Weather Or Not

The weather here in deepest, darkest Jockshire can't seem to make its mind up at the moment.

Saturday, which saw Mrs Wife and I host a barbecue for around 50 people, was scorching, and several of those present, myself included, ended the day a more lurid pink than they had started it.

But by the next morning, the debris in the garden was soaked by a constant, core-soaking drizzle that never seemed to depart.

This morning, after Mrs Wife and I made it to bed around midnight following a late evening showing of The Dark Knight, we were awoken around 6am by rumbles of thunder that were, well, thunderous.

And now Dungroanin' is shrouded in a mist that has rolled in, presumably from the North Sea.

Hasn't anyone told the weather that it's meant to be mid-summer?

Eight More Things About Me

My favourite Fred Astaire-loving wiseass Jooette has tagged me with the Eight Fascinating Facts meme.

I've actually done this one before, but what's another eight facts between friends? So here are facts nine to 16:

1: The first football match I ever attended was a friendly between Brechin City and Rangers in 1990 or 1991 for Dougie Scott's testimonial. I think the score was 6-4 to Brechin. Ian Durrant scored a penalty and Mark Walters, Terry Hurlock and Colin Scott all played for Rangers.

2: I have eight Standard Grades, seven Highers, two Certificates of Sixth Year Studies and a Bachelor's degree in Journalism. Oh, and National Certificates in Art, Music and Keyboard Skills.

3: I've scored two goals in the Aberdeen Oil League this season. Our team hasn't won a match yet.

4: I collect Hurricane cocktail glasses from Hard Rock Cafes around the world. So far, my collection covers Rome, Sydney, Edinburgh, Madrid, Melbourne, Singapore, New York, Cancun, Paris, Kuala Sumper, Surfer's Paradise and Hollywood.

5: Wales is the only country in the British Isles that I've never been to. For some reason, it just doesn't appeal.

6: The first dance at my wedding was Here, There and Everywhere by The Beatles.

7: This year, I'm spending Xmas with Mrs Wife's parents for the first time before jetting off to Brussels for New Year.

8: I attended four different Primary Schools and one High School as a boy. My first school had several hundred pupils, my second had nine when I started and seven when I left, my third had three when I started and five when I left, and my fourth had 13 when I started and 11 when I left.

So, weren't those facts just scintillatingly exciting? I'm meant to tag eight more bloggers to play along, but I think everyone should play if they want to and ignore it if they don't.

Cold Days and Classic Movies

There's a nasty nip in the air today (no Pearl Harbour jokes please) here on the east coast of Scotland, and it's clear that winter is most definitely either here or on the way.

When Mrs Wife and I made the decision almost a year ago to move east, we did so knowing full well that the weather would be drier, but most certainly colder. But I'd forgotten just how bitterly cold it can be over on this side of the country.

The heating in my office didn't seem to be working too effectively this morning, and hopefully this won't be an indication of things to come, as the days will certainly get colder as we reach mid winter.

And this evening, I am left to my own devices, rabbit-sitting duties aside, as Mrs Wife is in Edinburgh for training. Last night, faced with the prospect of a free evening, I decided to watch the The Shawshank Redemption for the first time.

I don't know how I'd managed not to see the movie before, but I'd heard a lot about it - with several friends placing it amongst the greatest movies ever.

And my verdict - yeah, it's good, but I don't think it's quite deserving of the legendary status bestowed on it by some people.

Certainly not a patch on Star Wars.....

Everywhere You Go

It's been a funny summer so far here in North East Scotland.

April was scorching, with weather that you'd more typically expect in July.

June and July weren't much to write home about - in fact July was pretty much wet and overcast throughout, the occasional day of sunshine aside.

But on Saturday, August at least threatened to play by the rules, with hot sunshine and a warm breeze coaxing Mrs Wife and I from our shelter. Montrose was busy with Saturday shoppers and football fans heading to Links Park to witness the dawn of a new season and the start of Irn Bru's sponsorship of our national game. By all accounts, it was a drab match that ended in a 1-0 defeat for the home side, so I'm not too fussed that I missed it.

Sunday came, and, typically, so did the rain. A lot of rain.

So much rain, in fact, that the road I take to work was flooded this morning, forcing me to take a detour and, as a result, arrive at the office late.

Every man and his dog now seems to think that global warming is to blame for everything. But we've always had weather, and it doesn't always stick to the plans we'd like it to. There have been mild winters and cold summers in the past, but there have also been years where we've had six-foot snow drifts in February and six weeks of sun in the summer.

There's not much we can do about it. In fact, there's nothing we can do about it except get on with things.

It won't stop me wishing for a bit of sunshine mind you.

And The Living's Easy

I'm almost loath to write this, but (whisper it) it seems that summer may finally be here.

