Time passing...

Just before I went over to Rothesay this morning I heard that my old friend Ken Cargill had died.

Although he was seven years older than I am I had known him from my first year at University when he was Senior President of the Student Representative Council and I was an aspirant student politician - and not a very succesfull one at that. When he left University he went to work for the BBC , where he stayed for his entire career ending up as Head of News and Current Affairs.

I was an usher at his first wedding and in recent years have seen more of him and his second wife, Una as we have a mutual friend in the Glen here, Fiona Hamilton. In fact Cathleen Fiona and I had arranged to go over to Arbroath to see Ken and Una tomorrow as I had not yet been able to visit since he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Ken and I shared another friend at University, David Graham, with whom I shared a flat and who was the best man at my wedding in 1980. David died twenty years ago, of pancreatic cancer and was the closest friend I ever had.

So I can't but wonder today about chance and life and time passing. And I was thinking those things when driving out of Rothesay at lunchtime and wondering how (or if) I could express them in a photograph when I drove past this, by the shore of Kames Bay in Bute, facing Port Bannatyne and the Kyles. In fact I was so startled when I noticed it I had to drive on for a bit, and then turn back.

The tube in which the flowers sit has a dedication to "Mum" but the thought is the same. We are remembered by what we do, who we know, what we love and where we go. That is what becomes of us.

Just as I am remembering Ken and David today.