Fresh air!

(Excuse the captions: they are the work of Photodirector and I can't change them).

My sister K took our mother to church in the morning, in her previous village. I skipped out along the cycle track (formerly the Ballachulish to Connel railway) and down to the beach at Tralee, passing the chalets that my sister cleans. They look lovely!

I walked the length of the beach and back, noticing the warmth of the sun on my back, the whoosh of the waves, and the yellow of the gorse on the fields surrounding the bay. Timed my walk well, and hot back at roughly thr.same time as K and Mother. 

The weather was so beautiful that we decided to have lunch outside. The gardens are communal, but mother has a bench and a clothes airer near her own door. When K.and I were bringing the plates back in, she said she'd like to stay out in the sun a while longer, so we left her. When we returned a few minutes later, she'd gone, leaving a tumbler on the table.  She wasn't in her flat either. We raced out to the main door near the road, where we found her in animated conversation with some other visitors, holding a yoghurt pot and spoon in her hand. She said she had just been having a walk, but it later transpired that she had forgotten that we had put the door key in her pocket, moments earlier, and had been 'quite frightened' about being locked out. 

We took back to the flat and gave her some llaundry to fold, as she likes to keep.busy. I was a bit worried about leaving her, but K thought she'd be ok, so we took K's dog, Harris, and headed up the mountain, Ben Lora, which is more or less opposite the flats.

There's been a lot of forestry work since I'd last been up there: the pine plantations have gone. Perhaps they will be replaced by native species. The land is not productive, and there's a bog on the approach to the summit. From the top, there are are 360 degrees of views, The lochs Creran and Etive are dwarfed by the longer, larger Linnhe. 

When we got back down, K had to rush off because her youngest son was making pancakes for K's birthday. She returned later, and took us to the village hall for a 'sound bath'. We lay on recliner chairs/the floor, wrapped in blankets because it was exceedingly cold in the hall, while a woman arranged crystals around us, and played many types of musical instruments over us while we were in sleep or deep relaxation. I was amazed that I did sleep a little, despite the cold. I liked the instruments, apart from the drum, which sounded like thunder to me. I felt as if I d stepped back in time fifteen years, to an era when such events were commonplace in Stroud.

Afterwards, we went back to the flat and K opened her birthday presents at last. I'd made our mother write a card to her the night before, and that had taken about an hour. I'd also given her a handmade cake of soap to give to K. Mother rather sweetly described as a 'loaf of soap'.

When K left, mother and I got into a distressing Alice-in-Wonderland conversation about the room upstairs where I was staying. She was outraged that I was paying for it, and thought that the management was profiting handsomely (t's 12 pounds a night)! and began to believe that I'd invited some other friends to stay there. This also made her cross on two counts: that SHE hadn't invited them herself, and that the management would undoubtedly ban them from staying. Tricky.

K texted me to say that she could see the Aurora Borealis. I rushed outside with mother, but there was too much light pollution, and mother thought wee were going to see the Warden, so we went back inside, and I finally ended the conversation by refusing to talk any more on the subject. I said it was too boring. Actually I was getting really upset. I had not yet learned how to nip the sundowning conversations in the bud.

I went upstairs to have a bath. It was 22.45, and I missed a Whatsapp from K, inviting me to the beach to see the Aurora. Thus an opportunity of a lifetime was wasted, although most of the day was delightful.