Joyous in all respects

Another lovely day has just ended - not just in the sense that the weather was lovely after it got over itself with a last deluge just as we were going into church, but also because we began joyfully with a double baptism of two little boys in the middle of the morning Eucharist. The singing was exhilarating - there were some singers among the baptism friends - and afterwards there were conversations and cake. (I have to confess I didn't have cake; I have  a birthday cake to finish and don't want to overdo the sugar). No fewer than three visitors to the church remarked on the sense of  community that they experienced, which is what I find almost the most remarkable thing about our congregation these days. 

When we were all outside again we found that the sky had miraculously cleared, and what had been a merely muggy wet morning had turned into a midsummer's day only with the trees changing colour. Di came for coffee, we ate lunch ... but then we went out, down to Loch Striven, and walked along the shore road along the birdsongy trees and felt we didn't want to leave. 

My main photo is one that had me hanging out of the bedroom window in my nightie when I suddenly realised, from my bed, that the clouds had turned to fire; when I looked up a short time later I couldn't see the other side of the water at all, as we were once more engulfed in torrential rain and a great grey cloud. The extra is of Loch Striven, looking up the loch in the late afternoon as the benignly pale clouds that had hung on the hills vanished. 

And yet again I knew that this is a brilliant place to live - even if the town pier link span is once more jiggered and people have to be bussed to the Western Ferries terminal, I couldn't bear to live without these views, these hills, that sea.