The road, the open road ...

I don't know if it's the lateness of the hour, or the summer solstice, or merely age, but I keep having these glimpses of my past reflected in the headings I give my blips - and today's is one such. 60 years ago or so I sang in the Hillhead High School choir a piece of music I've never seen or heard since, and yet I thought of it not only as I wrote the title but also as I took the photo. It's a quotation from George Dyson's Three Songs of Courage , from the middle song which I only just recalled was The Seekers, and I found a video on YouTube and found I could sing along with it, part- and word-perfect. If you're bored you might want to check it out here - it's the second number and has a mark on the video.

But to today... Back to my normal routine of shopping before breakfast, I found myself having to queue at the check-out, not normally something that affects me at that hour. I don't know why there were so many people, unless they're stocking up ahead of being trapped in their houses by the town stage of the (expletive) Argyll Rally which will thunder past our house, all smells and snarls but not particularly fast because of the steep hill up to us, either today or tomorrow. We all became quite obstreperous about the lack of staff manning tills ...

The usual lingering late breakfast followed, then Italian, then coffee, before I was ready to join Himself in rehearsing some Stanford before a St Maura Singers rehearsal on Saturday. (I'm still having bother with fourths and fifths and have to resort to annotating the music with sol-fa). Our tenor phoned in medias res and I had to tell him I couldn't chat as I was rehearsing what I was promised was a beautiful duet with him. He laughed. 

I'm still feeling horribly tired and post-viral, but it wasn't getting any better sitting around after lunch so we drove towards the sunshine and went for a walk up the lovely, lovely road in the photo, between the farms at the south of the Cowal peninsula at Ardyne. The verges had been trimmed - you can see the cut grass on the right hand side of the road - and the smell of it was intoxicating. There was a blackbird singing and no other sound, and I felt once more that we're incredibly lucky. We finished our walk off along the beach road, and drove home for one of my favourite dinners: roasted salmon topped with pesto and oatmeal, new potatoes, asparagus and pak choi, followed by Scottish raspberries and yogurt. We had rather splendid wine with it too ...Sybaritic? Moi?

I've just watched  Question Time with the four party leaders, and decided there's decisive and there's pain in the neck when it comes to chairing these things. And I found out from #1 son what the Scottish fans were singing the other night: We've got super John McGinn.. ..

Whaddya mean - you don't care?