Carpe diem ...

Well, maybe not the whole day, but I did grab a chance of a brisk walk when it wasn't raining ... I'll come back to that!

Back to the loft with me this morning. So many papers to look through (like all my University exam scripts, in thin books with different coloured covers - I didn't read them all!); old newspapers with pieces by my son or mentions of school trips to France (that was in Ouest-France, I think); programmes from the Glasgow Music Festival; my homework diaries (I know - why have I kept them?); older son's SYS English dissertation ... all now neatly filed away in boxes with approximations of labelling. A great deal of decaying plastic removed and thrown out, though the plastic dandruff still litters the floor (tomorrow's job). And the result? Another beastly allergy attack, giving me a horribly sore throat in one corner and the revolting immediate cause of same. Nuff said.

In the afternoon I wasted the best part of two hours trying to apply online for a renewal of my driving licence, before the chat assistant - for whom I'd had to wait in a queue for an hour - came up with the news that I'd have to apply on paper. No reason given, but I suspect it's because I've had to renew my passport and the photos won't match. A pain anyway. (Oh - I found my very first passport this morning, as well as the one we had as a couple when we were first married, before I got my own again - do people still do that?)

It was after all that that I could bear it no longer and stomped off for a brisk, bad-tempered walk on my own. I hadn't gone far before I realised that even while I was still walking up the road through the houses the scents of the damp gardens were intoxicating. I suspect the masses of buddleia now flowering in every corner has much to do with it. I came back in a big circle round to the West Bay, which is where I got the above photo. I'm looking north, past the point where Highland Mary stands on the hill, right up towards the Tail o' the Bank and the northern hills, and though Dunoon is briefly illuminated by sudden sunshine, there are thunderous clouds all around, and rain was clearly falling on Arran and Cumbrae to the south. You've been here before, Blippers, when I posted a photo from the same river-mouth but looking east, over the bright seaweed and the ducks.

Himself had made great curry for dinner, and I've spent the evening collapsed over the telly. When I came upstairs, the marathon women had reached the 20 mile point and the commentator was talking about how they would have had to practise rehydration, take gels and so on. I always blanch at the thought of practising a marathon: to me, it seems like the sort of thing you'd manage once in your life and then you'd die.

I would anyway...