Let's use our senses

Look. The sky is so blue I had to tone it down because I thought you'd never believe it. The winter barley, already going like a train. The calm of the water in the Firth. You can't make her out but trust me, anchored out there is the MV Klara, come from Aalborg in Denmark and waiting to go somewhere or other.

Listen. For once, here atop the Porridge Hill, no wind, weather silence. A flurry of sparrow wings, as a couple of dozen arrive on the stone wall, outside the kitchen window for a third breakfast. Then, behind us, the sound of a pile being driven into the new quay at Nigg. That moment, when the pile is still well out of the ground, when it rings like a cathedral bell. A sound familiar from when I lived next to the cathedral in St Malo, a sonority that gets into your bones and never comes out.

Smell. I just tipped most of a tin of ground Illy coffee over myself. Personally I think I'm fragrant, but it's a tad embarrassing. And behind us, lunch is ready. Mine, that is, not yours I'm afraid.