Out of the frying pan.

After two sleepless nights in our Holiday Inn Express room positioned on the Tay Bridge in Dundee we asked for a change. The receptionist kindly moved us to the back of the hotel and peace from the incessant traffic noise. Our delight was sadly short lived as we found ourselves alongside the top of a multi storey car park. There were no cars in the car park but there were about thirty floodlights. The local seagull population has commandeered every one of these as permanent roosts. We learned that seagulls don’t sleep either and if you can imagine the racket that thirty seagulls can make you will understand why we are now contemplating asking to be returned to the heavy traffic room tonight.

Noise apart we’ve had a pleasant few days in St Andrews visiting our daughter Sarah who has recently bought a new house with her partner Duncan. We’ve been driving around garden centres and DIY stores and Sarah now has a variety of new plants, pots, a parasol, a sun-bed and a chimenea to go with the John Lewis table and chairs which arrived bang on time as promised. Marion has been digging the garden and helping Sarah to plant everything up.





The table and chair instructions said to allow five minutes to assemble each chair and fifteen minutes for the table. That makes a total of forty-five minutes for the lot. It took me longer than that to take them out of their boxes and it was close to three hours when I sat back and admired my handiwork. Even then there were some screws that I hadn’t enough strength to tighten right up. It really is a great outdoor set though.





It’s our last night in Scotland tonight so we are off to The Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews. It’s a superb restaurant located right on the seafront in a modern glass building. I wonder if they do any sous vide cooking? I’ll have to leave a brochure with the chef.



Going to The Seafood Restaurant means no Orange Wednesday so we'll have to make it pink Thursday and go and see Bruno when we get back to Southport. I see today that the film has been banned in The Ukraine (yet more publicity for Sacha Baron Cohen. When will they learn!). It seems that so many under 18s have been trying to get in to see the film and been turned away that the producers are rushing out a censored version with a lower rating than the current 18. We watched the Inbetweeners on Channel 4 last night. I'm sure that they would be at the front of the queue trying to get in - at least Simon would be at the front of the queue with Jay at the back telling him what to do - brilliant comedy, if you haven't seen it check it out.