Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
It's Showtime!
by admin - 23:31 on 05 August 2010
One of the benefits of my part-time self-employed status is that I can tell the Chief Gnome's assistant that I don't want to work on Black Isle Show day. So today Matchgirl and I were able to visit the Highlands' premier agricultural show for the first time.
With cunning foresight, I'd even booked Mr Ford's MOT test at RM Motors in Muir of Ord, just a few minutes' walk from the showground, so crowd-free parking was guaranteed.
A crowd-free show wasn't. As someone with an aversion to being part of large numbers of people in confined spaces it was hard work after a while, but worth the effort, even if Matchgirl now wants to keep goats in the grounds of The Rural Retreat.
Finding space might be difficult: an outdoor hot tub, a rustic garage, a huge sit-on lawnmower and a £51,000 Land Rover all became objects of her desire during our perambulations. It can't be long before she wants to buy Mr Moneybags' field so we can extend.
We left after five hours, weighed down with literature handed out by Transition Black Isle and newly enrolled as members of the RSPB (and not before time). I also took away around 250 snaps which back home I whittled down to thirteen with disappointing ease, and the quality of several of those is marginal.
Hats off to the newspaper photographers who return to the office with a stack of decent snaps. My excuse is that I didn't have their access all areas passes.
The journey home was in an MOT failure; Mr Ford returns to Muir on Monday for a new offside rear wheel bearing. This explains the noise which I'd erroneously put down to a blowing exhaust, as a consequence of which I'd taken the Mondeo to Dingwall's exhaust centre earlier in the week.
"Nothing wrong with it, squire," they told me, "but those front tyres..." Much sucking of teeth. "And the alignment's off." Lots of money later, all was fine.
I wonder if the statute of limitations for suing Highland Council over its pothole-ridden roads has run out yet?
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