A day of two halves

What a silly cliché that is! However, that's how the weather was today, as the rain that arrived just as I was going to bed last night really lasted into the morning as fine drizzle and the cloud until early afternoon. It wouldn't have mattered had I not resolved to change our bed and wash everything that moved, including the mattress protector, and the chief joy of clean bedlinen comes from its having dried outside ...

But it was fine. By the time I started hanging out the rain had more or less stopped, and the afternoon was brilliant. Before I could enjoy it, however, we had the joy (irony alert) of getting clothed, in right minds, finished with breakfast ... before a civil young joiner arrived to work joiner's magic on the uneven floorboards in the dining room left when a cowboy insulating team cut a new trapdoor because one of them was too fat to use the existing one. Since then it's been protruding and squeaking and damaging a nice Persian rug. We also had the bottom of a cupboard door shaved because another floorboard had spontaneously ?swollen?... 

I escaped all this in the afternoon, by which time the sky was increasingly blue and my pal had handed her dogs over to the pack walker and was therefore free for a gentle walk along the shore road at Blairmore. We passed a gaggle of coaches parked at the pier in the tiny village centre - waiting for tourists who'd embarked on a cruise of Loch Long on PS Waverley, and shortly afterwards we caught sight of her steaming down the far shore. So my photo today captures much of what I love about summer here - the great banks of wild mustard along the shore, the variously sandy and pebbly beaches with their clusters of terns and seagulls, the dark of the dried seaweed and the brilliant blue of the water - all enhanced by the presence of an iconic paddle steamer. We padded along in our sandals (which encourage padding) and saw a man attempting to reunite a baby guillemot with its anxiously calling mother. They were indeed reunited, but the young one seemed very unhappy about being in the sea, so I don't know how that would pan out. 

Walk over, we sat in Di's conservatory and drank tea while the recently-returned dogs gazed adoringly at me in unrequited love. We don't do this sort of thing often enough these days.

And what about the man with the roller and the pot-holed back lane, do I hear you ask? Reader, he started today. The potholes have been scritched and rolled. But the final surfacing may not be to my liking ... watch this space.