An eighteen hour day...

I blame the Aurora, myself - I might've gone to bed earlier had I not been sneaking about the dark garden taking photos of the sky... Because I've been up and doing since 6.30am, which is the only way we could be sure of getting the ferry at 8.20am (we're not good at rushing first thing.) As it turned out, we didn't have to queue but drove straight on to the boat, perhaps because of the school holiday. All this was to get me (and my driver in case I had the wrong kind of eye drops put in the eye that was the cause of the whole trip) to Inverclyde Royal for a 9.15am appointment about the eye that's been sore for almost a month. IRH is a large brown cube of a building in a slight hollow in the hills above Gourock, and looks like the Borg ship (if you know Star Trek). Inside it's a maze of windowless corridors and despite my having been to the ophthalmology clinic before I had to ask where floor C was (the ground floor. I was all set to get into the lift ...)

To cut a long story (and a long wait) short, I saw a lovely Indian consultant who was infinitely patient and understanding and spent ages peering into my eyes and flashing lights into the painful one, and ended up having a swab (actually two swabs) taken which was the most horrid bit of the whole visit. Seems to be a viral infection which I may well have picked up in the Heathrow episode which incidentally was four wees ago tonight. So I've come away with two great boxes of single-use drops to be used to a strict timetable ... Progress report in the future, if there's any progress.

That out of the way, we decided to make the most of the trip by doing the weekly shop that I hadn't been able to fit in. Strange how exotic a strange supermarket (in this case Tesco in Port Glasgow) seems ... We survived this after a hefty injection of espresso at a nearby Costa (and a blueberry muffin - I only had a bit of it). We managed to fit in a visit also to Marks and Spencer, but by the time Himself had bought a pair of trousers we were both faint with hunger and headed back to Greenock and our fave Italian cafe bar, Tonino's, for a very late lunch.

After we'd had a cuppa and unpacked the messages at home, we decided we were stiff with too much sitting and drove down to Toward for the sunset that is my main photo. We also managed a mile and a half beside the sea into a strangely biting wind. On the way home we saw the new ferry, the Glen Sannox, on sea trials - fingers crossed she can start work soon! We also saw two seals doing parallel back exercises on a rock ...

Dinner wasn't over till 9pm. And then I started seeing all these photos online of the Aurora, and it came on the news, and despite being desperate for bed I yielded to temptation. The extra photo is one I took out the back in the very dark lane; I've experimented with making the colour saturation higher but decided to go with an un-tampered with version. Apart from the vertical streaks and the green and purple, I love that I can see so many stars.

And now I need a shower, another lot of eye drops, and sleep. Night night!