Just things ...

Today has felt so full, so busy - and yet I can't think of a title I've not used before and nothing of note actually happened. Strange. It began with a trip to the surgery, before my breakfast, for another blood sample - as I suspected, someone's unhappy with my glucose levels. (I do get irritated by vagueness about whether it's supposed to be a fasting test or not, but the nurse, a former pupil of mine, seems to be doing something sensible about it.) Then home for my porridge before heading out to Pilates, which I'm just feeling the effects of right now in my arm and leg muscles. I reckon that elbow plank at the end just about finished me off ...

As the day turned out much better than the forecast suggested, we went to Benmore Gardens in the afternoon, reasoning that if we can both still bash up the hill in the course of a walk then we're not past it yet. And it took us away from peering out of the front door wondering where our builders had vanished to - they never turned up today, and no-one so far has told us why. Apparently there's a great shortage of people actually wanting to work at that sort of thing, at least here; the chap laying who is supposed to be laying our path has recently come here from the south of England. Anyway, back to the gardens - I was delighted by the sight of a beautiful little red squirrel hanging upside down on a bird feeder only three feet from me; I couldn't get my phone our without scaring him away, so no photos. He was so furry and so purely red that I think it was a young one. And when he left the birds returned - chaffinch, blue tit, coal tit... 

My main photo is of a bit of the path down that I don't think I've ever photographed; I just loved the way the big leaves occupied the foreground so firmly, while the hilltop wood sort of faded into the sky. My extra is one of a series I shot through the car window on the way home, of a dramatic rainbow plunging down over the sheep and the seagulls and into the Holy Loch. 

Does anyone else out there wish we could just dispose of Russell Brand, quietly and without any more fuss? I'm sick of the sight of him.