Estate Agents, A New Coat and a Pipe Band

 

Well, what do you know? My photo program is allowing me to crop again. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it, just in case I jinxed it. 

So we drove down to Glasgow a week past  Thursday and on Friday we got up quite early and went over to Stirling. We visited two estate agents, both of whom we had been in contact with already, sampled an Italian cafe and bought the OH a new coat in the Mountain Warehouse sale. Him needing  a new waterproof thing hadn't really been on the agenda until we were ready to leave Orkney at which point we saw that the sleeve on his current one was ripped in several places. As it was waterproof there was no way I could just sew it up, and to be honest, he must have had it for years so, as my mother used to say, it didn't owe us anything.  I think the shop we bought it from in Kirkwall has had three changes of business since then! We decided to have a look in M and S when we got to Stirling, but then spotted Mountain Warehouse opposite and checked there instead. The coat is very nice and there was a lot of money off it so win, win. 

While we were in the cafe one of the agents we had been talking to sent us details of four houses on their books that she thought might suit. One we discounted immediately, and the other three we drove to and checked out the outsides, dismissing a further two, which left us with only one in the running so we arranged a viewing for that.

And that filled the day, by then it was time to go and meet my friend Doreen  for an early dinner. I had my first alcoholic drink for months, I think possibly the last one before that was a glass of wine in Finland last summer; we're not big drinkers. And after the meal I transferred an overnight bag from our car to Doreen's and the OH wended his way back to Glasgow. Doreen and I drove into Stirling, she dropped me by the Albert Halls while she parked the car and I joined what seemed like the longest queue I'd ever been in, to pick up a ticket. Just as well we had the pipe band to entertain us. I could have done without Mairi's Wedding, but there again, it wasn't Highland Cathedral. 

I had got to the Box Office but hadn't actually got my ticket when Doreen arrived from the back of the queue, which says something about the efficiency or otherwise of the box office staff. Actually it probably wasn't them. You know when you go to the bank and there are two people at the cashier's  desk and one of them is banking £742 in copper coins and the other one is demanding to know why the bank can't  send a tiny amount of money free of charge to a country which is so suspicious of foreign bank transactions that it demands a five page form filled in in triplicate, countersigned by the sendee, the cashier and two independent witnesses in good standing in the community? It was a bit like that. 

Anyway despite the huge numbers of people in the queue we all got in and we all got a seat and the entertainment began. Of which more another day.