Changeable

Goodness, I'm so fed up with this weather! My attachment to diary-keeping means that in my five-year diaries, the current one and the one I started in 1970, tell me in an easily-seen way what the weather was like on any given day in the year - and though we've had the odd flurry of snow in what I considered the wrong time it's not been like this. However, I should point out that at the battle of Culloden it was sleeting, and the anniversary of that battle is tomorrow, the 16th. (I was somewhat obsessed by the '45 when I was a child, and on our honeymoon Himself took me to visit his clan's grave at Drumossie moor - the biggest of them all. Mind you, the battle was on Mackintosh lands ...

But enough of that for now. I was not standing in line on Drumossie Moor with the sleet blowing in my face, facing the guns of the English army; I was marching resolutely along Argyll Street towards the Co-op when I stopped to take this photo of what was approaching me. I made it into the shop before the rain arrived - the shop is just behind these trees on the right with their green froth of spring showing - but was caught by its successor on my way home. Drookit again; sodden shoes; damp trousers hanging from the loft ladder (I know: quaint but convenient).

That was my morning, apart from doing some Italian - it felt strangely pointless, although I did buy the rather delicious black pudding sausages that I was going to the Co for - they're an amazingly unctious mix of pork and pudding. I suppose my attendance at an online Vestry meeting for 90 minutes of the afternoon made the day slightly more pointful - I really want to get out, preferably in sunshine, to plant pots and dig out compost (which necessitates lying down on the grass, with the ticks) and generally tidy things up - but not when it's all sodden.

Instead, meeting over, I desperately needed to stretch my legs (and my back), so after a preparatory check of the colour of the clouds to north and south we headed south to Toward lighthouse because the two-mile walk we can fit in there is further from the hills than anywhere round here. We managed to avoid most of the rain, and the one shower was coming from behind us, which never feels quite as bad. 

Dinner was an alarming plateful of sausages, cauliflower cheese and some tiny new potatoes. I'm still here - but hoping that sleep comes more readily than it did last night, when I heard 2am strike. Fingers crossed...