Category Archives: Travels and Trips

Anna’s Birthday

 Posted by Mark on Monday, 8 December 2014

 

Although the weather was a bit wet and windy with the odd hailstones we had a fun weekend. On Saturday we pointed Steve in the direction of Kirkwall in his car to do a bit of Christmas shopping on his own, whilst Anna and I went off clutching our house plans and visited the kitchen design shop and the bathroom design shop to get their input on the sizes and the layouts of rooms. We got some interesting ideas and will be modifying the design slightly. I have also posted a picture of our newly repaired porch, it’s looking much smarter now and is a lot warmer.

Whilst walking around Kirkwall we popped into Grooves which is fast becoming my favourite shop. They just had in some limited prints by the local cartoon artist Alex Leonard. I had seen a particular one of his works at an exhibition when were were house hunting earlier this year, and regretted not buying it then. So Anna bought it for me as a late birthday present. As we are both very difficult to buy for we tend to buy such presents when we see them, so this print will be hung in the office in pride of place.

On Sunday it was Anna’s birthday so as an extra special treat I drove her to the once a month Dounby Car boot sale in the village hall. I really now how to show a girl a good time ! Actually it turned out rather good fun , we met lots of people we knew and most of them seemed to know that it was Anna’s birthday ( Facebook can be wonderful ). The great thing about this car boot is that it doesn’t seem to start until 10 am, none of this getting up at 7 am lark! After this it was lunchtime and so I took Anna and Steve down to Helgis in Kirkwall which is one of our favourite restaurants. The beer is good ( but not for me today, as designated driver ) and the menu is interesting and varied. We had a good blow out and waddled back to the car to head home as Anna had all her packing to do for her flight to China on Monday morning to work at the World Mind Games there.

6 am Monday morning I got up with Anna to drive her to Kirkwall Airport, we had to drive through a blizzard of sleet and when we got there were told that the flight was delayed by an hour and a half! Anna had to fly to Edinburgh and then to Heathrow and then to Beijing, so didn’t need a delay that might mean that she would miss her connections! As it turned out she managed to make the connections and I have just received an email saying that she is at Heathrow waiting for her flight. I got back about 7:30 and went back to bed for a while.