Of perfection, and otherwise

Let's begin with perfection. (I'm trying; you were all so understanding yesterday I feel I owe a little upbeatness). Josephine Bruce, the only rose I've even known by name other than Peace, which in my mother's garden was taller than us latterly, is beautifully scented and perfectly formed - and my plant only produces two blooms in the first flowering, and perhaps a couple more smaller ones well on as Autumn turns to winter. It has long stems and any wind beyond a zephyr has it threatening self-destruction, so I tend to cut each individual bloom as it comes to enjoy indoors. This is bloom no. 2, and I love it. 

And otherwise? Well, the new passport came today. It's extremely odd. Why is it so stiff? And it's full of shiny laminate inside, so that the photo - which appears three times, once in colour and twice in monochrome, as well as peeping coyly through a little window to show sideways on Page 1 - makes me look like a criminal, with a strange slanting line across my chin. There I am, staring arrogantly from the page in a manner which to replicate at a border inspection I shall have to adopt a far sterner face than I tend to feel after a flight and which may well put the official in question right off me. Will I ever present the face of a sweet old lady ...?

While on foreign affairs, I am happy to report that #2 son and wife got their second vaccinations today in France, and are now the proud possessors of a European Vaccination Passport. It won't help them in the UK, but I envy them ...

In other news, I spent a fruitless hour this morning trying to decipher the Latin inscription in Gothic script from three dedication plaques on the wall of the Cathedral of The Isles below the stained glass south windows, from photos taken well below their elevated position by my friend who is a good musician but a lousy photographer. The red letters were so faded as to be practically invisible, and I did much guessing. Here's a wee example of what I ended up with for one of them: 

Ad honorem Dei et in memoriam ?Hororinn mariaie dilectarum ?re? stirpe familiae de Krigisin apud Mousehole in comitatu Coruvbicum olim habitantis scilicet Annæ Hoscombe quae in pace mortem obiit die XVIImo menses Decembris A.S. MIXXXIXIM et Mariae Elisabethae quae per mortis iter cum sorore coniuncta est die eadem A.S. M.DCCCIX?


The question marks are where I can't make it out - and what on earth was Mousehole? Anyway, I sent them off, complete with translation, and he can make what he will of them. That's an hour I shall never retrieve ...

Lunch outside and a hot walk along Loch Striven, all the time trying not to bicker, left me strangely exhausted by evening, which I spent - or what was left of it - sprawled in front of "Dunkirk" on the telly. I first saw it in an iMax cinema, which was amazing, but tonight I was concentrating on the marvellous Mark Rylance.

But why, I wonder, was the Beeb showing it tonight?