Saying goodbye

It's been a very long, very tiring day, beginning with only the thin red line of the dawn at just after 6am as we made sure we were ready and away to catch the 9.20 ferry to the other side en route for Ayr and the funeral of my brother-in-law, Bill. It was an uneventful journey down the coast except for the ill-judged choice of stopping-place in search of a loo and - more importantly - some coffee. It was then I took this photo of the Arran hills looking extraordinary with a bit of temperature inversion - at this point I had just poured most of a cup of execrable, 1950s-style coffee out on a patch of grass. 

The funeral was in a big Church of Scotland in Ayr - there seemed to be loos tucked all over the adjacent offices, which is such a luxury to one whose only resort in our own church is a strategically-placed buttress - with a thoroughly decent and thoughtful minister who obviously knew the Bill we too knew. There was the usual sudden recognition of the cousins whom we really only see at such occasions, all grown older since the last time, and their realisation that our older son was the little boy they last saw when he was eleven or so. I talked far too much. It all felt strangely unreal. 

And then we drove home again. Waze proved itself incomparable for finding the way through Ayr from church to crematorium to hotel and then back out of town again - I heard several other people moaning about their sat-navs. We came back across the Firth in the gloaming, and it was all I could do to rake some dinner together before collapsing in a heap. 

The minister today spoke more than once of the mysteries of life and death, and I thought of the undiscovered country from whose bourn /No traveller returns. Travel well, Bill.