No Carrying

Quite a bit of sunshine today – blue sky and huge white clouds. Mrs M and I sat out on the deck after lunch and tho’ there was a fair bit of wind it didn’t seem cold. I read the last couple of chapters of ‘Dear Cassandra’, Jane Austen’s letters to her sister – and others. Very sad – in her last few letters she told her friends of her painful condition and how she went to take the waters at Cheltenham in the hope of improving her health. She eventually rented a house in College Street, Winchester, to be near her physician, but to no avail – she died on 18th July 1817 at the age of only 42, with her sister Cassandra holding her head. To quote Wikipedia, ‘The majority of biographers rely on Zachary Cope’s 1964 retrospective diagnosis and list her cause of death as Addison’s Disease, although her final illness has also been described as resulting from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.’

I wandered down to the town later and unfortunately got bogged down taking pictures of all the places where local householders toss all their prunings, branches and garden waste down the nearest bank, of which there many in Oban. I think the amount of dumping which goes on is horrendous, and it’s not only in the more deprived areas by any means. So to avoid annoying everyone I’ve put on a picture of someone’s addition to a No Entry sign, which I found funny even if it might be classed as vandalism!

Quote of the day:

Bernard Schlink, ‘The Reader’ – “The love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible. “