That event was later in the year, but, for us, the year started with an unexpected trip to Cairo - paid for by the company, whose customer (Magdy) was having a big family wedding. His invitation was primarily meant for the Clarks, but all three of them were away on holiday at the time of the wedding, so it was a second string line-up that travelled out - John Anderson, who was Magdy's main contact anyway, plus Alan McRobb, who also dealt with him, with me as make-weight. Wives/partners were, of course, invited too and as we knew it would be a very glamorous/glitzy affair, we decided that full Scottish kilt regalia would be required.
KLM flights to Amsterdam and on to Cairo were arranged and we all got to Cairo in good time - but our bags didn't. This left us with the dilemma of what to wear to the wedding, as we were told our bags wouldn't arrive in time for it, so, after a brief bit of sightseeing, we hit the clothes shops. We all managed to get something suitable pretty quickly - all bar Catriona, Alan's partner. She went through turmoil - she couldn't find anything that she thought she could wear and tears were never very far from the surface, but, thankfully, she did get there in the end.
It was a huge wedding in a big fancy hotel - the Sheraton? This was us in our room, togged up and ready to go:
The outfits looked and felt OK at the time, but on their return to the UK it wasn't long before they were falling apart - they must have been made of pretty cheap and shoddy materials.
There was a huge gathering of guests from all round the world for the wedding. The whole event was filmed and the bride and groom - and the enormous wedding cake - were all on the stage:
The entertainment was by what I imagine was the Egyptian equivalent of Cliff Richard!
Anyway, we (mostly) had a nice few days in Cairo. I say mostly because Jo, as is her wont, fell ill and wasn't able to join us on the dinner cruise on the Nile, where we were entertained by whirling dervishes, amongst others.
We, of course, managed a visit to the pyramids at nearby Giza:
We paid our money, collected our tickets and headed towards the large pyramid you see behind us above. On the way up, just past the Sphinx, we were approached by a man wearing a hat and what we took to be an official uniform and he more or less grabbed the tickets from my hand and led us away in a different direction. We should have smelled a rat immediately.
We were taken to some underground ruins where our "guide" took a photo of us:
They even laughingly planted this bone and tried to persuade us it was some sort of ancient relic:
Somehow our "guide" and his partner-in-crime then managed to isolate Jo and Catriona from Alan and I, and simultaneously cut off our exit from this underground tomb. Then the requests/demands for money came. In the end, we paid up and emerged unscathed, but it was a lesson learned about scam artists at work. I guess you get them all round the world.
With our tails between our legs, we quietly retired to the adjacent Mena House for some welcome refreshments:
That short break was over the Christmas/New Year holiday period, but soon it was back to the day jobs for both of us, although there was another corporate do that we attended a few times. The Clydesdale Bank's Treasury team organised a Ceilidh - usually in February, and mostly at the Old Course Hotel, St. Andrews - although this one may have been held at Gleneagles:
March, 2001, of course brought Jo's 50th birthday, but, unlike me, she didn't want any big fuss made and certainly not a party. I think this was may have been the one and only occasion when I prepared a full 3-4 course meal - I believe we may have had our friends the Masons and the Kilgours round for dinner. I vaguely remember having scallops in the starters. Nobody died.
In the spring of that year I went on a football group trip to Amsterdam. One of the Friday night footballers - Andy Gore - had moved there and a few of us decided to go and see him, taking in a match at Ajax's Amsterdam Arena as well. Naturally, we had to have a game of football ourselves and Andy arranged a group of locals to play us. This was when we learned a fundamental difference between us and the Dutch. Their idea of adults'/veterans' indoor football is that it is a non-contact sport. It took us 10 minutes to realise this, by which time we had built up a healthy lead which we never relinquished. In fact, we gave them a proper trouncing - a rare case of Scotland overwhelming Holland at football! Here's the winning team:
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| Back row l-r: John McWhinnie, Ian Sharp, Ian Stewart, Colin Kilgour & Jack Simpson. Front row l-r: Dave Williamson & Andy Gore (playing for Holland!) |
Next up was another big birthday - Mum was 80 and we all travelled down to celebrate with her. By now, she was but a shadow of her former self, resident in Abbotsford House in Bearsden. She had fallen in the bathroom at Foxbar Drive and suffered a haemorrhage in her head and it had been quickly downhill from there. Like me, as I later discovered, Mum had Atrial Fibrillation and was on Warfarin, so the surgeons had to introduce an antidote and wait for the blood to coagulate a little before they could operate on her head, by which time damage had been done.
Dad couldn't cope with Mum after that. They had swapped houses with Barry and Helen a few years before, but soon poor Barry was getting called out to his old flat at all hours. Inevitably, after a while, Mum had to go in to care. She never understood why, and visits were very distressing, particularly when it came to time to leave - she wanted to come with you.
There was often a blankness in her eyes - and a sadness:
but sometimes, even then, the old Jessie would shine through:
I think Ross must have taken this photo of Mum's 80th lunch:
It was summer now and the golf season was in full swing. I was 52 and still fit enough, but, like all of my sporting partners, I recognised that golf held more promise of longevity than more rigorous pursuits like squash and football. Migration had started - our squash club champion, Gary Coutts, who was a couple of decades younger than most of the rest of us, and had worked on the Royal Estate at Balmoral since he was a kid, invited us to play at the small course there.
The clubhouse at Balmoral is basically a log cabin and you just bring in any food and drinks you want after playing. It was a very different kind of golf outing for us - but great fun, and we still go there once a year to this day. Here's me, Jas Bhagrath and Bill Miller, with Crathie Kirk in the background:
The 4th person - on the left in the above photo - is Ben Fernie, who was head honcho and Gary's boss at Balmoral, and a real character who somehow got me to imbibe neat gin (we had no tonic) and whisky. He was a Fifer and when he pulled the stopper out of the bottle, he threw it over his head, saying "we'll no' be needing that again"! When I demurred at the size of the measures he poured, he exclaimed "are you a man or a mouse, laddie?" He wasn't much older than me, but I was still "laddie" to him.
Sadly Ben isn't with us any more. He died on the operating table a couple of years after this, when he was having a knee replacement, of all things. When it came to my time to have the same operation a couple of years ago, it would be foolish of me to say that this didn't go through my head.
Staying on the subject of golf, another regular outing of ours is held at Midsummer. Back in 2001, we were able to play Gleneagles for a reasonable rate (not any more, I'm afraid). It was to be our friend Terry Edmonds' last time there. He had retired from BP a couple of years before but very soon after, he was diagnosed with cancer and he knew he didn't have long left. Our round in 2001 started dry but soon the heavens opened and it was so heavy that all of us - bar Terry - wanted to get off the course quickly as we were getting absolutely drenched.
Terry complained all the way home and his words still reverberate - he was angry with us for coming off the course early. He wanted to continue as he knew it would be his last time there. Terry died just after Christmas that year. His widow, Linda, then put up a trophy and we play the Terry Edmonds' Memorial every year.
On a much happier note, Kelly graduated in 2001 and the ceremony was held in Marischal College, Aberdeen, with TV presenter Kirsty Wark handing out the awards. Here's me and the (pouting) girls after the ceremony:
We had a nice meal afterwards with Ross and Gary - and Lottie:
That covers the first half of the year. USA was next up.
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