From both ends

It was raining this morning for the first time in ages - a grey start, but soon quite wet, and staying that way till about 1pm. Shortly after that it became sunny ... and there's some very interesting weather on the way; the bets are open whether or not we get any snow for a bit. 

Church was busy this morning - we were commenting on what a diverse congregation we have, which was not always the case here. Our rector was threatening to put the lights out to make everyone go home afterwards ... 

I'm heading off to the Diocesan Synod this week - the first I've been to in person since the last week or so before Covid lockdown - so I spent part of the afternoon packing a bag for a couple of nights and it was quite far on in the day when we went out for a short walk round the West Bay area, meeting a friend and her small dog on the way - all very seaside Sunday, really. But when I got home I had some stuff to do on the computer, and I was working away in the study when something made me look out - only to see the sky a wonderful dusky pink with pink cumulus over Glasgow. The collage shows the best photo I had time to take before it all faded into grey, but because I've cropped it for the frame you can't see the almost-full moon high above it all. 

The reason it's cropped thus is the photo above it, of almost the same stretch of the Firth, which I took this morning. You may need to enlarge it to make out the detail, but I have to say I first looked twice because the Wester Ferries vessel - the red flat hull with a white triangular superstructure - is way off-course, almost merging with the route of the town pier Cal Mac boat, The AliCat. There is a medium sized tanker nearby, heading towards Loch Long, but that's not the reason for this deflection. Look carefully to the right of the triangle of boats and you can see a Trident submarine heading for Faslane, with its flotilla of pilot boats and MOD boats, all of which had apparently had to slow almost to a halt because of the tanker.

Is it enough to say that I always feel a shudder to see what mingles with the more commonplace traffic that passes our house?