Scottish bands or weren't the eighties fab!

Wow how weird - I was blog surfing.. as you do... and I checked out Cathy Zielske's blog...as you do..and she mentioned Aztec Camera of all bands in one of her posts - who knew Roddy Frame was big in the US!!! well not me obviously LOL

It set me to thinking about how may fab scottish bands there were in the 80s. I've just spent hours on youtube reminiscing :D

How about:

Love & Money (Dogs in the Traffic has to be one of the best albums ever)
Orange Juice (and Edwyn Collins)
Win (if anyone has a link to Super Popoid Grove I would be eternally grateful!!! LOL)
Blue Nile
Hipsway
Danny Wilson
Goodnight Mr MacKenzie (yes saw them acouple of several times before Shirley Manson & John Duncan hit the big time...Garbage & Nirvana respectively)
Hue & Cry
Deacon Blue
Runrig
Big Country
Simple Minds
Eurythmics
Wet Wet Wet (one of the few bands of any note to have played Largs...but before they had a record deal! - they were pretty ropey and the crowd consisted of me and about 20 mates taking the mick LOL )
Texas
Fruits of Passion (great Edinburgh girl band - again any links to any of their songs much appreciated!)

I also found this on a Firefly site

The Browncoats Prayer

OUR JOSS,
Who art in Hollywood, Whedon be thy name.
Thy ideas come, and will be done
On film as they are in Comic Books.

Give us someday a little more Serenity,
And deliver us from Reality Television.
For thine is the Wit, the Wisdom,
And the Imagination

Forever and ever,

AMEN.

Love it!!!

Well for a change I have been very busy scrapping wise over the last few days. I finished my entry in the wonderful Buffy CJ - Girl's Rock - This book is just gorgeous. I was really reluctant to part with it...maybe that was why I was so late posting it! Sorry again Jane :D


Then I had "hunners" of cards to make - this one was for my friends daughter. I used the Klutz templates I bought in Borders (see previous post) to hand cut the clothes.


Then a very quick card ie at the last moment, for my uncle's 65th Birthday


Then a card for my nephew using offcuts of the new Junkitz papers

As well as that I also finished a card and a LO for my Angel Crafts design team kit, plus a birthday card for Robert (it is his birthday on Wednesday), a name badge for Scrapaganza AND started my planner for the retreat as well...PHEW!

I also got a parcel with some goodies in it from Bargainpack

These little cuties make a nice little neat row of holes (one is single, one is double) for stitching on your layouts.

And this is a new version of the Dymo punch - it has both an upper and lower case alphabet and comes with some gorgeous colours of tape.


Non-scrapping news

We went to party at a local restaurant to celebrate my uncle's birthday at the weekend. It was great to see some faces, including my cousins that I hadn't seen for years...and I mean many years plus it was lovely that my mum felt well enough to come out to play too :D

Kenneth went to Aviemore for the weekend...yes yet another weekend away. His friend's parents had invited him to stay with them at their holiday flat for the weekend. They managed to go swimming and spend the day at Landmark, although the weather wasn't all that great.

I think I will try and get an early night tonight as I have a busy week for thr rest of the week:

Tomorrow - Talk by Christopher Brookmyre at Glasgow University. If you haven't read any of his books then can I strongly recommend them to you. They are hysterically funny, satirical, crime thrillers set in Scotland. I mane how can you resist a book called "One Fine Day in The Middle of the Night" or "A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away".

Then Wednesday is Robert's birthday so we will have a small family party then.

Thursday I am babysitting Archie (Officially the absolutely BEST behaved baby in the world...EVER!)

Friday - Yaaay off to see Meatloaf in concert

Saturday - out for a meal with Robert in the evening

Sunday - well it has to be a day of rest deosn't it.

So if I don't blog again soon you will know why!!

