Beautiful blue sky but cold – 2 December 2025

When we had breakfast, made by Scamp, the sun was streaming in the front window. The back window wasn’t quite so interesting. Big heavy clouds away to the north. Thankfully they stayed there before disappearing over the hills, leaving the sun for us.

I sent Hazy a Happy Birthday message and it wasn’t long before she replied with her usual “Hello! Are you free?” Then we sang the “Happy Birthday To You” song which probably embarrassed her and had a wee chat catching up with what was going on down south. Glad she enjoyed the prezzies we sent her.

Later, I was browsing through what was on offer in the Apple App Store and found an App I was sure I’d bought, but which wasn’t on any of my devices. It looked interesting and wasn’t expensive, so I bought it. It’s called ‘Keysmith’ and seems to work with another app I use every day called ‘Keyboard Maestro’. Hopefully the two won’t clash with each other. I’m not going to explain what it does yet, but looks interesting.

Scamp was meeting Shona today to be a ‘listening ear’ when she (Shona) went to see the Dr Banerjee to find out about her recent blood test results. He’s been there for ages a really nice man who takes his time to explain things. Both Scamp and Shona seemed happy with what he said. He never “makes a drama out of a crisis” to quote an old advert.

While the ladies were out, I was making steak and kidney from kidneys out of the freezer and defrosted with a pack of much, much older steak chunks from Waitrose, hopefully only last year’s and no older! The steak was tough (chugh in Scotland) despite being in the slow cooker for ages. The kidneys were excellent. Scamp said put everything back in the slow cooker again cook them until you’re going to bed. I wasn’t convinved, but did as I was told. After another four hours in the slow cooker they were perfect. That’s tomorrow’s dinner sorted!

When we got back after dropping Shona off at Paul’s house we watched another episode of Highland Cops a surprisingly interesting fly on the wall documentary based in the north of Scotland … obviously! Worth watching.

Other than that we didn’t do all that much today. The bloke from Virgin Media is due tomorrow evening so, hopefully we’ll have the ‘Big Telly’ back in business, although Scamp’s laptop has kept us going for the best part of a week.

PoD was a shot looking along the boardwalk as the sun set behind the trees at 2.24pm. Daylight doesn’t last long in Scotland in winter.

Scamp’s booked for getting her hair cut tomorrow and I may get my own locks shorn this week too, if I can find the time.