Car Woes and a Holiday in Scottish Meanderings

It's been a while.

I had a scary moment there where I actually almost forgot what to do to write a new entry! I hope that's not dementia setting in - it would be just my luck to ride through this Mirtazapine hell and slide straight into a dementia haze😁

I've had a bit of a stressful (and costly!) time since the last entry. I had a school reunion to go to in Inverness (100 miles north) on the 22nd September so I was already stressed about being well enough for that then the day before, I got a UTI so was in a lot of discomfort. Managed to get antibiotics at the chemist but they always make me feel sick so I thought ok this is going to be a bit of a trial - I'll just have to get through it somehow but at least I'll be there.

I set off from Aberdeen in good time so that I would have a chance of a rest after the drive before having to get ready for the reunion and about 50 miles in, at a small town called Elgin, a warning light came up on the dashboard - 'gearbox in emergency mode'. I had had that once before in August but after I stopped the car and started it, it never appeared again so I thought it was a glitch in the system. So I stopped, started and it disappeared.

Ten minutes later, up it flashed again, followed by a red warning telling me to 'STOP CAR IMMEDIATELY!!' Which was all well and good but I was half way round a roundabout at the time! I managed to limp round it and pull into the side of the road where I phoned the AA and discovered my membership was still only covering my old car so had to pay £75 to get the SEAT added, then waited 2 loooong hours with an extremely irritated bladder for a 12 year old (I kid you not) to come out, go on his iPad and tell me nothing apart from 'well I could clear it but you might break down further up the road and have to call us again'. How is that helpful??

My membership only covered me for 10 miles towing distance so I had to pay another £230 to get it towed to a garage in Elgin for them to tow it back to a garage in Aberdeen on the Monday, then traipse to a nearby Tesco with all my luggage (of which there was extra because of ‘going out’ clothes, boots, fancy coat etc) to wait another hour for my sister, Lorna, to come and pick me up from Inverness, (during which I updated Nikki on the phone and she said she could get in the car there and then with the kids and come and take me home. Believe me it was sooooo tempting at that point!!), spend another hour straining to hear Lorna her in her campervan (she speaks really quietly) all the way to Inverness, dash into the hotel while she waited in the car park, get checked in, get dressed, then get dropped off at the hotel the reunion was at (3 hours late) whereby I spent 2 and a half hours catching up with folk and trying to behave like I was sane.

My friend Anne who had organised the whole thing made sure I got some food warmed up (I'd paid £50 for the meal which of course I'd missed!) and I made sure I knew where the nearest toilets were and got through it somehow! She also kindly gave me a lift back to my hotel. So now at least I can look back at the photos and see that I made it even though I felt like a basket case by then😁

And it was nice to do a bit of catching up. We're a noticeably smaller group these days and there were no teachers this time which was a shame but they’ve all reached an age where they’re either not with us any more or not in good enough health to join us. And actually some of US have reached that point as well😕.


I was too late for a bit of the cake though!


Next day the stress continued but really only because my already destabilised nervous system had to spend 5 hours with my sister and niece and it was just too much. We'd arranged to meet at my old school for lunch. The school (it's difficult to get a good photo of the original building but I quite like this drawing our Art Teacher, Mr. Harvey, did of the front of it in the winter of 1972)


is a listed building and stopped being a secondary school in 1980 when it became part of Inverness College but five years ago, it was refurbished (keeping the original architecture as much as possible) and is now called the Creative Academy which incorporates workspaces, studios and offices for artists, craftspeople, exhibitions and so on. Ironically, my niece, Marina, now works in one of the old classrooms which is an office for Moniack Mohr, a Creative Writing Centre - a classroom in which I used to gaze out of the window frequently daydreaming instead of learning French!!

When we had a previous reunion in 2010, a tour of the school was organised (this was before it was converted) in the afternoon so I'd seen it then but not since so was keen to see what they'd done with it and Marina was up for giving us a tour.

So weird how buildings retain energy. These stone steps are the original ones built in 1895 - they led up to the art, music and biology department in my day and I had such a strange feeling walking up and down them that day - it was like all the years just fell away and I was 14 again and back in my school uniform!


The original plan was to meet Lorna and Marina at 12 then I would meander on home to Aberdeen afterwards but, being carless, I had to rely on Lorna picking me up again at the hotel instead. She'd agreed to drive me back through to Elgin later where Nikki was going to pick me up but the girls had a drama rehearsal between 3 and 4 p.m. so Nikki wouldn't get there until around 5.30. That meant I was kind of stuck with them until we could leave at 4.30 and my body was absolutely screaming at me to just stop moving/talking/concentrating/thinking but I had no choice but to carry on. Marina kindly had us back to her house for the time in between but that meant more conversation, playing with her 2 kids and her new kitten and then when we left at 4.30, I had another hour of straining to hear Lorna again in the campervan, swapping over to Nikki's car at Elgin, more conversation with her and the kids and not getting home till 8.30 that night beyond exhausted and unable to wind down and sleep.

The stress continued the next day as I tried to get the car sorted and discovered the garage I'd it towed to in Aberdeen couldn't deal with it because it was a problem with the automatic gearbox and so it had to go to a SEAT specialist but when I phoned them they could only get me in on the 26th November!! Several phone calls later I discovered another independent specialist who could look at it after the 3rd of October and was willing to have it in their forecourt until then (because the first garage wanted it out of theirs) so I had to spend another £170 to have it towed all of 6 miles then go and cancel everywhere I was supposed to be but couldn't get to without a car!

