Reunited with the grandsons for a few days. They requested assistance with a couple of projects. A computer generated movie and assembling a model sailing boat. Simple enough? The model of the Alexander von Humbolt is level 5 of difficulty – as difficult as it gets. Their dad said, pointing at me, it is your responsibility to see this model

completed, rigging and all, before you leave. The teeny tiny pieces have to be handled with micro tweezers and glued together with a micro syringe glue applicator. And the rigging is a spool of the finest thread, which somehow has to be threaded through invisible holes in the spars. Notwithstanding these challenges, we managed to progress from the sheets of bits to the photographed intermediate stage.

Meanwhile, pre-planning for the movie was under way. The plot: The evil Professor Scionide has invented in his futuristic laboratory a Timewarp machine that looks like a drink vending machine (think Tardis). Using this machine he plans to travel back in time and destroy the world. The hero is schoolboy Max, who bears an uncanny likeness to Yunus and drives a Porsche. Amazingly, his school resembles a castle. Assisting Max is the secret agent Boris who bears some similarity to Colin Firth in Kingsman guise. He drives a Lamborghini. Prof Scionide has made his escape in a WW2 tank, hotly pursued by Max and Agent Boris. They manage to save the world by successfully exploding Prof Scionide in his tank, and the story concludes with Max and agent Boris helping them selves to cans of coke from the Timewarp which had turned back into a drinks machine. Easy peasy. But the devil is in the detail. The narrative rolling into the distance was a cinch. Less easy was dismembering a photo of Max so that he could be rendered as a cartoon character with stiffly moving limbs, going across selected scenery. Tense thrilling background music was easy, as was the explosion sound effect and the explosion itself. The car chase remains conceptual at this stage. A Pepsi drinks machine was morphed to the Timewarp by addition of a Tesla spark graphic. All was rolling smoothly when play was suspended – by something trivial like supper or bed-time.

In the morning we moved right along to Peterhead, our home away from home in Scotland. Fancied a weekend away in the countryside, and booked in to the Deeside Inn at Balleter, a little town up the lovely Dee river. Storms around the world seem to be wilder and more frequent.

The storm at the headwaters of the Dee last new year was a horror. The evidence is still everywhere. The suspension foot-bridge over the Dee at Cambus o’ May that brother –in-law George built was mangled by a caravan floating down the river. The flood basin retaining wall above Balleter burst, sending a wall of water through the town. Now, 4 months later, the Inn and the butcher shop seem to be the only businesses flourishing. There are still flood trashed houses and businesses everywhere. Further up-river, the main road to Balmoral was washed away, as were the foundations of a minor castle on the river.

On the royal estate at Balmoral bronze plaques indicate the high water level of record floods. The 8 markers march up the bank starting in 1872. The marker for Storm Frank 30 Dec. 2015 is at the top of the bank. And the next time, the waters might even be over the bank and heading for the Castle.

But today is a clear cold day with no threat of flood, and we are free to walk around some of the 20,000 ha estate. The ballroom is open to the public so we can check out some of the current queen’s frocks, gowns and memorabilia, along with earlier records. Queen Victoria’s friendship with John Brown was recorded, even before the film.

Less is known of the period when, a few years after Brown’s death, as Empress of India, she befriended the handsome young Abdul Karim or “Munshi”, and appointed him her Indian secretary, causing quite a stir among other household members. Following Victoria’s death in 1901, Karim was returned to India and the episode quietly buried.

Still further up river Braemar was cut off by the flood, but remained unscathed. Not a person to be seen anywhere near the park that will host the highland gathering where the lovely grass will be savaged by trampling and thrown heavy objects on the first weekend in September. The Royal box was securely locked, but we couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a bit of posing.

The competition? I agree, it’s not nice to make fun of people who are trying to do their best, even if they are very large and about to go bankrupt. However the prize is still up for grabs.