Another day, another shore ...

I'm told it rained rather spectacularly in Edinburgh today, giving rise to, inter alia, a humorous piece in The Scotsman about The Scottish Barbecue. So it's with a touch of ... what? sympathy? schadenfreude? ... that I have to report that here in Dunoon, where it rains a great deal, we had a mild, quiet, more or less dry day, with just enough rain before teatime - when I was down the coast in a dry place - to save me from watering my newly-planted pots again. I call that a result.

I wasted a lot of time today, though. I found it hard to get up, despite - or maybe because of - a premature wakening around 4.30am with a horribly stiff neck. I shall need to take more care about composing myself for sleep, obviously... Anyway, I didn't do my Italian till after breakfast, discouraged because of being demoted again because of allowing myself to be distracted by other things last week. And then Di came in for coffee and catch-up because she'd been away yesterday and we had to compare notes about Saturday - but she also came up with a thought for the sermon I have to write for this Sunday, so now I'll have to mull it over, let it brew for a bit. When she left I allowed myself to be seduced by the newspaper on the computer and then it was well past time for some lunch.

And then, of course, because it was warm and still not raining, we had to go out, chasing the light again southward. Actually we had a lovely walk, along the triangle of road that has as its apex Toward Lighthouse; only the people that live there tend to drive along it, so it's very peaceful and very different from the rest of the area because of its flat fields and big sky. Before going back to the car, we took a detour onto the shore, just because I felt like pottering among the rocks and noting the different stone - pink sandstone, running all the way from Corrie on Arran via Bute; rough conglomerate with pebbles sticking out of it, what I think must've been whinstone in long dark strips. The view in the photo is of a bit of beach we knew really well when the new houses were first built on this side of the big house at the end; our dear friends were the first people to live in the first one, out of sight behind its neighbour, and my boys loved the fires we sometimes lit on "their" bit of beach and taking Jane's wee rowing boat out by themselves - and we all played murderous games of croquet on the not-entirely-even grass. So we sat on a rock and remembered our younger selves until our old selves felt the need of dinner ...

And now I'm late again because I was laughing at Have I Got News For You. We have a concert tomorrow and I need to sleep!