Close-knit ...

Another weather-blighted day redeemed by family contact and the inevitable and apparently lunatic walk. I was making bread when my younger grandson contacted me on WhatsApp to tell me his match against Rangers (no, not the first team!) had been postponed, and he couldn't go to rugby either, so clearly I was not alone in being scunnered at the weather. And then I heard, via her father who was over the Czech Republic in a plane at the time, that my older granddaughter had got full marks for a critical essay on Shakespeare. With my lifetime work involving the imparting of this skill, I was thrilled - she's only 12, and if she can do this now ... The bread turned out rather good too.

We'd been having lightning, thunder and hailstorms in a brisk gale, but, crazy as we are, we put the waterproofs on again and headed south. Our first thought was Loch Striven, but when we arrived there was a full-blooded hail shower in progress and the wind threatened to take the car door off, so we retreated to a more sheltered spot and walked from there. It was then that I saw this ivy on a farm wall - tiny, tightly packed leaves all intertwined and amazing. Hell to clear, but quite a sight on a whole length of dry-stone dyke.

We managed to be rained on only once, we eventually warmed up, and the sky cleared quite surprisingly just before we came home.