So far, July has been an almost complete washout here in Angus. By my reckoning, there have been two days of sunshine so far this month, with the remaining 25 days marred by heavy rain, howling winds and towering black clouds.

But this morning I awoke to glorious sunshine, a cool and gentle breeze and blue skies as far as the eye could see, dotted only occasionally by fluffy white clouds.

By acknowledging that summer has begun, I've probably gone and jinxed it, and my planned lunch hour in Duthie Park will instead turn into me seeking refuge in the car as hailstones batter down on northeast Scotland.

Eight Things About Me

As seen over at Blog d'Elisson and at Blissful Bedlam - Eight Random Facts About Me.

The useless knowledge is listed below, but first we'd better keep things proper by explaining the rools:

Write a post enumerating eight facts/habits about yourself. Include the rules at the beginning of the post.

Tag eight people, posting their names and links to their sites. (I'm not going to do that - if anyone wants to play, feel free. If you don't, don't.)

Leave comments at the sites you’ve tagged, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

So here we go - eight things you didn't need (or want) to know about me:

1. I've never had an operation under general anaesthetic. In fact, I can count my hospital visits on the fingers of one hand: the first was to get a piece of grit removed from my eye as a teenager, the second was to see how badly I'd damaged my ankle playing football (it turned out to be a strained ligament), the third was to see whether I'd broken my nose playing football (notice a theme here? I hadn't, just burst it open quite spectacularly), the fourth was to see if I'd broken my ribs playing football (I hadn't, they were just bruised) and the fifth was when I had my toenail removed by a doctor who gave me a single local anaesthetic injection. Please note that I was touching wood and crossing my fingers whilst I wrote that answer.

2. The longest I've lived in one house is seven years, when my parents and I (and for three of those years Baby Brother) lived in a small cottage in the countryside near Montrose. I took a drive down there on the way home from work a couple of weeks ago and it hasn't changed at all in the intervening 20 years.

3. The most keepie-uppies I have ever done with a football without it bouncing on the ground is 120. At the end of the session, my legs were exhausted and I'd moved about 10 metres in the time it took, which was probably about five minutes. So I can't begin to fathom how Martinho Eduardo Orige managed to keep a ball in the air for 19-and-a-half hours.

4. I've visited seven of the eight Australian States and Territories, including the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. Mrs Wife (then known as Miss Girlfriend) and I didn't make it to the Northern Territory because of an unfortunate incident with an exploding car engine that cost us $2,500 to fix.

5. I can lick my nose and wiggle my ears. But not at the same time.

6. Whilst at university I worked as a security guard, a kitchen porter and as a journalist for a Premier League football team.

7. My favourite alcoholic drink is Cointreau, lime and lemonade. Which is probably the least masculine drink that one can order at any bar in Scotland.

8. I'm allergic to cats and have a phobia of birds. Apart from that, I like animals.

Weather or Not?

The weather here in Jockshire over the past 24 hours has been, for want of a better word, changeable.

Last night, as I drove home from Aberdeen, a lightning storm began to rip the thick black clouds apart, a forewarning of the Biblical rainstorm that followed.

All of last evening, as I sat in the house alone, the rain battered down, the lightning continuing for at least four hours. In fact, the thunder was still rumbling as I went to bed. I attempted to capture it on video, but unfortunately my mobile phone couldn't do the weather justice.

On the one occasion I ventured out in it, as far as the garage, I was utterly soaked, and the noise of the fat raindrops belting off the horizontal steel garage door sounded like bullets ripping into a metal bucket.

But this afternoon, as my colleagues and I left an Aberdeen restaurant following a "working lunch", the sun was drying Scotland out, beating down from a clear blue sky.

Which bodes well for a weekend when I have Dungroanin' to myself and when Mrs Wife is taking part in a sponsored walk up a Munro.

I sense a full hammock day is approaching.

The Best Laid Plans

It's strange how some of the best times you can have are completely unplanned.

Mrs Wife and I originally intended that yesterday evening would involve nothing more than an evening on the sofa watching a Spiderman double bill on DVD.

But instead, Baby Brother paid a visit and we ended up heading out in Montrose for a tour of the pubs and an impromptu house party in town.

This was followed by a viewing of American History X that ended for me at 4am this morning.

Rising at noon today was perfect timing for settling down to watch Everton v Man Utd on Sky Sports, when our original plan had been to go shopping in Dundee.

I'm all for this free-flowing life, where each day is tackled on its own merits and where we go where we please and do what we want.

If only it could continue indefinitely.

Time To Move

Posting here at Groanin' Jock may be a bit irregular over the next few days, as Mrs Wife and I are now in the throes of moving from Groanin' Towers to Dungroanin'.

