Window Shopping & Wonderful Weather

There’s no better way to embark on a non-shopping venture than with a little bit of torture; or window shopping, as it’s normally known.

Quite why I decided to go trailing round the shops yesterday after work when I knew that buying was out-of-bounds is anyone’s guess, but that’s what I did.

Thankfully, the only things that made it back home with me were vitamins and with our health records, they were definitely essential purchases.

Today was much easier...

Scotland - usually famed only for rain and midges - was basking in glorious, record breaking April sunshine, so it was on with the shorts and up to the ice cream shop.

It’s a 40 minute walk to the ice cream shop, so by our calculations whatever calories we consume there will have been burned off by the time we get back home.

I just need to dig out last year’s fake tan (can’t buy new stuff) and rid myself of my West-of-Scotland blue pallor before I frighten any more small children with my short wearing!

Seven Days of Sunshine

Scotland is a truly beautiful place when the clouds clear and for the last seven days we have been bathed in blissful sunshine; making Hobbs a very happy, little dog.

I realise that my recent rambling about the weather is making me sound like my mother. Also, I’m worried about scaring away the tourist trade and being sent hate mail by VisitScotland, so I promise to stop and will leave you instead with a little glimpse of how gorgeous this country can be.

Rain Rain Go Away

Well, I certainly needed my wellingtons and waterproofs for this year’s holiday!

After being lured into a ‘Staycation’ by the Met Office’s predictions of more sunshine than your average Brit can soak up in a lifetime, we ended up having to come home after nine days because we’d exhausted all of our wet weather activities and just couldn’t face any more rain.

All was not lost though...

Kevin transformed himself into an expert weather watcher and for the last six days of our break was able to find little pockets of sunshine across Scotland that we basked in until the clouds came over and it was time to head for the next hot (okay then, luke warm) spot.

Battering rain on brollies replaced sausages sizzling on the bar-b-q for nearly everyone who holidayed at home this year and I can’t help feeling a little suspicious about the Met Office, their glowing forecast and subsequent apology for getting it so wrong.

At a time when we are hit by recession and swine flu, wasn’t it rather convenient to persuade us to give up our flights to sunnier climates in favour of the ‘Staycation’ that the media were so keen to promote?

Maybe I’m just being an old pessimist. Maybe it was a genuine mistake on the part of the Met Office. Or maybe it was a rather clever way of confining our cash and contamination to the one country...