Girlie outing

My pal was having her hair cut today. She goes to the same great hairdresser in Greenock as I do. Would I like an outing? So, for the second morning in a row, I was clothed and in my right mind by 10am ready to be picked up, and an hour later I was footloose in Greenock and needing coffee. Because the Italian cafe next door to the hairdresser doesn't open till lunchtime, I was directed by one of the girls in the salon across the road to an imposing grey stone building that at some point in the past I remember as selling ... carpets. 

It used to be a church, a Gaelic church called St Columba's,  built in 1823. Now it is Café Mor. It seems to be in the original hall and vestry, and it's rather lovely. There's even a working log-burning stove, though that wasn't lit today. The coffee wasn't as strong as the fabulous espressos of last week, but did the trick. There is a variety of different kinds of tables and chairs, a tempting breakfast menu, and ... a dog menu. This morning there were tables of ladies chatting, and a solitary lady with her dog. I tried not to be too obvious taking the photo for today's blip.

After a depressing trot along to Greenock's Oak Mall, in which more than half the outlets have closed since I was last there, I abandoned the search for trainers and yielded to Di's suggestion that we hightail it along the motorway to Braehead. There, I bought the kind of trainers another friend recommended - men's trainers, in a fetching moss green - before having cake and tea for lunch and visits to Hotel Chocolat and Marks & Spencer. 

By the time we got back to Dunoon it was sunny and felt just a little like May. I had some tea in the garden and then spent an hour having a hing with friends along the lane (for the uninitiated this just means leaning on their garden fence side by side, chatting about their holiday and ours; it could just as well involve next-door window sills.) And now, once again, I feel totally exhausted. 

I wonder if the lengthy lockdown periods have terminally affected my ability to cope with shopping and chatting? I shall test myself, I think, in the morning ...