A bit too much excitement for pensioners...

He lives! This was Mr Life's first outing since the lurgy struck him down. We went to Cramond, in the west of Edinburgh, with SIL 1 and his visiting dad, and walked along the river. I didn't realise that his dad read the blog to find pictures of Grandson - sorry, none today since the baby's in London visiting Auntie Daughter 2, but here's a picture of you instead, B.

"Stand there and try to look as if it's not raining," I said. Not sure if they quite succeeded. The bouncing raindrops on the river possibly give the game away. It had been beautiful in the morning, too!

The colours were lovely, despite the dull skies.

I know that posting photos of autumn leaves in autumn doesn't win any prizes for originality but what the pretty pictures don't show is that something dramatic had happened just before, while we had our lunch in the local hostelry in this respectable suburb.

Da - da - da .... (drum roll...)

We were sitting there quietly eating our macaroni/Thai green curry/gammon when a chap came in with a woman and she ordered soup. Then, without a word, the chap picked up a bar stool and hurled it over the bar. We weren't watching but there was a huge crash as the bar stool hit and smashed the optic bottles and some more bottles on a shelf. We turned and looked but in the first instant we didn't realise what had happened and assumed that someone had just dropped a tray of glasses (a very fully loaded tray?) The two newcomers were just standing there. Then the woman (who turned out to be the man's sister, or so she said) said, "He's mad. Call the police," which didn't seem to be the most useful or helpful thing she could have done. We were all just sitting there trying to work out what was going on, but the young chap behind the bar very composedly said to the chap, "Get out!" and then repeated it and the man did.

The sister said afterwards to the barman that her brother was schizophrenic, which is very sad.

I was very impressed by the young barman, who wasn't a big lad (mind you, neither was the stool thrower). While everyone else in the bar was just going "???" he took charge. Of course, he'd actually witnessed what happened so he wasn't so puzzled as the rest of us; but he must have been very shocked.

The barman called the police and the boss. The boss arrived, parked his BMW with its personalised number plate in the car park, leapt out, strode across the car park ... and then ran back and leapt in again because he'd forgotten to put on his handbrake. By this time his car had rolled back into another car, not improving either, especially the BMW. Again, we weren't looking until the young couple at the nearby table beside the window exclaimed as the car took off, so actually we missed the real drama once more.

I don't think it was the best day of the boss's life.

The young couple at the window had finished their meal. As they left, the young chap said to us, "Troubles happen in threes so we're going!"

There you are: you thought nothing exciting ever happened in this blog, didn't you?

Back to cats tomorrow, I imagine. I have a nice picture of Sirius licking Cassie's face. Bet you can't wait. Or I might tell you what happened in the theatre the other evening when we went to see "42nd Street"... .