As a result, my access to an worldwide interweb connection and a spare five minutes will be sorely restricted. But it's all for the greater good - as you can see from the photograph, Dungroanin' has a garage, which means that I'll soon have room for a drum kit and a pool table in both my home and my life.

Although purchasing either may mean that I no longer have a wife in my life.

Hammock Heaven

With only a fortnight to go until the big move, we seem to have reached a short calm before the storm.

The mortgage and all the associated finances are in place, the removal firm is booked and we're ready to take possession of Dungroanin'.

One of the exciting things about the new pad is its back garden, which is huge - with loads of room for games of football, trampolines and the like.

But perhaps its most endearing feature is the hammock in the back corner, which the current owners are leaving behind, as it is suspended on huge wooden posts that have been fixed into the ground in concrete.

So I can now envisage many a Sunday afternoon spent swinging merrily in the breeze, listening to the Magic Tune Box and sipping on a nice cold beer.

Then my thoughts are always disturbed by the reminder that I will be living in Montrose, which isn't well known for its hammock-lounging weather. Still, it's a nice thought.

Joining in

Joining organisations seems to be a long and laborious process nowadays.

In the past week, Mrs Wife and I have joined the local cinema and the local gym. On both occasions, we have been asked for more identification than when entering Vietnam on tourist visas four years ago.

What I can't understand is why the cinema really needed to see two separate forms of ID and proof of our bank's address before they would let us join - they made us pay the first month up front by debit card, so even if we had provided them with false details, they could easily have cancelled the memberships without any cost to themselves.

Neither joining the cinema nor the gym was made any easier by the fact that our applications were handled by monsyallabic cretins who seemed to spend as much time remembering how to put their left foot in front of their right as they did sorting out the simple process of handing us pieces of laminated card.

Still, all is now well, and more of our money is now being channelled away each month in the name of leisure pursuits. Returning to the east coast, and to an area where recreactional facilities are available far more readily than in Argyll, has led to a sudden rise in expenditure for both myself and Mrs Wife - in the past week, I have spent more than 12 pounds simply to play football.

But hey, it's all good - the new, lithe Groanin' Jock is on his way!

Movin' On

The hunt is over.

Mrs Wife and I have found our new home, and have begun the process of emptying Groanin' Towers.

In a shock twist, I am deserting my Brechin roots and moving to Montrose, to a charming, almost-new three bedroom bungalow with a garden big enough for a battalion of dogs and babies, or even dog-riding babies. The fact that it is a bungalow with thick double-glazed windows in the corner of a cul-de-sac lends itself to the prospect of cranking up the volume on the surround sound system and letting the complete works of Messrs Tarantino, Pacino and De Niro reverberate around the lounge.

Admittedly, there are a few hurdles to be, emmm, hurdled between now and then. The big one is packing up the contents of Groanin' Towers and preparing them for the move to Dungroanin'.

I hate moving house, and having done it too often in my first 26 years striding around this planet, I sincerely hope that this will be the last move for many a year.

Fit of the gigs

My imminent move back to Scotland's chilly east coast has revealed a new benefit that I had barely considered in the few weeks that have passed since I was first offered a new job.

I am soon going to be able to attend far more gigs than in recent years, given that I will be working in Aberdeen, home to several great venues.

In the coming months, tours by The View, The Killers, The Australian Pink Floyd, Bloc Party and Idlewild all call into the Granite City.

And one of my favourite bands in the world, and the greatest rock'n'roll band on the planet today, The Cooper Temple Clause, play there at the end of March.

All of which is terribly exciting to someone who has spent the past two years living almost three hours from Glasgow, the nearest port of call for major tours.

Home

The sun is shining and a cool breeze is coaxing the leaves from the Angus trees today. Mither's house looks out onto Brechin's public park, a vast green expanse that has probably been the one constant in my life over its first 26 years.

My grandparents first moved into this house in 1963, and it is the one place on earth which reminds me most of my childhood. Apparently I took my first tentative steps on the grass across the road from the house. I remember staying with my grandparents in the warm summer of 1990, watching Italy v Argentina in the World Cup semi-final before recreating the celebrations of Diego Maradona and Salvatore Schillachi using sapling trees as replacement goalposts.

This park has it all: a hill ideal for sledging in winter and rolling Easter eggs in spring; hedges which make ideal hiding places during marathon Man Hunt sessions; a BMX track and monkey bars that I spent a whole summer attempting to master to no avail.

There are relics of bygone days: a towering concrete war memorial, a band stand practically unused for its original purpose in the past 30 years and an elaborate lions head fountain that has long since run dry and been turned into a flower bed.

In my first quarter century, much has changed. I hope Brechin Public Park never does.