Fireworks, music, Meetings and Recovery.

Must have been the lull between the storms,  yesterday morning the heavens opened and it looked like wellies were going to be the order of the day, even one of the customers arrived with his on-  wee frogs on each toe !!    But as the hours passed the skies cleared to reveal a nice day - ideal for our planned fireworks display.

So into the evening and a large crowd gathered at the Mercat Grill for what turned out to be  very spectacular fireworks display organised by RGB and thanks to the farmer who allowed our pyrotechnic boys access to his field.- This was followed by music in the Bar , supplied by the local folk group  "The Yard of Ale",  so all in all we had a busy and entertaining day at the Mercat.  Busy day, some new customers -    almost forgot that we had a surprise proposal there on Friday night when a young gent popped the question to his girlfriend much to the delight of the staff and customers.  Certainly a first for us at the Grill, but exciting,

Big change this morning, cool but bright which unexpectedly turned into a beautiful day.   I was up early  and off to rendezvous with Tom MacInally before we headed up to the half yearly Meeting of No 1 region IPA (International Police Association)  held at Castlebrae, Auchterarder, the Scottish Police Treatment Centre.  Spectacular drive up through Glendevon, by Gleneagles - magnificent in the morning sunlight with all the autumnal colours.

What a marvellous place,  opened in 1996 and since then has offered treatment and support to almost 20,000 ill or injured police officers.

However, to day, we had the conference room to use for our meeting, with Representatives from the various Scottish regions (pre Police Scotland) - now very much mixed up. Nice to see Tom Crozier, the National President  in attendance.
Good meeting - interesting ,  great to hear of all the work being done around the Country and of all the visits by overseas offices, and also of the activities by the Special Interest Groups.
Twenty nine local officers are heading for the Faeroe Islands this week, while we have thirteen German Officers coming to Edinburgh.

End of the meeting Tom and I headed southwards in Tom's open top BMW tourer, with my topee very much at risk!!!  benefiting from the bright sunshine, just about as good as an experience as the SMART cabriolet.