Joint Warrior

I may have been the ship's hooter that woke me before I was willing to be awake, although I had no recollection of it - it was Mr PB who told me there had been one sounded, muffled but insistent. But what I noticed first when I opened my eyes was Venus, bright in the clear pale sky above Dunoon. It wasn't till I sat up that I could see the thick dark cloudbank that hung over the Other Side, with the white trails of a cloud inversion hugging the low hills and trailing north of us into the Holy Loch. I thought I might just take a photo, and besides ...

When I brought the phone through to the bedroom, went over to the window, I noticed something moving in the dark - a bigger, thicker darkness between me and the lights on the coast road. I noticed also that the row of lights I had seen in the region of the Gare Loch had gone - and realised that Operation Joint Warrior was heading out to sea. My thick darkness, moving stealthily down river, was in fact a ship of the US Navy, with only the lights necessary for navigation showing, a huge, dark ship 210 metres long, 33 metres wide. My Ship Finder app told me no more, other than that it was on "Military Ops". I closed the window and went back to bed ...

The rest of the day was more ordinary, but good. Pilates class gave me the biggest laugh I've had in weeks - we were all wobbling because laughter may be good for the soul but is dire for the balance. And I'm just in from the most glorious walk through Benmore Gardens, which is a miracle of colour and form in this most generous of autumns. I'll pop in an extra photo just because it was so beautiful. I haven't tinkered with the colour - I promise.

And we met a red squirrel. It came tripping through the woodland on the top of the hill, over the moss, out onto the track just in front of us. I resisted the urge to move for my camera; it sat, briefly, looking us over. Then it turned and lolloped without haste down the hill. I felt blessed. It's good to be here.