Niggling

The trouble with being me is that I expect July and August to be holidays. There is a part of me still wants to be that carefree child, free to wander and get lost in Arran, or to spend a whole, magical day in the hills or on the beach, eating food that appeared miraculously via the tiny kitchen in the cottage we rented every year ...

And then reality bites, in the form of the Thursday morning pre-breakfast shopping, the fact that dinner doesn't cook itself, the slightly delayed coming of The Gas Man (he fixed the fan), the missing delivery from Amazon which is, according to a couple of tracking notifications, in the sorting office in Dunoon, the fact that said sorting office is only open for limited and varying times, the fact that adult people have to deal with these things, be it summer or no.

At least today felt and looked a bit more like summer, even if we are talking a Scottish Summer, and the wanderlust took us out in the afternoon to Benmore Gardens, where we've not been for a week or two. As we were later than most people, we had the gardens more or less to ourselves - just us and a red squirrel darting down the hillside, or an elegant deer picking its fastidious way between tumps of moss just below us. I took the main photo in what used to be the Formal Garden, but which is now is a state of transition. I loved this wildflower border leading down to the old glasshouses - it's not been like that before.

My extra photo - which I've not used as the main because it seems a bit odd - is the back of a packet of Quorn mince, the same kind as I bought in June for an ill-fated gesture towards saving the planet. It was this that, as I realised on eating it for a second time and ending up in hospital for a second night, made me horribly ill, with a BP high enough to be considered perilous in one so aged. If you look carefully, you'll see in the white panel a list of ingredients, with possible allergens in bold. After it, there is another short paragraph, with no particular emphasis, saying mildly that in rare cases there have been people with allergic reactions to Quorn, because the main ingredient may cause "intolerance" in "some people".

Now, I confess I didn't read that with any great intensity when I bought the stuff. I skimmed over the bold allergens, noted that none of them was a problem, and that was all. I think I'm not being unreasonable when I say that I can't help feeling that they ought to make a bit more of this. I don't feel that the words "allergic reaction" and "intolerance" quite convey the full hellishness of what I experienced. I thought of contacting the manufacturers and suggesting they stress that the reaction can be extreme. 

So, fellow-Blippers, what do you think?