Visited Marrakech and proposed to my darling Ria. Thankfully, she said yes!

Looked at a lot of flats in an attempt to finally get on the property ladder.

May

Had a wee break on the West coast around Troon. Good ice cream.

Went on a mountain biking related stag, somehow survived despite my lack of fitness.

June

Found a beautiful flat and jumped through the many mortgage and solicitor hoops. RBS now own our soul.

Got hospitality tickets to T in the Park though work. Had an ace time with the boys. Shame we went on the Sunday, Monday was pretty painful.

Moved out of Gilmore Place and into our new place. Didn’t want to lose our deposit so we did an epic amount of cleaning.

August

Summer emerged in Scotland. My parents, sister and brother in-law all stayed at our new place. We took them out on the town during the festival. Great times.

September

Mike’s stag do. Fired shotguns (badly) and jumped off cliffs into a very cold river – surprisingly good fun!

October

Our holiday for the year: Venice, Florence, Sienna and Rome. That warrants a post of it’s own…

November

Grew a ‘tache for Movember. Lots of people laughed at my face.

My little sister got married!

December

Christmas in Bathgate, post-xmas in Billingham. New Year in Bathgate.

Roll on 2012…

First up here are some from a long weekend we had in Troon. We had a very wet and windy visit to the nearby wee island of Cumbrae:

In the summer we visited my parents in Teesside and popped down the coast to Runswick Bay:

When my parents visited a few months back we travelled on the train to the Summerlee Heritage Park:

Friday evening we had a very nice meal at L’Escargot Blanc, but chickened out of the £20 “surprise” menu. It really was a surprise, only the chef knew what we would get, the waitress wouldn’t give us any hints, and the whole table had to opt for it. Given the name of the establishment, there was a good chance it might be snails.

Saturday we wandered around Bristo square before picking a random matinee show to go and see – Kate Fox News. Mostly an auto-biographical show based around the major news events in her life, her slightly bizzare up-bringing and, sprinkled with some poetry. Browns on George Street for lunch, very busy, great burger! Then off to the Book Festival to browse the books and people watch the odd mix of grizzled book fanatics, families eating ice creams, gin soaked publishers and people hoarding spare chairs on the lawn. We had tickets to see Rhapsodies in Red, White and Blue at 7pm so we went home to smarten up before heading to the newly refurbished (in a frantic hurry just before the festival) Usher Hall. Great performance, I don’t think I’ve ever since something with a a full orchestra and choir before. I loved the Copland and Gershwin, but some of the Ives was quite challenging. Back home for an excellent (and promptly delivered) takeaway from Zen Kitchen.

Sunday we had a bit of a lie-in and then got a bus over the Foodies Festival in Holyrood Park. I wasn’t quite sure what the expect, they had seemingly been giving free tickets out left right and centre. I was pleasantly surprised though! It was a good size, lots of different exhibitors and we signed up for a free rum tasting class – which amazingly wasn’t a complete sales pitch. Scorching weather by this point which just brought even more people out to the festival! My only nitpick was that they needed more seats, people were sunning and drinking all over the place. We saw my parents off on their train back south and then I joined Ria and friends at Reel to Real. Which was pretty schmaltzy, camp musical goodness with some clever interactions between screen and stage.

Great weekend.

View on Flickr.

A couple of weeks ago we had a long weekend in London with friends. Went to Borough Market, The Design Museum, had afternoon tea at The Athenaeum and dinner at Arbutus Restaurant. Also caught up with some old friends from university which made for a fun evening.

Pretty clunky I know.

What I really want is a way of tweaking my photos online and getting those changes mirrored back locally. Slightly hampered by the fact that my local photos are on my desktop PC, which gets turned on monthly at the moment. Ideally I would have all my photos on some kind of NAS which I could then edit and upload from via my imaginary Macbook Pro and access the NAS remotely from work, pub etc. Oh and NAS should backup into the cloud. For free.

How does this compare to your workflow dear readers?

February: Ria and I had a few days in Krakow including Valentines Day at Auschwitz.

March: Had a weekend near Helensburgh at Strone Cottage – outdoor hot tubs are one of mankind’s great inventions.

April: Saw Honda’s Asymo, destroyed my website, went to a huge 50s themed charity party.

May: Spent a long weekend in Arran, travelling there on the train and then the ferry. Did some nice but very, very wet walking. First round of redundancies at work.

June: Lovely wedding, lots of warm evenings drinking outdoors, saw numerous films at the film festival. “Our” birthday picnic.

July: Went to Whitby and visited my parents at home including a day trip to York. Began the great flat hunt.

August: fringe, fringe, fringe and found a nice flat! 2nd round of redundanices at work.

September: Moved in with Ria, had a weekend in London, rounded off the festival, re-designed my website.

October: Had two weeks in New York, Boston, Chicago and New York again. Amazing trip – wanted to return immediately. Numerous halloween parties.

November: Finally had our flat warming party, my cousin in Kansas got engaged.

December: The Jackson & Phillips families went for a weekend in St Andrews together.

It is time for your meter reading

What the heck? IT IS TIME – It’s like a summons to climb the sides of mount doom. Why so formal? Even just changing “it is” to “it’s” softens the tone.

Then I get a follow-up email, with the following:

You have not yet given us your meter reading

Not much better. Did I commit a crime? Not really a gentle reminder. Does anyone in marketing even read these before they are put into production?

I also added links to the blog archive and blog search functionality at the bottom of the page. Since my last re-design the styles on the blog category pages weren’t ideal so I took this oppourtunity to tidy them up. The blog archives page isn’t great, I could do with a better way of visulising all of the historic content maybe using sort of tag cloud.

View on Flickr

The trip was amazing! We ate lots of fantastic food, saw great shows, went up tall buildings, drank cocktails, went to zoos, took boat cruises, ate some more food, saw the sites, did shopping and generally stood around looking up and gaping at the tall buildings.

More photos to follow of Chicago and Boston.

Arrived 2pm, collected tickets, checked-in, walked to Strand Leon, walked to Covent Garden. Wandered in shops, champagne at the Liberty champagne bar, then tube to Haymarket Royal. Saw Breakfast At Tiffany’s – good but uncomfortable seats (you get what you pay for). Hungry, found random Italian “Prezzo” and had calzone and wine. Bed.

Sunday

Breakfast from kitchenette then walked down Mall to palace, cyclists everywhere, saw Boris. Went up arch then tube to St Paul’s. Coffee and cake at Paul, peaked in cathedral, took photos and then walked across bridge to Tate Modern. Nothing new on so carried on along river to Tower Bridge view. Tubed over to north side and walked to British Museum. Tired, had coke and cream scone. Did bits of Egypt and Greece then headed back to hotel. Got ready and headed out to Benares. Very nice! Had brilliant cocktails, tandoori chicken, meatballs/salmon, deserts, bottle of wine, coffee and petit fours. Very swanky part of town. Tubed to London bridge and met parents in the Real Greek for a drink.

Monday

Checked-out, breakfast from Starbucks, got London Eye tickets, walked to Westminster and met parents. Went on Houses of Parliament tour, very interesting! Then waked over to London Eye and saw the view. Tubed to Liberty cafe and had nice lunch with parents. Realised it was getting on so went and retrieved bags from hotel and got to Kings Cross. Boarded train back north.