I've looked at life from both sides now ...

Why did that song come into my head? It's appropriate enough - this is the view of the Argyll coastline at the bend in the river, taken from the car park in Gourock. It looks like a different world - and it is. For all that Gourock isn't a huge place, it feels very different. We had a snack in Flava Coffee house, and there were students on both sides of us, talking seriously about their work. There were lone lunchers and chatty couples. The café we first tried was full and we couldn't park anyway. 

But do I want to live there? Well, no. Even though this visit was to make up for the one I missed on storm-afflicted Wednesday, even though I get fed up with the restrictions placed on my life by ferries and timetables and weather, that distant coastline still calls - and reminds me irresistibly of the first time I looked at it after finding out we were moving there to live. That time, too, we were unable to make the journey because of wind; we looked at the white horses and the blue sea and wondered what we were doing.

That was 43 years ago. We're still here...