Richard Arnold was heading to see a friend and looking forward to a pleasant afternoon in the sun quaffing chilled wine.
At least that was what he thought.
Television has a way of scuppering the best laid plans.
The next thing he knew he was making his excuses by phone, shoving clean pants in a bag and high tailing it to Heathrow to catch a flight to Glasgow.
That gave me the time to make a more leisurely drive back to Dunblane.
I met up with Nick Dixon who had gone into Producer mode. He had organised some filming to do when the big man arrived.
So early in the evening with the sun still shining and warm the three of us set about shooting a short vt.
There were three locations that we had to visit.
Firstly we went off to see Christina, a beautiful bubbly young model who used to have Andy and Jamie as neighbours.
She told Richard about the days when she was very young and the young pair next door spent all their time playing football and of course tennis.
They must not have been so good in those days because lots of balls ended up coming over into Christina’s garden.
Then we went over to the tennis courts, the location of Andy and Jamie’s first tennis games.
Richard did a quick piece to camera.
The Dunblane Hotel were laying on a special Murray snack to go with a pint, strawberries and cream.
There might have been a lot more strawberries per serving than there are down in Wimbledon, but the cream came out of a can.
“Skooshie” cream as it is called in Scotland. That’s the noise it makes as it comes out of the can.
Heather the barmaid served it up beautifully.
All I had to do was organise a taxi to take the tape to STV in Glasgow.
The Dunblane Hydro, unlike some of the hotels I have stayed in recently is well used to doing this sort of thing and had it organised in no time.
The imposing old Victorian hotel is in the middle of being refurbished. It is looking and feeling like a top notch hotel with all the facilities you would expect.
Or has it?
The weather has been hot and muggy.
Nick was feeling particularly sweaty and sticky when he went to his room.
He could find no control for the air conditioning.
When he called reception to ask for help the receptionist answered promptly and efficiently. She said very politely that someone would come right up.
A few short moments later there was a knock at Nick’s door.
He opened the door to see a smart smiling member of the hotel staff eager to help.
“I hear ye canny open yer windae sir”, he said
It might be a place with all mod cons but you can’t beat good old Scottish air conditioning, an open window!
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