Away day

Today’s picture, stolen from her Facebook page, shows a bicycle that my recorder playing friend Sue encountered in Berlin.

There was  no cycling today as we were bound for Edinburgh for a celebration lunch to honour Mrs Tootlepedal’s significant birthday.  The actual day is tomorrow but this was a day which suited the rest of the family best.  I didn’t mind not being able to cycle as it was an absolutely foul day and there was just time to take a couple of token bird pictures in the gloom before setting off.

You can see from the length of the rain drops in the picture a) how hard it was raining and b) what a slow shutter speed I had to use to get a picture at all.

The blackbird looked pretty cheesed off by the whole thing.

The drive to Edinburgh was not very pleasant with the roads awash with water and thick mist when we went over the highest point of the trip.  However, we arrived safely and picked up our younger son Alistair and got to the restaurant bang on time.  Alistair’s wife Clare was not able to join us as she was unwell but our older son Tony did manage to stagger along even though he is just recovering from a major hernia operation.  Annie’s partner, Joe was hard at work back in London but we were still a good number.    We got a very nice window table and had an excellent meal from the carvery.

Here we are getting ready to eat.

Tony can only sit with great difficulty. His partner Marianne and her two children, Tash and Dylan are beside him.

Tash is working as Tony’s apprentice in his painting and decorating business and is invaluable to him at the moment as he is unable to drive.

We ate enough to sink a battleship and then presented Mrs Tootlepedal with a modest gift to mark the occasion.

She seemed quite pleased.

Here are our three children posing for the camera (but not mine unfortunately).

It’s surprising how old they are when Mrs Tootlepedal and I are still so young.

After lunch, Tash drove Dylan off to work, Tony and Marianne hobbled home, we dropped Alistair off at his flat and then enjoyed a much better drive home as the rain had stopped by the time we left Edinburgh.  It really is a treat to drive through the border country from Edinburgh to Langholm from a scenic point of view and as the traffic was fairly light, we got home before dark and in good order.

We had driven 180 miles  and eaten a very large lunch so the evening was spent in dedicated couch work.  It has been a very satisfying day though not one that has lent itself to a lot of photographing things.

I did manage to get a sort of flying picture of the day because our restaurant window looked directly out onto the approach path for Edinburgh Airport.