Renshaw's Chronicles: Chronicles Part XI

2005 was a pretty exciting year for Ross. He was working for WeatherNews and they were trying to develop a new smartphone app so they sent him out to their Tokyo office to help advance the project. He was out there for about 6 weeks, I think. He said he felt like Gulliver in the Land of Lilliput whilst he was there! Here's some of his photos from that trip:

That was in January. Just a few months later, Ross was despatched to the London office for a while. It was July, 2005. He faced a regular commute by Tube from his hotel to the office. At 8:49 am on 7th July, 4 Islamic terrorists detonated 3 bombs in quick succession on different Underground routes, one of which would have been Ross'. For once, it was just as well he was late. A 4th bomb was subsequently exploded on a London bus, enhancing the terror factor in the city.

Ross phoned us to tell us he was safe before we had even heard about the attacks. Spooky isn't it? Having been in the World Trade Center just a few weeks before 9/11, Ross had an even closer shave this time on what became known as 7/7.

Back in January, Jo and I returned to the lovely Old Course Hotel for another corporate do:

We often had - and still have - regular dinners with the Masons and Kilgours, but in 2005 one of them coincided with Burns Night. For some reason - presumably strong drink was involved - we all tried to sing one of Rabbie Burns' most well-known songs - My Love is like a Red, Red, Rose:

My spring golf outing in 2005 was to Gran Canaria - a new experience for us. I had a bit of a rough time for a few days. I had fish for dinner one night and a fish bone somehow got stuck in my gum. For love nor money, I couldn't get it out, no matter how many different ways and devices I used. Whenever anything gets stuck in your mouth, it's like a magnet - everything seems to automatically get attracted to it - especially your tongue. Within 24 hours, my tongue started to swell up and after another 24 hours had passed, I was having difficulty breathing, let alone talking.

There was no other option but to try to find a dentist to remove it. We found one not too far away and I sat in the long queue in the waiting room. Language was a bit of a problem but a bit of pigeon English plus some pointing soon resolved the situation. What a relief!

Back in Scotland, Lottie was going downhill rapidly and soon Jo took her leave from work and went down to Paisley to support her sister Mary, who had taken the brunt of the care work to date. Within a few weeks, Lottie passed. Unfortunately, there followed a major fall-out, principally between Margaret and Mary, but with Jo suffering some of the inevitable collateral damage. Regrettably, that fall-out persists to this day and now seems terminal - Margaret has cut off all ties between her immediate family and the rest of the Sowerby/Stewart/Hanson clan. It may be a cliché, but it's oh so true - life is way too short for this, but it seems there's nothing more can be done now to try to build any more bridges.

A happier occasion back on Deeside was when we were invited to Brian & Roseanne Fitzpatrick's wedding. Brian's first wife, Agnes, had been a victim of cancer and suffered a long, painful end. A little while after she passed, Brian hooked up with Roseanne and they eventually married in April, 2005 at St. Columba's and afterwards at the Marcliffe:

Leslie & Anne Mason, with Christina Ling flanked by Jo and I (Ted took the photo)

Also that Spring, I went on a short business trip down to Hook in Hampshire. By this time, I had cut down my business trips a fair bit - no more regular visits to Denmark, Belgium, Orkney etc - and even UK mainland trips were few and far between, so this was a relatively rare time away from home for me.

I was still driving between 25,000 and 30,000 miles a year just visiting our various factories - my regular day job - so I wasn't exactly idle. As a business, we were always on the lookout for acquisition opportunities. Our field of vision was relatively narrow, however - we wanted to continue to focus on areas that had some synergy with our core business in added-value pelagic fish processing. In the middle of the "Noughties" decade, we thought we had found one such example when Scot Trout set about dismantling their business. We had a good look around at their various interests, including Swankie's of Arbroath, but our main interest was in Daniel's Sweet Herring, a company that supplied marinated herring in jars to the retail sector.

Daniel's was based in Grantown-on-Spey, which is about equi-distant from Banchory with Fraserburgh - at least in terms of miles, albeit I would have to travel over the Lecht to get there - not a great idea in the winter months. What an eternal triangle that would have been for me travelling from Banchory to Grantown/Fraserburgh/Aberdeen constantly. In the end, it all came to nought as Scot-Trout pulled the plug on the deal at the last minute - the rest of their group was about to go bust.

