Sunlit

It's hard, reconciling the dire warning about ... everything, really, with the benign warmth of a day like today, when a noticeable wind was enough to make reading a paper outside at lunchtime (yes, I tried) bothersome but was instrumental in keeping temperatures utterly agreeable (21ºc in the late afternoon.) I've just been watching a distraught French farmer in the Loire area with his brown, brittle crops as the mighty river shrinks to insignificance, while the people on Skye and elsewhere in the islands are having to put their heating on as the temperature remains in the low-mid teens even as the forecast price hikes soar to unpayable levels.

I had quite an insignificantly busy morning, hanging out two loads of washing, having another trip to the pharmacy who are still struggling to get our prescriptions right, visiting the health store for various necessities and treating myself to a wee box of Palestinian Medjool dates. We had lunch outside and the gas man came to service the boiler - came early enough not to require either of us to wait in for him. This meant we could drive round to Ardentinny for a sedate walk round Glenfinart Bay, where the tide was so far out when we arrived that we could have halved the distance we walked by going over the bay on dry land. The camp site which has made such a horrid difference to the beach was quieter than I would have expected in such weather, so we were able to enjoy walking back along the water's edge before the path between the fields. Being there on a summer afternoon always makes me think of going home from the beach with sandy, sea-salty children - first our own, when they were small, and later grandchildren, especially the eldest, Catriona, who several times stayed with us on her own and had adventures with foxgloves and rock pools that looked solid with seaweed until you stood on them and it didn't matter because Grandma was wild and no-one was going to give her a row for having wet her shoes ...

My photo comes from when we were just about to get into the car and I noticed the horse, rimmed with the sunlight catching the fuzz of finer hair on its legs and belly. The wild flowers were alive with lazy-sounding bees, and it was all rather magical.

And then there was time for a g&t in the garden before I cooked pasta ...