Gloomy

Funny how badly I take it when the weather reverts to normal here - a few sunny days and I allow myself to dream that we might be about to have summer - but no. To be fair, there wasn't much rain - a tiny smirr in the morning, a full-blooded shower just as we were reaching the end of this afternoon's walk - but there was far too much cloud and only a blink or two of sunshine. And all this gloom on the news about new variants, as if we've not known from the beginning that viruses mutate and that's why we need flu vaccination every year but make do with our old smallpox ones ... Nah. I've been grumpy for hours, and it's time for bed.

To wheech through the day: I hung out of the window taking photos of a Trident missile submarine heading down the firth with its attendant flotilla of MOD vessels, none of which appeared on the ship finder. I swept the kitchen floor. I ironed pillowcases, put them away, wrestled the winter duvet into a vacuum compression bag and - along with Himself - managed to sook enough air out to get it into the under-bed storage. None of this was of interest, none of it amused. No wonder I'm girny. I retrieved my wedding ring from the jeweller - a size and a half bigger, so that I don't have to cut my finger off next time...It came back very shiny.

The walk was along the shores of Loch Eck, so I give you a suitably gloomy photo of the east end of the loch, where the posher of the holiday cabins have the prime positions on the loch side. You can see how dark the water is, and yet under a blue sky it too is blue. Just after I took this photo, I filmed a sheep - in the photo - calling insistently to the far end of the field, where a lamb suddenly detached itself from its pals and cantered back across the field shouting "It's all right, Mummy - I'm coming! I'm starving!" ...

Ok. I made that bit up. He didn't say he was starving.

The tea I've just drunk tasted odd tonight. Don't see it can be the new kettle, as we've used it since yesterday. I think it's the tea - or am I tasting with a distempered appetite? 

Makes me sound like Malvolio. I don't have cross-garters, I don't have yellow stockings. Capisce?