That view again ...

I know there have been many views of the Firth of Clyde in my journal recently, but I'm not going to apologise for this one, because I woke to this surreal pinkish light suffusing my bedroom from this vivid pre-sunrise, which by the time I'd found my phone was this more fiery colour and which two minutes later had lost almost all of its fire. I then sat drinking tea and reading all your advice about non-medical treatment of conjunctivitis and dreading looking in the mirror ...

However, I didn't really have time to feel sorry for myself, as I was on to preach again this morning and had to ensure that I could see well enough to cope with reading my notes in the pulpit. Blipper Sally will be familiar with the increased demands on a worship team in a time of vacancy - this was my second sermon since my non-holiday, mainly because of people going off in the October holiday season. I had chosen to talk about all three of the day's readings and draw them together in such a way that justified my pal Di's wonderful picture of a lion on the front of the pew sheet - think Aslan, inter alia. I suspect I'm a better English teacher than I am a theologian, but it seemed to go down well. It was so cold in church - 7ºc outside and not much better inside, I suspect. We repaired back home to huddle over the fire with coffees ...

And then Himself and I fell irresistibly asleep. (We ate something first.) When the clock struck three it had already grown much more cloudy but we went out for a brisk march along Loch Eck side and back before the rain arrived, and I took a batch of forest/loch/hills photos, one of which I've added as an extra - the holiday lodges at the end of the loch, round the weir that carries the water off to form the River Eachaig. The water was glassy in the still afternoon, and it looked as if no-one was taking a holiday in the site; only the sheep were making any noise at all. 

And that was that. Home in time for Himself to do a bit of housework (during which both vacuum cleaners seem to have packed in) while I made dinner. 

The papers are full of the sudden death of Alec Salmond. He was, as many point out, a giant in Scottish politics, and though I only encountered him twice (once here, at a hustings, and once in George Square at a Bin the Bomb rally) he's been a big presence in my life. May he rest in peace.