There was a spooky aftermath to this when, a few months later, the Managing Director of Daniel's was killed in a road crash on the A9. That would have made things really tricky for us.

Some of the memories for this blog have come from old photographs. For the last 15-16 years they have been digital which has also helped me put more exact dates on some of the events. A couple of photographs from 2005 surprised me however - I was cycling!:

Now if I'd just completed this by memory alone, I would not have recalled this. I remember cycling years before that - in the mid-late 80's/early 90's I completed a couple of long runs - through Glen Tilt to Pitlochry and through Glen Feshie to Aviemore - and Ken Page and I often used to head to Glentanar to cycle, but I thought that until I got on my bike last year to recuperate after my knee replacement, that I hadn't been on the bike for 20 years or more.

Gary moved from house to house in the middle of the Noughties and he took on a distressed greyhound, initially called Sailor:

It wasn't long, however, before he changed the poor dog's name to Tyler. I can only imagine his prior embarrassment when out in public calling for his dog - hence the name change.

It was that summer that niece Lauren graduated:

All of this and we haven't even got to our American summer holiday yet. We spent a couple of weeks with the Lesinas in Oregon. Braeden was just 14 months old but we still travelled round the state - to Bend and Crater Lake, amongst others. Lucy was keen to get the boys' younger years professionally recorded so it was back to the photographers in Medford:

We had an early celebration of Cade's 5th birthday. His cousins Landen & Caitlin came over and they played on the water slide and the pool in the back garden. We went to the Britt Festival in Jacksonville and also had dinner at the aptly named Summer Jo's in Grants Pass, but then we were off again - this time to the East Coast, where Jo and I had managed to secure a week at the Custom House building in Boston.

Lots of history in the Boston area - we did the historical tours and visited Plimouth village, Salem and Harvard, went on board the Mayflower, but also some more modern pilgrimages:

We did a lot of walking round the streets of the city and climbed up the 294 steps inside the Bunker Hill Monument. I can still recall Jo's red and sweaty face when we finally got to the top:

We deserved a beer after this - and there are many opportunities in the area.

We weren't long back home in Scotland when we were invited to Malcolm and Eleanor Lodge's 25th Anniversary party at their house near Drumoak.

Dad was by now in to his mid-80's. Living alone of course, in the small flat in Temple that he and Mum had house-swapped with Barry and Helen some years before. It was much easier for him to manage - no stairs other than a couple of steps up to the front door:

The rails helped of course, because by now he was getting quite frail. He still liked to get out for a daily walk if he could, but he fell a couple of times, which worried us all, particularly as one of his favourite walks was along the nearby canal bank. Obstinate as ever, he refused to use a walking stick - that was for old men, he said! Social Services were supplying daily help for him - he grew quite attached to one particular help and whenever somebody else showed up, he was unhappy - particularly if that person was foreign - that was when his intolerant side came out. Dad - and particularly Mum - had always demonstrated tolerance and it was quite a shock to hear some of his comments at this age.

Towards Christmas in 2005, Kelly decided she'd had enough of her shortish hair. Both she and Lucy struggled a bit to grow long, lush locks but Kelly eventually found the solution - hair extensions:

Around about the same time, Jo and I finally managed to decide on a new suite for the front room. The old pink leather one was now past it and needed replaced. We spent many months wandering around various furniture stores all around Scotland, looking for something suitable, until we eventually plumped for this one from Anderson's of Inverurie:

The front room had now been totally transformed - the old low level fireplace and surrounds had long since gone and been replaced, and new diagonal wooden flooring had been put in. New curtains, mirror and (not in view above) a new dining table completed the new look.

When the Christmas holidays arrived, so did the American clan. Yes, the Lesinas were back in town and we had places to go and things to do - Dunnottar Castle, Catterline, Pennan, the Stone Circle at Auquorthies, the Soft Bear Centre at Strachan, Codona's Amusement Park in Aberdeen and the Adventure Playground at Crathes Castle to name but a few. A curry at the Jewel in the Crown was also a must.

I think that was the Christmas that new jammies were received: