Home is so sad ...

In this case my thoughts of Larkin's poem were a kind of transferred epithet, as my home wasn't sad at all - I simply hate saying goodbye to family, goodbye at the end of their Christmas/New Year visit to Scotland, goodbye to the brief moments of relaxation and staying up late in (their) busy lives. Home was actually no wetter than Edinburgh today, and there was even that gleam in the south as we drove through Kirn on our way to the ferry. The tide was amazingly high (blame the super moon) so that we had to drive uphill on the ramp to board the Sound of Soay, and the sea was almost up to the level of the car park at Hunter's Quay terminal.

My extra photo is a contrast: first light in Edinburgh, before the rain arrived.

And as I cannot resist the didactic even after all these years, here's Larkin's telling little poem to explain the title:

Home is so sad

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was: 
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Philip Larkin.