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.
A Bit of a Breeze
by admin - 21:30 on 08 December 2011
My final day aboard the good ship GNoME (although hints have already been dropped about possible future need) was suitably apocalyptic, thanks to the storm that's ravaged Scotland most of the day and night.
The Highlands may not have suffered as much as places further south but the roads have still been turned into an obstacle course in which drivers daft enough to use them slalom around fallen branches and standing water.
I'm not daft, but devotion to Strawdogs meant I ventured into the howling outdoors and the Black Isle's B road network for tonight's rehearsal at Mulbuie Hall, leaving behind a concerned wife and a couldn't-care-less cat.
A fallen tree blocked the road to Culbokie so I was motoring cautiously through Dingwall – a town surrounded by floodwater – when Jim phoned to say Matt couldn't find a route through the timber-strewn Evanton byways and the rehearsal was off. Tomorrow's gig may be off too; I'm not keen, as more snow is forecast, but the management will decide tonight whether to pull the plug. If the weather's as bad as predicted there'll be no audience anyway.
I returned to The Rural Retreat over more flooded roads, fording several streams along the way and observing with alarm the dimming of headlights and dashboard display when I entered the water, even at a responsible 5mph. Back home, Laphroaig was necessary.
The Retreat was a fine place to return to, filled with candlelight and and the flicker of an open fire because the electricity was off, much to Matchgirl's Masterchef-deprived chagrin. I could even forget the swift-flowing burn and adjacent paddling pool outside the door, the result of rain, snow-melt and poor drainage – something I'll have lots of time to investigate in the weeks ahead.
It's going to be a long winter.
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