The news of the bombing in Liverpool and the subsequent arrests in the quiet suburb of Aigburth shocked us all, but for me, my heart did stop for a moment with the realisation that this was in Emily’s city.
Of course, the likelihood of any of us being caught up in a terrorist attack, no matter where it occurs, is highly improbable. The taxi driver David Perry was just having a normal Sunday doing his job and to be caught up in such an event and then to come out of it alive will change his life forever.
Thank God he managed to escape and thank God the bomber was killed before he managed to run into Liverpool’s Children’s Hospital and put more lives in danger.
Just when we are getting back to normality and being able to venture out again, the terror threat in our county has been raised to severe.
We must pray that the government intelligence is one step ahead of these terror plans, and we don’t have to witness any more horrific attacks and the shock and sadness they bring.
Ironically, it was my friend Carol Vorderman who invited me up to the north-east this week.
She was the guest speaker at the Inverurie Loco Works FC annual Business Lunch at The Marcliffe Hotel hosted by MC Ian Thain, and what a wonderful event that is.
They always have fabulous speakers every year, who have included Joanna Lumley, Clare Balding and Darcey Bussell.
Carol was so entertaining with lots of stories of her life, on and off TV, and the audience loved her.
The second speaker was Peter Brown, the funniest comedian I have heard in years. Carol and I were still laughing at his jokes on the way home. We kept remembering another one and started laughing all over again.
We met some wonderful people and I spoke to so many readers of this column who made me smile by asking how my aunties were, and of course I had lots of questions about how Webster the cat is settling in. He is fitting in perfectly by the way.
The organisers of the event (pictured) are the club chairman Mike Macaulay, his wife, the wonderful Commonwealth Games medalist Gill Macauley (nee Fordyce), who has won gold, silver and bronze medals for swimming, and the club vice chairman Graeme Hay.
They made us feel so welcome, and after a day spent with us spikin Doric I think Carol learned quite a few words.
She started her speech with “Fit like, loons and quines?” Which of course was very well received, and we were all very impressed that she had been listening to what we had taught her.
It was lovely having Carol up in my part of the world. She loved the friendliness of the people and will definitely be back.
I did of course come up a day early so that I could spend time with my aunties. Next time I will have to take Carol to Turra for the day and maybe we can catch a match at Inverurie Locos.
So although Webster was the cat everyone was asking about, Rimple managed to remind us how important she is this week.
Our neighbours are having major building works done and the builders were a bit lax and didn’t put netting up around the site. Rimple went to explore, and having fallen into or jumped into the wet concrete she came home covered in the stuff.
It’s quite dangerous for a cat to have concrete on them as they lick it off to clean themselves and ingest it, so we had a trip to the vets to have it properly removed.
The builders got a bit of a ticking off and hopefully the site will be properly secured now.
I’m sure her ploy was to be written about in the column after hearing that all those people were asking about Webster!
Of course, the big news this week is that TV presenter Rylan Neal is getting new teeth!
After eight years with those ridiculously dazzling ones he has decided to replace them.
How funny that he put up a post on twitter to make this announcement and say goodbye to them.
That’s what we all love about Rylan, he has never taken himself too seriously.
We are now all waiting to see the big reveal!
Have a good week,
Yvie x