Blairmore blethers

No sun today, other than that which woke me and then shortly afterwards disappeared. By the afternoon it was uniformly cloudy and then it rained - which was an unwelcome surprise after all that blue sky. As there was no sunshine to tempt me out in the morning, I indulged in minor housework, mostly making sourdough bread (and therefore a mess) and cleaning it all up again. Having allowed me le Creuset casserole to make black rings on my worktop, I set about it with the bleach spray - quite satisfying, really. 

I have to report that I laughed today more than I have in well over a year, laughed till the tears ran down my face, all because of a witty diary piece in the Sunday paper, which I'm still reading. It was the story of the origins of the term "Mondegreen" used to describe an expression which you hear differently from its reality - like "Gladly my cross-eyed bear"; the story was funny enough in itself but was written with the wit that renders the reader helpless, so that when I read it aloud to Himself my voice rose in an uncontrollable squeak ... You get the picture. So good for the endorphins!

Still giggling, I set off on my own in the car to meet my pal and go for a walk in Blairmore, where she lives. She calls this particular walk "round the block" - though at 10 kilometres it's quite some block, taking in a walk along the shore road, up a hill to the back of the village, further uphill through the forest to a viewpoint high overlooking the Clyde, and down over the golf course. By the time we reached the viewpoint - a point at which I once fell flat on my face after catching my bootlace in a hook on the other boot - it was raining quite hard, so I took no photos from there. Instead, I'm blipping the daffodils along the shore road with Blairmore pier just visible in the distance, and the pier itself from the high road. PS Waverley still calls at this pier, now in private ownership; there seems to be work going on with that crane ship clearly doing something interesting - here's hoping it's in preparation for visits from Waverley this summer! We both got rather wet on our walk, and blethered non-stop for two hours - another endorphin boost.

The third boost of the day came in the form of two letters this morning, inviting us to the surgery next week for our second vaccinations. This is a week ahead of the date mentioned at the time of our first, so that's good. And Nicola is letting us travel anywhere from Friday, instead of waiting another couple of weeks, though I doubt I'll go anywhere till after the jag. I have that hairdresser's appointment in two weeks and two days ...

Not that I'm counting!