I've looked at sky ...

Are you humming yet? Touch of Frank Sinatra, maybe? I am, as I wrote the heading above and the second half of the line* popped into my head, for my photo is of the sky above Gourock, taken from Gourock instead of from the other side of the Clyde - geddit? 

Actually the day began with some very dramatic skies, which I'm not posting here lest everyone shuns me as a one-view photographer. A red line lay along the hills, with a great, smoke-coloured layer of cloud on top of it and extending into a temperature-inversion effect over the Holy Loch; this got me up (taking photos, natch) and out de-icing the car which had frozen over again in the night before I could go for the early shopping. That over, I could enjoy my breakfast in virtuous peace, do my Italian, make coffee ...

And then head over to Greenock for another appointment with Opthalmology in Inverclyde Royal. First we treated ourselves to a quick supplementary shop in Tesco (their All Bran cereal is much superior to the more famous brand which is all Morrison's now sells), followed by lunch in Tonino's, the Italian place next to my hairdressers (oven-roasted veg, foccacia with olive oils, espresso, cannoli) before we headed off up the steep - and high - hill on which the hospital stands. 

The overflow car park, which is where we always find ourselves, is across the road and through the grounds of the hospital itself, and by the time we got inside we were both frozen - the day was cold and quiet, and the frost, while more or less gone at sea level, was still white on the grass at this height. However, the hospital was warm, and Himself later confessed to having fallen asleep three times while waiting for me. 

All seems to be well with my eye now - this was the signing-off appointment, though I've to go back if there's any more trouble, and the consultant has referred me to another specialist about a cyst on the same eye lower lid...fingers crossed.

But what struck me most was what was happening on the side, as it were. I always think late afternoon on a cold grey day in winter is the most depressing of times in a hospital - maybe everywhere - and to be sure the doctor remarked that everyone was depressed. She said she wasn't, herself, but I could see that she looked so tired that she was almost grey in the face, and because I'd had to wait for ages (I think they'd lost a patient) she kept apologising. We parted as if we'd been friends for years. Then I went out into the corridor which  by now had not a single patient left, through the empty waiting-room - and the three nurses appeared carrying a small red Christmas tree, various tinsel decorations, long ropes of glitter, which they started draping round the room and on themselves. They were all laughing and joking and inviting us to join in and I thought how great it was that they were doing this and how lucky we are to have such places to go and be looked after despite everything said these days about the NHS. 

As we left the hospital there was the slightest suggestion of rain just as the forecast had promised, but the sky as we drove along the shore road to the ferry was rather gently wonderful - and that's when I took the photo, of the shore road through Gourock before it heads between the shops and on to McInroy's Point. 

We were home in time for a FaceTime call to our older grandson, whose 16th birthday it was today (actually yesterday - I've just realised it's almost 1am!)  He challenged us to sing Happy Birthday better than his mates at school, so of course ... harmony and all. 

I think I missed most of the Ten O'Clock News ...zzzzz

* from both sides now ...