See ya at the telegraph pole ...

I'll start with the photo, taken towards teatime on this unpleasantly chilly afternoon when the wind was whistling down Glen Striven, though if you look carefully you'll see that in the far distance, like the backdrop to an Old Master's virgin and child painting, there's a visionary gleam seeking out Rothesay - or perhaps Port Bannatyne - on Bute. There's quite a gang of sheep hanging out round that completely undistinguished telegraph pole, while the outsiders, presumably not invited to the party, graze around trying to look unconcerned. The "in" crowd, however, have their beady eyes on us ... are we coming to break them up as being non-Covid compliant?

You'd think with all this scintillating humour that I'd had a great day. Au contraire, I woke up feeling half-drowned in exhaustion - I didn't sleep till after 2.30pm after dozing much earlier in the evening. As a result I felt about 100 years old, and not at all like doing anything. However, my usual FaceTime coffee break with my pal turned instead into a three-way conversation on Whereby with a friend in deepest Englandshire, and after 45 minutes or so of the completely random and hilarious conversation that only women can generate I had tears streaming down my face and was aching again, not from exhaustion but from too much belly-laughing.

Maybe that's why the sheep were gathered round that pole ...