Monday 7th May

We pack up the caravan and start the journey home via Granton on Spey to visit a smokehouse
Believe me the website is better than the actual "tour" which basically involves looking through glass windows at people at work cutting slices of fish...yawn! The interactive bits weren't working so this was pretty much a waste of time...even the price of the smoked salmon in the factory shop was high!

Next stop though is Killiecrankie. We take a short stroll through the woods to see the Soldier's Leap and spend a while admiring the view.

Yes Kenneth is starting to look like a
girl with that hair and no he
does not want it cut!!!

Then we head just down the road to Pitlochry for lunch. I haven't been to Pitlochry for years (one of my friends from Uni was from Dunkeld so I had visited a few times then) but I couldn't remember much about the place at all. We have lunch at Victoria's which was really good and then have a mooch about the shops, dodging showers. We leave at about 3pm and get back into Largs just after 6pm (after stopping off at our local tesco for some basics to tide us over till the next day).

I have been nursing a cold for most of the weekend but once I am home I feel a lot worse and head to bed for an early night. end up staying in bed for the next 2 days as I feel so yuk.
never mind I am on the mend now although still coughing away

Sunday 6th May

Second time lucky for Brodie Castle. We get there for opening time at 10:30am and are soon enjoying an excellent guided tour of the castle that we all enjoy.

Photos courtesy of RLS.org.uk


I can't even remember where we end up for lunch but we do drive over the bridge to North Kessock to see if we can spot any dolphins or seals - Kirsten maintains she saw a seal so she is happy!
Then we end up back at the driving range at Fairways again - not my idea...honest! But I do take another shot or two :D
Next stop is Borders. I like Borders in Inverness as I always manage to find some interesting things like this
and this - now this one I have wanted for ages. I originally ordered it from Amazon, then was told it would be in stock in 28 days, the two months and then no sorry you can't have it after all!! So I was v v pleased to find this at last.


and this - which I thought looked like fun for making birthday cards etc

We have our tea at Pizza hut then back to the caravan where we have some fun playing with felt!!! LOL Look what we made. The one on the left is Kirsten's and the one on the right is Robert's - all his own work too - who new he had a creative side. Might have to start hiding my craft stuff from him. Kenneth made a really cool one too called Paches (pronounced Patches) but I cant find that to photograph at the moment. Kirsten's is called Knotts and Robert's is either Square Head or Cheese Head...we haven't decided yet. No we are not mad... well not much anyway LOL

Saturday 5th May

On Saturday we have breakfast in the caravan then drive along to Elgin. I look for MrsMacs shop but in vain. Hadn't realised it was outwith the town centre. There are a lot of good shops in Elgin though. Plenty of craft, fabric, wool shops and K&K are delighted to find a large toy shop.

We buy some butteries and cakes in Walkers bakery then drive up to Lossiemouth for a picnic.
The view is wonderful but for some unfathomable reason I fail to take any pictures!!! So here is roughly the view we had courtesy of www.potteryhouse.co.uk.


After our picnic we stroll across the above bridge (how could you not) and then we head back towards Brodie Castle along the coastal route.

What we had failed to realise was that Brodie Castle is not open to the public on Saturdays! When we get there we can see there is a wedding taking place. K&K have a bit of a play in the play area and then we decide to head to Brodie Countryfare - unfortunately this is not to be either as the road between the castle and Brodie is closed so we give up and head back to the caravan...after all Dr Who is on tonight.

Photo courtesy of NTS

Friday 4th May

The Travelodge is situated right beside Fairways Leisure so we have a really good buffet breakfast in the clubroom (£6-95 for adults, children free). Entertainment is provided by some numpty who decides to put his croissant in the toaster (one of those large catering ones where you pop the toast on to a rolling grid at the top then the toast appears at the bottom) and predictably it gets stuck and sets fire to the machine. Said numpty is then about to try to unstick the croissant with a knife (now what did we learn in school about metal and electricity!!!). Fortunately the manager stops him, puts out the small fire and normal service is resumed!!!

