Busy old weekend

Dashed off to the Highlands of Scotland this weekend with son Robbie (16) (that is his age not his IQ).

If you have never been to the Highlands here is a picture of what they look like...

Had a night at Bridge of Orchy Hotel - truly Scottish welcome from the Russian staff there. It was pitch black when we arrived but the next morning dawned glorious. The views over the hills were stunning with snow, mist, sunlight all fighting for the attention of the eye. So we responded accordingly and went to breakfast. I had a light meal while Robbie went for "Death by Cholesterol" illustrated below...

Unbelievable Robbie ate all this and three rounds of toast.

Off thence to Plockton which is to Scotland what Compton is to England (see earlier blog) except that I really love Plockton. We passed the stunning Glencoe - Not to be confused with Sebastian Coe or Glen Close!

Watched the Rugby - Come on England!!

Came home via House of Bruar where I bought a stupid amount of Venison Salami.

On arrival home I enjoyed a lovely Skype chat with my daughter Eloise -(Still in Corsica- see earlier blog - but not the same one as Compton). The conversation got round to the Venison Salami and the price of it - at which point Mrs Blog joined in and said that she had seen a gold dress she liked which was cheaper than 200g of Venison Salami. This naturally led to thoughts of Lady Gaga and her dress of pork chops or sirloin steak or whatever it was and then I suggested this....

Of course it did not take long before my wife and daughter pointed out the flaws in the design such as....

As you can see our pet Labrador (Muffin) really likes Venison Salami which kind of puts paid to my clever idea of having a dress you wear that looks good enough to eat!

Oh well back to work tomorrow.

A week of IT problems

A week of PC problems is I hope behind me. It started with the local town server going down.Apparently this an "outage" should be an "outrage"! Why is it that IT geeks have BO, pony tails and annoy everyone by inventing words that we don't need??? An "outage" - should read - "buggered", "broken" or "temporarily unavailable"

It took two days to get us back online although all the geeks were sayng that everything was fixed - or "un-outaged".

Then my leg continued to play up so my IT band was suffering even after Magic Mark had done his thing last week. Had another session this morning where I ran into "Mrs McKinnon" - she looked familiar and after a while I realised she was the Chemistry techer who had been at the parents evening last night! Another geek!!

Finally the last IT problem. A guy at work who sent me an email asking if I had managed to solve a client's problem. In itself not an issue except that he had singularly failed to tell me at any stage that the client had a problem. So an upset client is now an angry upset client. I know what you are thinking - was this a computer problem? After all the theme on this post is IT??

No it isnt - this guy is not a geek he is an................

................. "Irritating Tw*t"

Getting Fixed

At just after nine this morning I went to see Mark the Physio. He has successfully treated just aout everything that has ever gone wrong with my muscles in the past. In fact in one session he fixed my neck which for more than ten years had stumped several BUPA physiotherapists.

Mark is a German/Jamaican who speaks English with a Scottish and Jamaican accent (try the accent out in the dialogue below!!). All in all a good guy.
"What is up?" he asked
"My knee" I replied and explained that my running had left me with a knee injury.
"I have been to two other physio's" I explained, "one said it was my IT band and the other that my muscles round the knee were too weak" (The IT band is the Iliotibial muscle which runs down the outside of the leg next to the quads)
Two minutes later and Mark had concluded my legs were of different lengths causing my left leg to work harder than it should. He began the treatment explaining that he needed to loosen up my piriformis....bum to you!
There I was lying on front on the treatment table and he came out with the immortal instruction
"Squeeze your bottom like you were trying to crack a walnut!"
I don't know about you but I have never tried to break a walnut with my hands let alone my buttocks.
The treatment continued with work on my 1st Rib which was stuck, my neck which needed traction, my IT band and my shoulders. Apparently all these problems are linked to my knee.

Finally I got exercises to loosen my calf and to strengthen my buttocks. YES you heard I have at the age of fifty need to do exercises to make my bum work better!!

Having looked at this picture again it really worries me!

So after a few months of this I should look like this -