As 2025 draws to a close, it’s fair to say that along with the highs, the year has thrown more challenges in our path than we’ve had the good fortune of experiencing in the past.
The year began in a similar manner to how it normally does - a dark, cold and windy January. Some early year snow gave Iona the opportunity to enjoy some fun sledging with her friends (and sometimes with her mum and dad!). However, an exceptionally studious Eilidh turned down some sledging opportunities in favour of studying for her prelims. She’d been working exceptionally hard towards her Nat 5 exams, and was determined that the distraction of fun in the cold snow wasn’t going to dampen her work ethic. She did have the good fortune though that her prelims finished in the week running up to her birthday, meaning that she could celebrate a chilled-out games afternoon with her friends with a clear conscience!
On Valentine’s day, Craig and Gwen flew out to Paris for the weekend. In truth, this was less a romantic gesture, and more that it’s when the school holidays were and Gwen’s annual leave allowed us to go, as Eilidh and Iona came too! We had a fabulous weekend, combining shopping, the Paris opera house, the Eiffel Tower, and some delicious food!
March started with some excitement as Eilidh entered her first synchronised swimming novice competition, and she and her partner came away with gold medals after putting together a routine to Taylor Swift’s song Style. The following weekend saw a lovely weekend away with the Andrews and Jenkins, staying in a house in Dumfriesshire.
The most excitement at the end of the month and into April, however, belonged to Iona. After celebrating her (twelfth!) birthday with roller skating and a sleepover with friends, she was off for a week to school camp for the last week of term at PGL Ford Castle in Berwick-upon-Tweed. She had a great time there with her classmates, taking part in adventurous activities and socialising with her friends in the evenings. No sooner was she back, than we whisked her away to Sallachy for a week which saw some incredibly warm weather for that part of the world for April!
Our world was turned upside-down on return from that trip though with the sudden and unexpected news that Craig had lost his job. Although reeling from the shock, it meant that he was suddenly able to spend some intense time with Eilidh helping her prepare for her exams, in particular Applications of Maths, and this did indeed prove to be time well spent. It seems that some clouds at least do have silver linings.
No more May bank-holiday weekend escapes for us for the foreseeable future - May is now crunch-time!. All Eilidh’s hard work and preparation came down to a handful of days putting her to the test. It’s probably fair to say that, in common with most other teenagers, spending spring days sitting in school doing exams isn’t her favourite activity. The exams began a hectic period for Eilidh: straight after her final exam, she was off on a training camp in preparation for her forthcoming summer Scouting adventure, while the two weekends following that saw six dance shows over the two weekends. June also took Eilidh in a new direction for a week, literally, as she took a week off school in order to go to school. She was given the opportunity to do work experience, and managed to find a placement in a local-ish primary school. She really enjoyed her time, and it’s safe to say that the experience hasn’t changed her career aspirations.
Speaking of primary schools, our days of having a child in one have come to an end. Iona rounded off her primary school years with a part in the P7 show, and a messy paint run party! It’s hard to believe that we’ve got two high-school-aged daughters, but that’s what the passage of time will do! Iona also had a Scout camp thrown into the mix in June, just to keep her on her toes!
With school done, we wasted no time in escaping for a break - a sleeper train was booked to take us down to London, a visit to the Peplers was arranged, tickets to the Harry Potter studio tour were arranged, and another sleeper train booked to take us back up the road / track in time for Gwen to start her session on Monday morning. However, as a poet who shares Eilidh’s birthday once said, the best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men / Gang aft agley. At some point on the Friday night into the Saturday, the sleeper train decided that it itself needed a sleep, and decided to stop at a place that wasn’t London and not go any further. We were therefore turfed off the train in Rugby with little ceremony and left to catch a local train into town. Our problems were compounded when news came that our reservations on the train home had to be cancelled due to broken air conditioning in our carriage, leaving us scrambling to find a way to get Gwen at least back to Scotland in time to make the people of north Livingston better. In the end, we managed to get a late booking back up on the Sunday afternoon, cutting short the weekend and meaning the postponement of the Harry Potter tour.
July is where our year got really interesting! Having a love of Scandinavia, Eilidh had stepped out of her comfort zone and signed up with another Scout Group to attend the Norwegian Jamboree, about an hour north of Oslo. She flew out on the Saturday morning, and spent a 
fabulous week doing a great range of activities. They finished up on the Friday, and then spent a few days exploring Oslo in small groups. Rather than having Eilidh flying home with the others on the Tuesday though, we had other plans. On the second Saturday that Eilidh was in Norway, the rest of the family flew out to Oslo too. Craig, Gwen and Iona also spent a few days in the city, in the course of which we met just about every subgroup from West Lothian (and several other countries in Europe) except Eilidh’s! Gwen intercepted Eilidh as the other Scouts and Explorers were catching the bus to the airport, and our family holiday could begin as a full unit.
Following a trip to the Oslo Opera House to see a ballet about football (everybody’s interests catered for in one activity!), Gwen took the girls to the botanic gardens for an ice cream, Craig went to pick up the campervan which would serve as the family’s accommodation for the next week-and-a-half. The rest of the holiday followed a rough plan, where we didn’t know where we would be sleeping from night-to-night, nor whether we’d have access to toilets, electricity and wifi (the campervan did have two of those three facilities to a limited extent!). The girls embraced this way of life so much that they soon positively requested to avoid parking in a campsite wherever possible, preferring to park up somewhere remote, preferably with a wild swim nearby.
