Another long day at the Inn

Getting used to these early rises - but unfortunately Sam the Joiner decided to have a bath and fell asleep before he came to work - so we ended up hours behind schedule and had to call a halt to the upgrade till after the weekend.

Chief Cheffette ( Claire) in the kitchen made me my breakfast, fancy little presentation of of a scrambled egg - nice, but Jamie was not happy that she had done such a good job.

In the meantime, the City Council have reported a £92 million deficit in the budget, but so far they have spent £350 million on the Tramworks project - and managed to cost the local community probably twice as much so far. For us, the nightmare continues, the tramworkers started outside us today again, and with avengance - our staff and customers could not hear themselves - so how these folk cannot believe we are losing money is unbelievable. So not only do we have thieving chancers as MP's running the country but we also have inept local councillors ( work experience M P.s) ruining the local economy, and not interested in how we are coping - or not. This ongoing saga with our MP's should guarantee a big flush of the chancers at the next election. We have been told that they will be there for at least another two months, so that will be about ten months of pain for us.

Had runs to B & Q, Ikea and back to Beatson's again before getting home and fed ( pork chops).

Took a run down to Thornton Farm, Rosewell, where I met up with Bill Johnston , Chairman of the Riding for The Disabled, and presented him with a cheque for £750 from The Laird o Cockpen RA No 500, however we will need to meet up with the group when they are in action and get an official photo.

Thornton Farm is also adjacent to a massive Scottish Coal open cast project which has been going on for about fourteen years in the area, they have moved across miles of farm land stripping off the top soil and then taking out the coal seams below. When I first came to life and work in this area there were about eight small drift mines operating in this part of the county, hard work, but now they just rip it open from above - not unusual for the big machines to drop into old workings below ground, which did happen at the old Blinkbonny Mine workings.

Big build up starting tonight for the Heiniken Cup Final at Murrayfield stadium, town filling up, and all the hotels are full and charging premium rates - hopefully we will be busy, probably need to get the rugby supporters to go sort out the tram workers.

Sparky Mark has arrived , he is off on his wanderings this weekend, another hike through the highlands with a group of friends, short daily hikes and events planned in the afternoons for them.

Just thought I would add the floral picture to add a bit colour to the blog.