Not as planned.

Yesterday was a busy and exciting day, but definitely "not as planned"! However that is a good thing as all experiences are positive even though they might hurt or leave you worse off than before they happened initially.

Kors phoned first thing to cancel as he was not feeling 100%, I make these phone calls to him all the time so whilst disappointed that we were not to meet up, I was fully behind his decision to give me the body swerve and go back to bed.

Arranged to pick Matt up and that's when change of plan number two kicked in. Instead of doing the same old Ocean Terminal coffee routine Matt guided the way to a new venue on me, the Drill Hall. As you will see from the website: http://www.outoftheblue.org.uk/webpages/drill_hall.htm
The space it's self is very open and disabled friendly, unfortunately getting in to the venue is less easy as just at the moment the outside of the building is covered in scaffolding that reduced the routes of access to just one. This one route involved cobblestones and a reverse angle slope that meant my front wheels got stuck. When the scaffolding goes it should be better. The disabled toilet was okay nothing great.

It is a very interesting venue run by "Out of The Blue" a local arts and education charitable group who I hope people will support, as they do some good innovative stuff with communities and to support local artists. The Drill Hall is situated in leith and is a listed building, take a look at the plans for it available on the web sight, or better yet go and have yourself a bowl of extremely good home made soup, or the fab free trade hot chocolate. Matt and I had a good long chinwag which ended up with me feeling more energised and more positive, we will be meeting up again after his return from a short European tour to continue our plotting and planning.

We made it back in plenty of time to watch the Scotland V Ireland rugby game on the telly, change of plan number three unfolded it's self in the form of Scotland winning and despite going to sleep in the second half giving the Irish a sniff at a come back, winning in a fairly impressive way.
Not withstanding the transaction that finally saw Rachel's Ford focus depart for Inverness taking place during the game, I thoroughly enjoyed the match as we seem to have a squad at long last that can do more than look good in muddy shorts, providing us with some hope that we will not be totally embarrassed at the upcoming world cup.

The alert amongst you will have spotted that Rachel's car has finally left our attentive care. We shed a tear and waved a fond farewell, before we burts in to a quick chorus of "You take the high road and I'll take the low road", whilst charging back through the house to shout more abuse at the Scots rugby team, happy that we had done our duty.

Well lastly to the events of last night, and the last of the unforeseen changes to the plan. I am somewhat ashamed to say that we let the side down folks, me and Claire arrived a wee bit early and sat nicely with a drink apiece and behaved ourselves. This behaviour continued and I have to report that I was unable to cause any trouble at all mainly as a result of the venue being part of the Sheraton complex but not actually in the Sheraton it's self. The access was good and more than enough circulation room was available so not too bad for wheelchair users. The only fault with the venue was that the disabled toilet whilst being large enough for a wheelchair user and a care giver to be in at the same time, still had the loo right next to the wall and so would have made transferring with assistance problematical. For those reading this can I say that these odd toilet based discussion will be a feature of my blog as I have as a wheelchair user become rather transfixed by the provision of accessible loos.

Looking for ideas on my wee corner plot here, if folks would like to make suggestions then feel free.