After breakfast Kenneth begs us for a shot on the driving range so Robert and him sort that out. Then Robert convinces me to have a shot. Now I have never played golf. I vaguely remember my grandpa teaching me how to hold a club when I was about 7 but apart from that nothing...which is strange when you think about it as both my gran & grandpa golfed and my dad is an excellent golfer...when he was younger his handicap was right down at 1 or 2 at one point. Anyway after a few "air shots" I get the hang of it, a couple of pieces of advice from Robert about my stance and hey what do you know I can hit this thing 100 yds...hmm maybe I will go for some lessons one day.

After our golfing we check out our hotel and go to visit Culloden. We discover the Murrays were in the front line (as were the Frasers, of which I am one on my mother's side). K&K then spend the rest of the holiday playing at Jacobites & RedCoats.



After Culloden we head back in to Inverness where I manage to visit a couple of craft shops in the Victorian Market and then it is time for the drive along the coast to Nairn to check-in to our caravan. We are lucky to be allocated a 3 bedroom van very near to the beach.

For tea we decide on fish suppers (well I have White Pudding) from the on-site chippie. Now I said to Robert that I was sure the last time we were here we had had fish from there and it still had the skin on (why would anyone make fish like that!!!). No, no said Robert, that's just an English thing, it won't be like that up here!. Hmmm proven right yet again LOL. Anyway neither Robert nor Kenneth particularly enjoyed their tea.

It was a nice evening so we went for a walk along the beach. K&K even went in the sea for a paddle - yes very keen!!!


Then back to the caravan for 9pm so that Kenneth could catch up on the Dr Who episode he had missed last week...yes the caravan even had a freeview box (so we had BBC3) as well as a DVD player.

Thursday 3rd May

This is a mini-trip report about our trip to Nairn - really just done for myself for future reference...so scrappy people feel free to skip as there ain't much scrapping goin' on in the next few posts.

Thursday dawned bright and clear...a good omen for our weekend away. Robert decides to get a haircut before we go so nips down the town first thing. We then pop into the primary school to vote. How complicated was that! Crosses on one ballot paper (with two different votes on the one paper) and numbers on the other. No wonder there would turn out to be so many spoilt papers. Fairly crucial in our constituency of Cunningham North where the overall majority was only 48 votes but there were over 1000 spoilt papers. Including apparently at least 100 ballots from Arran which "got wet" and therefore couldn't be counted electronically so weren't included at all. What a disgrace!

Anyway I digress LOL

After voting we pop in to see Mum & Dad briefly and then we are on our way. We make it all the way to Aviemore without stopping. Yaay a new record. Kirsten normally needs the toilet a long time before we get that far. One time on the journey "Up North" we stopped at Tesco in Perth for Kirsten to use the facilities, then Tesco in Aviemore and then finally Tesco in Inverness. That was the trip that became know as the "Tour of Tesco Toilets"!!!

So we are pleased to make it to Aviemore without any stops. We have lunch at Roo's Leap restaurant in Aviemore that Dawn recommended. It was great (once we managed to find our way in as they are digging up the pavement all around it at the moment). It is an Australian restaurant but basically serves TexMex food. Robert had the fajitas, I had an enchilada, and K&K had a melted cheese tortilla sandwich that they both really enjoyed (basically a cheese toastie but made with tortillas instead of bread).

After our yummy lunch we wandered around Aviemore, popping in to Waterstones (I liked this better when it was still Ottakers) and then we we were on our way. We arrived at our Travelodge at Inverness at about 4pm. Checked-in, had a quick breather then it was off to explore Inverness. We saw the castle then popped in for a quick wander round the shops as it was late opening (well until 7 o'clock anyway). K&K decided they were hungry again (I was still stuffed from lunch) so we popped in to McDonalds to get them a Happy Meal each. Robert had one too!!!


Then back to the Hotel where K&K had baths using their bathbombs they had just bought from Lush. Kenneth had an Avobath and Kirsten had Think Pink (now there's a surprise LOL ).