Another sure-fire way to escape over-bearing heat was to go into the mountains. After a scenic drive up a very winding road, we reached a summer ski resort (not open in the winter as the whole building gets buried in snow!), put on warmer clothes, gloves, heavy duty walking boots and crampons and tied ourselves together to a guide and another family with a long rope before embarking on a glacier walk.
Spending the time in such a relaxed (but still keeping ourselves busy!) fashion was just what the doctor ordered, and we returned from holiday ready to tackle the second half of the year.
The weekend after getting back from Norway, we were off on the road again - this time to Cambridge for the wedding of Gwen’s cousin, Liz. Being in that part of the world allowed us the opportunity to catch up with one of Craig’s oldest (long-standing - we still consider ourselves young!) university friends too. A short while exploring the city before our return north of the border capped off a lovely but tiring weekend.
There may have only been one week left of the school holidays, but that still left time for one more big event: the start of the football season exam results day. Eilidh got an excellent set of results, and we’re all so proud that the effort that she put in resulted in the good grades that she deserved.
The following week was Iona's turn to take centre-stage, as she took the first steps on her secondary school journey. She’s settled into the new environment really well, and gallops out the door each morning to meet her friends and walk down. Long may the enthusiasm continue!
The remainder of August sadly didn’t continue on that happy note. Subsequent to his cancer diagnosis last July, Roger’s health had been steadily deteriorating over the course of the year. The family had enjoyed some nice walks with him in the spring and the early summer, and in the later and hotter summer days, he enjoyed sitting out in our garden, either chatting with whoever was around, keeping a keen eye on what was going on, or simply having a nice snooze in the warm temperatures. The doctors and nurses and Marie Curie team did a fabulous job of helping him to carry on with as much normality as possible, until he was admitted into the Marie Curie Hospice on 24 August, where he spent the next few days asleep before passing away peacefully on 29 August.
A funeral date was set for 26 September, and a lot of that month was spent making sure that Roger got the send off that he deserved, and assisting Brenda with the administrative tasks which inevitably follow the death of a loved one.
Life had to carry on though, and during the course of September, Eilidh was assessed for and passed her Artistic Swimming Figure Grade 2 exam, successfully demonstrating all the skills that she’d been learning in her classes. At the end of the month, we went as a family for a surfing lesson at the new(ish) artificial surf resort between here and Edinburgh. Picking our dates carefully and in conjunction with the weather forecast, we all had a great time, with varying degrees of success at actually surfing!
We enjoyed a family theatre trip in October to see War Horse. It was lovely to spend a relaxed and cultured afternoon as a family, and more relaxation was to follow as we went up to Sallachy for the October holiday. We managed to catch a sunny day to kayak on the loch, and then successfully managed to find the equivalent of a needle in a haystack when a pair of Eilidh’s socks were caught unawares by the rising tide and ended up discreetly bobbing in the water! We managed to find some new walking routes, cycle some old favourite routes, watch some films, and play board games in front of the fire. On top of that, Eilidh managed to keep her studying habits bubbling away!
On the way back from Sallachy, we played things a bit differently from usual. We arranged that Brenda would get the train to Perth, whereupon Gwen and Eilidh would whisk her away to a nice Perthshire hotel and treat her to a day of shopping at House of Bruar. Of course, six of us wouldn’t fit in a five-seater car, so Iona and Craig took the train back to Livingston, conveniently allowing them to attend a birthday party and football match respectively on the Sunday!
October wasn’t over yet though - there was still time for Gwen to relocate from Livingston to Lindisfarne for a lovely, spiritual weekend with university friends. And there was still time later in November for more culture, as Gwen, Eilidh and Brenda went to see Scottish Ballet’s production of The Snow Queen.
Coming into December, we were super-excited to welcome the Rouses over from Australia; they’ll be here over Christmas and New Year, and we can’t wait to spend more time with them over the festive period.
As well as thriving in High School, socially and academically, Iona has followed Eilidh’s swimming pathway. She completed the Learn to Swim programme, and then had a successful trial with Forth Valley Tridents’ artistic swimming section. She’s still playing her flute, and has recently embarked on piano lessons too. She’s still very keen on spending time in her bedroom, particularly playing online games with her friends, and sleeping!
Eilidh is still filling her week to the brim. She’s kept up the valuable experience of being a Young Leader with the Beavers, and helps out there each week. She dances for long stretches on Wednesdays and Fridays, and is continuing to enjoy syncro. She gave up playing the oboe at the end of 4th Year in order to concentrate on her Highers. This year at school, she’s taking Higher English, History, RMPS and Applications of Maths. She’s also participating in an initiative called West Lothian Academy, where certain subjects are taught online. It’s designed for cases where schools wouldn’t be able to offer particular classes due to low pupil numbers, or where pupils themselves may have timetable clashes. In Eilidh’s case, she’s doing Higher Philosophy. The subject itself has one hour of online teaching per week, and one face-to-face get-together per term; the rest is self-driven. It should prove to be a good introduction to university learning for her.
Gwen never has an idle moment! Her work at the practice and her additional GP teaching role keep her out of trouble, and along with maximising time with her dad in the first part of the year, and with just her mum more recently, she’s been able to keep fit, and is still regularly playing her violin with Meadows Chamber Orchestra.
Having assisted Eilidh to success in her Applications of Maths exam, Craig has expanded his services, and is now providing tutoring services to nine other teenagers. He’s also been very much enjoying going to the Hearts games this season (have a look at the top of the Scottish Premiership table if you’re unsure why!)
As ever, if you’re anywhere close by, please do let us know – we’d love to see you! The Family Browning would like to wish all our friends and relations a very Merry Christmas, and all best wishes for a safe, healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!
