A wild birthday

There. Does that give you a vision of a 12-hour rave chez moi? Don't be silly. The wildness was out there, in the sea and in the scudding clouds and the driving rain. The birthday - for it was my birthday today - was a much more sedate affair. I felt, for example, that the foul weather and the absence of huvtaes made it perfectly ok to sit in bed till 9am, drinking tea and looking at social media messages. And then I opened presents and cards before having a breakfast so late that it ran into elevenses, listening all the while to the wonderful conflation of all Liz Truss's interviews yesterday on different local radio stations - it's on BBC Sounds, if you're interested. Di my friend facetimed me instead of visiting after she'd had contact with a plague victim, and I poached some prunes in the remains of my tea and some secret ingredients and tidied up the debris of the present-parcels and that was the morning. During this time the weather began to move on, with the sun putting in a dramatic first appearance over the Firth (first photo), and by the time we'd finished lunch we'd decided we must go for a walk (surprise) to justify dinner. (I know.)

The Toward shore, where I've been to swim during the summer, was transformed by great mountains of seaweed on the high tide (centre photo, left) and the burn from beyond the castle was brown and foaming (bottom left). We saw a heron lift off from the water's edge, stalling in the wind before pulling out the throttle and flapping inland to the woods - probably more restful in that weather. The wind was screaming in the wires and rigging of the boats laid up in the sailing club yard, and though we avoided any significant rain we were well pounded by the time we returned to the car.

The evening was lovely. My favourite champagne (la Castellane) and little biscuits sent by my sister, followed by Himself's chicken bhuna and chickpea dahl, with basmati rice steamed to perfection, followed by raspberries and yogurt. I had nice long phone calls from both sons and a lunatic conversation with my entertaining oldest grandchild. I've just rounded off the evening with two episodes (on BBC 1) of Accidental Renovators. If you can bear/ignore the rather maddening background music, it's quite entertaining and gives an interesting (to me anyway) slant on where I live. (The link gives you the summary if you can't be bothered!)

Now I must just leave a message for all the well-wishers on Facebook ...As my cousin remarked, I've survived another year!