Happiness is ...

Well, it certainly wasn't any happiness caused by today's weather and that's for sure! To be sure, the morning was dry and I got a washing dried (am I the only one in my particular circle of Blipping to be so obsessed with this?) and the builders got cracking on with creating the new steps down to the road, but by early afternoon it was raining, wetly if not heavily, and it just went on from there. Right now it's pouring down, making an unfamiliar noise on the new slabs of the steps and on the tarpaulin protecting the half-made ones. 

Actually, this seems a moment to recount a surreal moment this afternoon when we went for a walk along the old road at Puck's Glen - a stretch we have become accustomed to calling the Pensioners' Mile, as it's just over a mile long from car park to where it turns back to the current road and is level and car-free. About half-way long there's a mysterious new corrugated iron building, like a warehouse, with two enormous gunnera plants beside it. As we passed in the rain, each of us became convinced that the other had suddenly acquired a pocket full of small pebbles - either that, or there was a regiment marching along just behind us. We even looked round ... and discovered that it was in fact a drip falling from the guttering of the building onto one of the leaves of the gunnera which somehow amplified the sound and turned it into this rhythmic crunching noise. 

The highlight of the walk, however, is the reason for my rather undistinguished photo and the clichéd title of this blip: we saw at least five red squirrels, not just sitting in trees looking coy but as active as if they were trying to amuse. The first was sitting in the middle of the road, tail up behind him, just looking at us before he poured himself up the bank and into the forest. Others ran across the road in front of us, or appeared as if by magic halfway down the bank. The one in the photo ran into the garden of one of the chalets in the bit near the car park and was the only one I came near to photographing, so there you are: an action shot. They all looked small and young - maybe this year's kittens?

Anyway, happiness is a multiple squirrel-sighting, especially after a summer almost totally devoid of such. We came home cheerful if a tad damp, and had curry (made by Himself) for tea. And then we had an entertaining text conversation with #2 son in Dakar. He gets around, that boy. We, on the other hand, hope to be hopping downriver to Cumbrae tomorrow ...

We really know how to live!