July 21, 2024 – Keith Robertson

“Great to see you after 40 years!”

On Monday we drove through to Currie (just outside of Edinburgh and next to the Heriot Watt University campus where I spent the first year of my university career) to meet up with Bobby, a classmate and part of the small group that hung out together so many years ago. It’s close to 40 years since I last saw Bobby.

The Riccarton Inn hosted our reunion. Diana enjoyed our historical stories quite a bit. Bobby is a very good musician – playing both the standup and electric basses and he had a lot of good tales about his travels with bands and the albums that he’s made. One fun story involved the old Mountbatten building in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket area – this was the home of the Heriot Watt Electrical Engineering department for the final years of our degrees. It’s now a hotel and Bobby had played a wedding gig there. He said the reception was in one of our old lecture halls and it still had the terraced slope – he was having interesting flashbacks. That got us off thinking about presentations we had to do in that lecture hall. We remembered Andy’s troubled talk about the Free Masons that made us realize we should take this assignment seriously. Bobby gave a talk about a band recording that had won an award, playing the recording to occupy the final five minutes of his required talk time. Then he reminded me of Euan’s grave digging talk – I had completely forgotten that. Euan had that as a summer job and it was certainly the most unique presentation.

We were intrigued by the way the dry/sweet and boldness of wines were indicated on the menu. Why don’t we have this?

We enjoyed this sign outside the Inn, “Good Banter”:

After a lovely lunch, Bobby invited us back to his home to meet his wife, Kirsty. She is also a musician and teaches violin in the Currie and Balerno school systems.

We thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Kirsty, and were treated to their granddaughter, Cassie, when she was woken up from her nap. Cassie quickly warmed up to Diana and enjoyed her reading of the “Wonky Donkey”, a hilarious children’s’ book.

Bobby had told us about “walking football” which he really enjoyed due to his bum ankle. What he didn’t tell us was that his team had won the competition – as evidenced by the huge trophy in his entryway.

I remember Bobby played forward for the Heriot Watt team and knew he had played semi-professionally for a short while. Makes me seem very lazy – he holds down a full time job (until recent early retirement), plays many musical gigs every week, and participates in a busy sports agenda.

Here’s an explanation from the official walking football website about what makes it different:

“The biggest difference, as the name suggests, is there is no running. Walking football is played at walking pace, with players not allowed to run. This includes with the ball or off the ball, and includes jogging. You can ‘walk’ as fast as you want and walking as described in the rules is “one foot must be in contact with the ground at all times.”

One other big difference to association or 5-a-side football is that it’s classed as non-contact sport. Although tackling is allowed, this must be done with no contact.”

Our drive to and from Currie on the “wrong” side of the road was uneventful until it wasn’t. Close to home, several long PVC looking pipes broke loose from a van in front of us. They were headed straight for the windshield. Fortunately there wasn’t a vehicle in the inside lane and I was able to swerve and avoid any damage. Arriving home, I found the next door neighours out front watering my Mum’s garden – apparently they had been quite worried about my ability to drive through to Edinburgh and back given all the changes in the roads. Sometimes I wonder how I get by, between Kenny’s concern about my driving in New Orleans and now this concern in Scotland.

I’m so happy that we made the effort to connect with Bobby – such a nice day.

Tuesday began with another walk and run along Kilwinning road. This time Diana reported that the “mountains” were back to being “normal hills” – she’s adjusted to the undulating terrain.

We had invited Mum to lunch at the Laird’s Table restaurant outside of Fenwick and asked if she would like to include a friend or two. She decided on the Dunlops and we were very happy to include them – always entertaining.

They were just back from holiday in Norway and had told us a bit about that. Most of the stories were about their ever expanding family. We had a very enjoyable lunch for several hours and laughed at the banter.

We also laughed at the “mini meringues” desert:

And of course Diana got all the pictures that she wanted:

The flights home on Wednesday were very pleasant, albeit the 10 hour leg from London to New Orleans certainly feeling quite long. Diana was pleased when champagne was served before takeoff and I appreciated that drinks and food service started about 30 minutes after takeoff. Much improved over our night flight over to London.

I really enjoyed the cheese plate for desert – with fancy oatcake presentation:

The “Gentlemen Out At Lunch” club (Thom, Alex, Dennis and Kenny) convened our inaugural meeting at Plume in Algiers on Thursday. The food and service were excellent and we got to try a decent selection of the menu by sharing food among five of us. This is the young couple that operates the restaurant with the help of their son:

The food is certainly not typical of the Indian food you find in the U.S., with light and flavorful sauces.

We voted on logos for the group. My submission:

The name was tweaked to replace the “To” with “At” in order to create a nice acronym (GOAL). The picture was deemed too “fancy” and “stuffy”, and so I’ve now come up with version 2.0:

I had the original displayed on a small easel for the krewe to review. The owner noticed and asked if we would sign it and leave it for her to display on the wall – we were happy to oblige. I’ll have to return and take a picture of that. I was chastised for not taking any pictures – we were chatting and having too much fun.

After lunch we made a quick stop at the Crown and Anchor before sitting for way too long in traffic on the bridge over the Mississippi. One final stop at the Milan Lounge to play along with Jeopardy on their TV (it’s a regular thing there every day).

As if we hadn’t had enough wonderful food for the week, we met a colleague of mine, Fred, who retired a couple of years ago, for lunch at Commander’s Palace on Friday. Fred grew up in the New Orleans area and has lived in the Dallas area for the last 20 years – he makes regular visits to New Orleans to enjoy the food and drink. The food and service were exemplary as usual during our 3 hour lunch. It’s always good to catch up with Fred.

This is the time of year when we can expect heavy thunder storms most days. We were able to get our walks in around the downpours on Saturday and Sunday, with some of the loudest thunder claps I’ve ever heard on Sunday.

I finished up “All the Colors of the Dark” by Chris Whitaker on the flight home. The subject matter is certainly dark, as the title would indicate, and I enjoyed this read quite a bit. Great characters and twists that weren’t the typical incredible nonsense. I recommend this one.

I’m still plugging away at “Southern Man” by Greg Iles and should finish that monster in the next week or two.

I‘m also reading Ann Patchett’s “These Precious Days”, a collection of her essays published in 2021. Some of these appeal to me more than others and the writing is as excellent as always. The first essay about Patchett’s three Dads is my favourite so far. The one about her husband’s flying obsession a close second. The one about knitting- not so much.