Cheers!

I've just finished reading all the blipulations (excellent word!) on yesterday's 4,000th blip - so many words! So many photos! I'm sure I could have learned oh, I dunno - Classical Greek? - in the time taken to do that. But, compulsive diarist that I have been from the age of ten, I find this format suits me to the extent that it's more or less taken over from my blog since I first joined up so that I could leave a comment on one of Feorlean's local photos. Thank you all for being such an interesting and varied group - and for the cordial atmosphere that makes Blipfoto such a civilised space in the maelstrom of  social media.

I've chosen my photo for today carefully, not because I'm a dipsomaniac who didn't manage out to take photos of brambles, dark lochs and rippled clouds (for that, O Best Beloved, is how I spent the afternoon) but because I was so taken with every aspect of this relative newcomer to the gin market. I had no idea there was a newish gin distillery on the Island of Cumbrae, where we go to sing, so this gift at Christmas of a bottle of Maura gin (from clever #1 son and wife) came as a complete surprise. It's doubly appropriate because our quartet, The St Maura Singers, was thus named more than 50 years  before the gin was, called for St. Maura, a devotee of St. Columba, who settled on Great Cumbrae in the 7th Century, devoting her life to the religious instruction of young girls to help bring Christianity to the West of Scotland. And I have to say that it's actually rather glorious - a really flavourful gin with raspberry, blueberry, red clover and elderflower representing the flora of the West coast, paired with orange and grapefruit notes. The label is wonderful too - I've picked out the PS Waverley and the cross for St Maura for the collage. A last good thing is that the company is run by a group of women, which given St Maura's role in her lifetime seems totally appropriate.

There. Commercial over. Today, other than drink gin, I have made bread, hung out a washing (and scampered to get it in when it suddenly rained), done half an hour of yoga and ten minutes of physio exercises, and irritated my eyes once again by going for a walk even though it had a sea loch all along the side of the road. I accepted a promising dinner invitation for a few weeks hence and followed my French family's progress from Lyons to Paris. 

I finished the day by catching up on The World on Fire on TV - I think it's really well done. I'm well hooked. 

Thanks again for all the good wishes - thank you and goodnight!