Life in action
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Day 2 – Lazy days and sunbed shenanigans
Oh, what a beautiful morning! I woke up early on that first morning and armed with my iPad and sunglasses went for a walk (leaving Fi snoozing …or was that snoring in bed!). The sun was already up, warming the day as I headed out with a big smile on my face. Ending up at the pool area, I sat down in the sunshine at one of the tables to write notes for this blog, something I’d not had much time to do before. I was pretty much oblivious to the world around me. Just happy that it was sunny! Sunbed-Gate Later I would discover I had made a crucial…
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Day One – Have passport, will travel..?
Then again it is Friday 13th …so who knows! After all the running around the day before, I was amazed we surfaced in the morning so easily. Mind you, my alarm is pretty piercing! We were up early ready to face the day, so long as that involved getting a flight to the sunshine …there is no telling what Fi might do had there been more problems! 😃 With a more than little trepidation, we headed to the airport, not quite shaking off yesterday’s disaster and praying lightning really doesn’t strike twice. At least if we ended up stranded in Glasgow, it had finally stopped raining. Airport nerves We got…
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Day Zero (still) – Going somewhere?
The recap Now, where were we? …Oh yes, we were going nowhere! Our flight had just taken off and we had been dumped, left behind, stranded at the airport! The only small glimmer of hope was a telephone number given to us by our ‘hand-holding friends’. A concession for their less-than-helpful chat earlier. …honestly, I think they gave it to us so we’d walk away! The number was for the local passport office. Armed with this and a cup of tea we went to make a call! The golden number Suddenly, we were hopeful again …not all was lost! Call us naïve… But, we were utterly convinced a lovely person…
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Day Zero – Going nowhere?
Are we nearly there yet? (Part 1) It’s the unearthly hour of 6 am, as we make our way to Edinburgh airport to get our flight. Nevertheless, we are excited and manage to contain ourselves until we are in the airport region before we ask our driver Pete (Fi’s husband) – ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ We get dropped off and practically jog into the terminal to get out of the freezing cold! As we stand at the check-in and passport pre-screening stage – you know the spot where all eyes are on you for that split second – our excitement suddenly becomes despair as it quickly becomes clear that…
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The holiday preamble
Dedication to a special friend This holiday blog is dedicated to my good friend Fi. Thanks to her kindness, I enjoyed an amazing winter trip to Lanzarote in January. In preparation After a couple of obligatory get-togethers over a few G&Ts, where we discussed really important issues like… …what sort of clothes to pack …“let’s be clever and just take one shampoo”, and …small incidentals like insurance, tickets, money and passport (including COVID app downloaded showing our vaccination records)… We were good to go! Ladies in Lanzarote 2023 I know, that’s not the most thrilling or imaginative team name! …but after cycling through names for our trip, we were kinda…
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Small acts of kindness
Like many people at this time of year, I’ve been looking back over the past 12 months… …and I’m not ashamed to say I’ll be glad to see the back of it! Everyone’s life has ups and downs. Even the most together happy people have those periods in their lives when things just don’t go right, it’s normal… …and for me, 2022 was like that. It started off poor, then rallied a bit with a few weeks of huge success with an amazing BA Life conference, successfully running another Edinburgh Half Marathon, and being a finalist for a business award. But then the bottom seemed to fall out of my…
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Wow! Crazy, amazing, busy, frantic, inspiring, fantastic …oh and gin!
All of this and much more describe a crazy few weeks back in May/June! I am of course talking about a few wonderful weeks that incorporate BALIFE2022 and the National Start-Up Awards… Oh, and there was the small matter of running in the Edinburgh Half Marathon. BALIFE – Your BA Festival in a Day BALIFE2022 took place on the 26th May this year …and what a day it was! A true festival of all things Business Analysis related, direct from the world-famous home of the festival, Edinburgh. Don’t just take my word for it check out some of these quotes: “The meaty content was delivered in a very engaging way.…
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What a difference a day makes
Particularly if that day is an exceptional one like Sunday 12th September, the day of the Great North Run! Perhaps it’s a little unfair to say this all happened in one day, but it was the culmination of 18 months worth of hard work, by me, my close friends and family, and you… my brilliant and very generous donators. Because on 12th September 2021, after waiting two years since the last one, I finally ran in the 40th Anniversary Great North Run …and in doing so, earned a load of money for the wonderful mental health charity MIND. What a crazy few weeks, filled with training runs, friends visiting, presenting…
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Day 8: Returned vans and the editor’s cuts!
This is the final blog (what’s that I hear you say “Awwwwwwwww, say it isn’t so!” …or was it, “At last, I thought it would never end!” …tsk, cheeky!). This is a brief look back at our final morning as we made our way back to Livingston. Before reflecting on a few stories from the week that were cut out, shredded on the editor’s floor, along with some random pics that didn’t make the first cut. So yet again my morning started like every morning this week with an early morning walk along the beach. The weather was a little brighter today, although it was still damp following yesterday’s rain.…
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Day 7: From rollercoasters to traffic jams
Our final day’s journey took us back south toward home. Starting on the crazy Applecross Rollercoaster before hitting busy towns with long queuing traffic, something we hadn’t encountered for days. Another thing we hadn’t seen for days was rain, this hit us just as we arrived at our final stopover! I overslept a bit today, sleeping too long for me to walk over THAT road! Oh well, I guess I’ll ride in the campervan after all! 😉 But… I still got out for a short walk, down to the seafront, heading in the opposite direction to the way we’d walked yesterday to the pub. It was a lovely gentle walk…
