The only ray of sun ...

I was up early today, even by Thursday's normal standards, not to go shopping but to catch a ferry, and the first thing I noticed when I woke at 6.30am was that I'd left a little gap in the curtains and there was a shaft of sunlight - sunlight! - coming through it. When I opened the curtains half an hour later I was just in time to catch sun, and a patch of blue sky, as well as the drama of the tiny distant ship on the gleaming water, before it all reverted to grey again. 

We got the 9.20am ferry with little to spare, and found that the sea was a great deal bouncier than it had been in that first photo of the day; the wing mirrors and side windows are still covered in salt which tonight's wind-driven rain may clear before I need the car tomorrow. We were on our way to a funeral: a musician who had been a contemporary at university and who over the years had accompanied us both on Cumbrae and here in Dunoon when we needed an organist. He's been ill for many years now, and I was shocked when I met his family by the realisation that I really remembered him looking the way one of his sons does now. The church was full - so many old people, so many white heads; another shock to realise that we were them too. 

I loathe crematoria.

Afterwards our friend the organist from Cumbrae, the tenor for all our singing for 57 years, gave us a lift to where we'd left our car and all three of us had lunch in the excellent Tonino's before I went next door for a haircut. By the time we reached the ferry again to go home it was so busy that we were last on and bounced back over in driving rain. 

Fiona Bruce joined the ranks of hectoring - and alas, female - panel bosses on the apparently nightly Question Time tonight, talking persistently over the ends of sentences with that strident voice that cuts like a band-saw. As I said in a comment on last night, I must avoid tomorrow's debate like the plague, as Farage will be on and I don't think I can bear it.

 I am not staying up all night for the American debate.