A tale of two cities?

Well not quite. No-one in their right mind would call Dunoon a city. But it has certainly been a day of contrasts. We began with the top half of the collage: continental breakfast delivered to our room in the Malmaison. Two picnic baskets, each on its own tray, left outside our room at the appointed hour. Swiftly overcoming the slight problem of not actually being able to lift them (they weighed a great deal) we organised a sybaritic breakfast in bed, complete with snowy napkin protecting the duvet (and my nightie!) from crumbs and fruit juice. Neither of us bothered with the cornflakes - there was plenty of other deliciousness to fill us up. 

The other photo is of the sea at Toward, where I was paddling at 7pm this evening. Since that breakfast, I'd not eaten anything but a couple of small biscuits, but the sea was warm and calm and we'd first heard and then seen PS Waverley going into Rothesay pier and then leave again. And after the cool, grey start in Leith (and, I hear, in Dunoon), the evening sun was warm and I was wearing shorts. 

In between we'd had coffee and farewells with the family who are due to leave in two days for France - a family reunion for the other grandma. But just as we got home to Dunoon, an anguished phone call: my son had just discovered his younger daughter's passport had expired. She's 10, and apparently child passports only last 5 years and he's not been doing the usual overseas work and hadn't thought to check ...and ...and...

I'm so sorry for him - for all of them. It's hard enough to arrange this trip just now. And it's hard to realise that forty-something years after having children you still want to make things better - and can't do a thing about it. I'll be on tenterhooks for several days.

Talking of tenterhooks: I watched the end of Andy Murray's match at Wimbledon. I had thought I might relax ...