes in about 40% of the cost of a new laptop!
She’s not been sold on the idea in past chats so I decide to bite the bullet and sort it out to see if it’ll work for her.
I pick up a Logitech keyboard case with trackpad at the Braehead Apple Store and subsequently an iPad A16 at Costco. Total cost is under £400.
I go about my business in Glasgow, pick up some charcoal at Rightway in Polmadie, Costco and Tesco shopping then home.
Fiona’s coming along for dinner later and we’d planned a paddle beforehand…but her B&B guests haven’t arrived and I’m puggled, so instead start configuring the new iPad for Margaret.
Fiona rocks up at dinner time and we have a nice night of food, wine and chat.
AFTER breakfast I spend some time working with Margaret on our bookings system which has lain dormant since the pandemic!
The first booking system I built was on FileMaker…then Apple brought out Bento which was easier to synchronise and more user friendly so I rebuilt for that.
For some reason Apple discontinued Bento and the only thing we could find that had similar functionality was an app called TapForms. It worked but was clunky and awkward to work with.
When I was booking the last USA tour pre-Covid I discovered AirTable and found it pretty good but then Covid hit and Margaret never really used it and it fell into the background. Now we wanna start using it again.
It’s lunchtime before I go out for my first paddle in a month or more ‘cos of a combination of an elbow injury and shite weather.
I do a livestream from the water then back home for a shower, lunch, then I get the smoker on…time’s tight to get the beef short ribs done so I decide to try the electric smoker instead of the kamado.
Late afternoon one of my guitar students rocks up for a session. We’re not long done when an alert on my phone tells me the ribs are almost done.
Later on when we eat we’re happily surprise that the meat is just as good as when done on the kamado. Seems some things still fare better on charcoal, but some stuff comes out just fine on the electric jobbie….
SIX-thirty and the kids are jumping all over me. Jeez! On the plus side it gets me up to put the sourdough in the oven nice and early!
After breakfast I hit the studio for an online guitar lesson and Maggie and Joel bring their dog, Rosie, for Freya to look after for a few hours.
Next I have a custom pewter pin to finish off and get ready for sending out.
I spend the first part of the afternoon editing up the ‘burrito’ video I shot yesterday morning so I can spin it into tonight’s Wildcats’ livestream on Facebook.
When I come to export the finished video there’s an issue referencing the original media files which takes me an age to sort.
There’s some updates to run on the Quad Cortex which I leave running when Catriona comes to pick up the kids then I get busy worth some prep for the livestream which, unusually, goes pretty much to plan with no technical clusterfucks!
I DECIDE to film the breakfast burrito process which I’ll edit later on and spin into tomorrow (Monday) night’s Wildcats’ livestream on Facebook.
Once we’ve eaten I go out to the office and cast a spurtle pin – one of the recipients of the fi9lm premier batch has lost hers and asked if I could make a replacement.
There’s also an order in from the ‘States for a couple of acrylic Loch Lomond keyrings so I get them made up and ready for the post to pick up.
Next job is some livestreams of Still Friends which we get done before Catriona rocks up with the kids…we’re looking after Freya and Aaron tonight and tomorrow.
I have a batch of pizza dough all ready to go so we all sit outside and eat pizza before Catriona heads back to Doune.
After the kids are in bed I get a little work done then we chill and watch Bill and Dorothy’s livestream.
