A special weekend

It's not often that we do anything fancy at the weekends. Or any other time for that matter!

 

But this past weekend was just a little bit different.

 

My husband's best man, who he has known since they were teenagers, was turning forty at the weekend and his wife organised a get together of a few of his oldest friends. The plan was for dinner in Inverness on Friday night and then everyone would attend a music concert together on Saturday afternoon/evening.

 

As Inverness is over 3 hours drive away from us it involved an overnight stay. With granny in place to look after the boys, we headed north on Friday afternoon.

 

Since we had just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary the week before, my beloved thought it would be nice if we treated ourselves to a slightly posher hotel than the budget hotels we would normally have plumped for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner was in a really lovely restaurant. The food was delicious and the company was great. Lots of laughter over the evening. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't notice we were the last people left in the restaurant!

 

When we decided to take a photo of each side of the table, the girls all grouped together nicely....

 

 

....as for the boys, well, I have no idea what they were doing....

 

 

On Saturday, after the delights of having a full Scottish cooked breakfast - complete with an unlimited supply of toast and marmalade, fruit, pastries etc - we spent the rest of the morning wandering around Inverness.

 

We enjoyed the simple pleasure of looking around a bookshop at leisure, choosing the books we wanted to look at rather than spending the time in the children's section. To be fair, my husband gets to do this whenever we go to a book shop but anyway...

 

 

In the early afternoon we took in a local shinty match. Or rather, my beloved took in a local shinty match while I enjoyed a very peaceful spot of crochet time. It was a good shinty game though, and I kept finding myself distracted by the happenings on the pitch!

 

 

Then it was time to meet up with the others at the concert. The concert was a rather special one as it was the 40th anniversary concert of a band that my husband and his friends all loved as teens in the 80s and students in the 90s.

 

Back in 1990 my husband and his future best man won a competition to meet the band backstage before and after one of their shows. Just look at some of the hairstyles in this photo!

 

 

My husband is front left and his best man, playing it cool, front right.

 

And here they both are 23 years later at the anniversary concert, this time hubs is on the right.

 

 

It's kind of hard to explain the music of Runrig to anyone who hasn't heard of them. They brought Gaelic songs into the mainstream, although they have just as many English songs as Gaelic. Their appeal is really wide ranging which was obvious at the concert. There was a huge mix of ages there, from those of my parents generation and older right down to teenagers.

 

We hadn't actually thought we would make it to the concert at first as the tickets were so expensive but then another friend of my husbands couldn't go and very kindly gave us his tickets!

 

 

We also didn't think that we would stick around at the concert for very long, largely due to the fact that being 30 weeks pregnant and standing for hours at a music concert are probably not a good combination, but it was all very civilised really. There were plenty people who brought picnic blankets along, as did we, so in between the supporting acts - one of whom was mine and the boys' current favourite bands, Manran, and who were amazing - I could join those of an older generation and have a wee seat down! Then by the time Runrig came on, three hours after the show had started, I still felt pretty good. I didn't, however, think I should join in when everyone started jumping in time with the first song!

 

 

Because we still had to make the 3 hour drive back home, we didn't stick around for the whole concert. We left at about 9ish, arriving home soon after midnight. It was a great time to leave. Later on when the concert finished, and 10, 000 people all tried to leave, it took our friends 2 hours to get out of the car park field!

 

The boys were all long tucked up in bed when we got home but when Alasdair sneaked into our bed at some point through the night he crawled in, kissed me and said 'I love you mammy'. It was wonderful to get some special time away with my hubby but also equally special to have these boys waiting at home for us.

 

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