When all the world was young ...

Forty-six years ago, when we had two pre-school children, one of whom was about to go to Primary school, a new rector came to Holy Trinity Dunoon. (Strikes me we went through them rather rapidly in these days - we'd been here less than 5 years and had already known two). For a few years we shared a great deal of our lives with him and his family, for he too had a son about to start school and a toddler, and he was a wonderful singer and sang with us and there was a choir in the church and his wife and I trailed our sons to and from school and huddled over an open fire in the back room of the Rectory and drank spiced tea (how did we create it?) while our sons did awful things like float boats in the bath till it overflowed ... We kept up over the years when they returned south, until the time when he became the Bishop of Argyll and moved back into our lives. 

Martin and Elspeth now live in the south again, and we haven't seen them in years, but today they called in when we got back from church and we picked up as if it were only last week as Elspeth followed me through to the kitchen to make coffee and Himself and Martin plunged deep into conversation about ... music. We walked down to a seafront cafe for some lunch because I didn't have the makings, and talked more. We remembered people and places (we went on two holidays to Austria with them twenty or so years ago) and shared ideas and talked about grandchildren and it could have been only last month that we'd said goodbye. 

I used to wonder what old people found to talk about at such length. Now I realise that they have far more to chew over than the young, simply because they've lived more. (See what I just did there? "they"? That's us I'm talking about!) 

When they'd driven off, heading north, we fell asleep for an hour or so, then went out because I needed a couple of baking potatoes for roasting and the sun had come out. And so I've added an extra of the low tide in the West Bay, a total contrast to yesterday's gurly weather. It was rather lovely. 

In other news, one grandson did a twenty mile kilt walk in aid of his forthcoming football trip to Rwanda next summer and the other scored a marvellous solo goal - I saw the video. And I'm as exhausted as if I'd done both these things. Simultaneously.