Edinburgh social gathering

First update for a while: we had a bit of a social gathering in Edinburgh yesterday - we'd heard that Uncle John and his new wife Sati were visiting Scotland, and since it had been over 20 years since we'd seen him, we decided to go across for the day from Dublin - Ryanair had a special deal so that it only cost us €20 return each including taxes to do it. Ella stayed in Bray because she's in the middle of a sailing course that she's loving.
So we were up at 4am, and having breakfast in Lennox St by 8am. Gillian was there too, which was a lovely surprise.


The big news was that Z had been to the book launch for his latest book in Glasgow the previous night - "Falling" by Gordon Brown. The author is a bit of a marketing wizard and we were thrilled to find a whole stand prominently displaying the book at WH Smith at Edinburgh Airport when we arrived.


We had gentle morning around Lennox St, dotting between snoozing downstairs, food-preparation in the kitchen, watching morning tv in the dining room area and dabbling on the computer in the living room.


Did you see Anna in the photo above - she can play a few pieces on the piano that she's taught herself, and she loved the sound of the Lennox St grand piano.



Meanwhile Z headed out on his motorbike to post off the latest batch of books to the wholesaler for distribution.


After lunch, we headed off to the garden centre at Hopetoun House to potter, in a bit of a rush because we knew that John was on his way....




Joyce was busy texting folk at home to find out how much fine mesh she needed to cover the frame for her broccoli.


So we were able to get the right stuff, which is hard to find in Ireland.



Then it was back to base to find that John and Sati had arrived - and we had a lovely afternoon sitting around and chatting.


We then had supper of beef olives for carnivores and vegetarian moussaka for vegetarians, followed by apple crumble which unfortunately was not vegan because of the butter in the crumble bit. Z nipped out and bought some vegan margarine, so next time we'll get that bit right.


Anyway, it was a great catch-up for us all, and when we got back to Bray just before midnight, we were tired but happy to have had a lovely social family day. We were sorry to miss Jo, who arrived with Sarah after we'd left for the airport, but we'll hopefully see them soon another time.....