Eventually it got looked at on the 10th October and they decided it needed a new mechatronic unit (at a cost of £2,500) which needed to be ordered so wouldn't be there and fitted for a good two weeks. This was a disaster because Nikki, the kids and I were all due to go on holiday to a caravan site in Ayr for 4 days on the 18th and her car was also out of action and wasn't going to be fixed anytime soon (it needed a new engine and the guy was trying to source a refurbished one). So she had hired a car up until their holiday in Salou in August hoping her own car would be fixed by the time she came back but it wasn't. The garage did give her another temporary one eventually but it was a crappy old Ford Fiesta and certainly not big enough for us all to go in plus luggage so we ended up having to fork out another £180 to hire another car to get us to the caravan site!

So totting it all up - so far I'd shelled out just over three thousand quid and still had no working car!

However it all panned out in the end - we got a good hire car, had a decent holiday and were actually really lucky with the weather because it was the weekend of Storm Ashley but the worst parts of it came mainly at night - during the day wasn't too bad and it was even sunny for a good chunk of the time. Although a caravan is probably not the best place to be while a storm is raging outside - I thought the thing was going to take off on Sunday night!

We were in two separate caravans which worked out well - Nikki had booked the kids into as many activities as she could so it meant I could just be left to rest in the mornings then join them around lunchtime, help her out and spend the rest of the day/evening with them. Our two caravans were next to each other right beside the beach with lovely views of the sea.


There was decking at the end and round one side so plenty space to sit out - we did try one afternoon but it was just a bit too chilly for that - be lovely in the summer though!


The weird thing was it's built on the same site as Butlins (holiday camp) was years ago and our whole family went there when I was 6 so there I was back in the same place exactly 60 years later!! I do have a photo from that holiday but it's in a folder somewhere ...... in a drawer somewhere ...... in a room somewhere ...... so you might have to wait a while to see that :)

The kids went swimming in the pool, swam with waterjets, had fun on an inflatable course, did an aerial assault course (which almost finished Nikki off), went to the park, we all went on walks, played games, ate out and the only thing they didn't get to do was bungee jumping as the weather was too bad with the storm at that point and it was cancelled. They also went to see Boyd and Bev who live 15 minutes away - Bev took a good photo of Boyd and Nikki (I don't think he looks well at all but he is looking better than previously I have to admit)


and we all went to the Rabbie Burns museum and cottage on the way home as that was just a couple of miles away.


There's not a lot to see in the cottage but the museum is very impressive - loads of stuff on Rabbie's life and work - I actually learned a lot from it.

And I managed to persuade Nikki to retrace steps a bit before we went home and take my photo on a particular wee bridge which is connected to Rabbie Burns but also to my old Open Diary diary! Those of you who were with me in those days might remember (but very likely not) that you had to put a location in your diary and mine was called BrigaDoon, mainly because it's a very old Scottish film which depicts Scotland in a sort of whimsical kind of way but also because it was a play on words on where I lived at the time which was an area called the Bridge of Don! I confess I don't think I really knew that Brig O'Doon was actually a real place - I thought it was made up for the film - so I was very excited when we passed the sign and just had to go back and see it.

You can just about make out the 'Brigadoon' here in the top left corner of my diary above the 'Find A Diary' bit.


And here's a photo showing the actual bridge and Lilah reading all about it.


It's actually from the poem Tam O'Shanter - something else I didn't know - I realise the writing's a bit hard to make out here.


I managed to refrain from graffitiing it with 'Marg wuz here' and made do with a photo instead!


I finally got the car back at the end of October but the stress of the whole débacle sent me into a bad wave of symptoms and I continued to have very distressing problems with my bladder for pretty much 3 months. The antibiotics didn't work so I tried another round of them but no joy then the situation wasn't helped by a whole week of snow and ice which meant I couldn't get a sample into the doctor for 10 days but eventually an infection was found and I got stronger antibiotics which have helped a lot thank goodness.


Some more glimpses of the old me are definitely coming back - I was able to read some of a book last week which was nice - especially as I've carted that book round with me for literally 5 weeks hoping to feel well enough to be able to open it for 10 minutes! I had to restart it once more for the third time this year but I've got a bit further with it this time and I feel the information is being retained better now so hopefully won't have to do that again!

Also managed to create a piece of writing for the old School (Creative Academy) which was having an exhibition to celebrate their five year anniversary. I wanted to see if I could produce something for a deadline and managed it - Marina was submitting some of her poems as well so kindly framed my writing and took it along to the Academy for me. It was so nice to see something I'd managed to produce being displayed for others to read.


So that was a bit of a boost.

What else? Turned 66 in September - great excitement at getting to apply for my state pension at last!!

Took the annual photo of the kids and I (plus Alfie!).


We had a cream tea at Nikki's - just look at all that sugar!! We made a pretty good dent in it though and it was 'awfy fine' as we say around these parts.


Lily was 12 in October - she's turning into a really lovely girl but can still have her moments especially around backchat to her Mum but hey I'm sure a lot of us wound our Mums up in very similar fashion :) Doing really well in her gymnastics competitions - I think she has around 19 medals altogether now.


And I've started piano lessons - that's been a bit of a learning curve. I found a lovely teacher but I think she started me off at too high a level - I had told her I had reached Grade V when I was doing exams but that was 50 years ago and she seems to have discarded the 50 years bit which was kind of significant! We had a chat about it a couple of weeks ago though and she's agreed to take me right back to basics because there's a lot of the theory I've forgotten and it's crucial to be able to read the music properly.

The piano is still in shock that someone is actually playing it properly for a change! The poor thing has been waiting 10 long years for someone to do something other than plonk away on it with sticky little fingers but I've been practising regularly and enjoying finding pieces to play which is exactly what I wanted so I'm hoping I find my groove a bit more in 2025. It's nice to see it with the lid open all the time now and a piece of music on the stand.


Ok that'll do for now - well done if you made it this far!

See you in the New Year sometime😊