Rain and chill - and squirrels

What a beastly day. The first day of the school summer holidays, and weather to make you want to be anywhere but here: 13ºC max, rain all day - sometimes heavy, sometimes gentle enough to make you think it might be stopping - and cloud right down on the hills and over the Firth. And in the morning it was still really windy and I was out in the front garden (oh, the shame of it!) in my dressing-gown rescuing a completely felled antirrhinum from the pot beside the path. Horrid.

I shut it out and concentrated on Pilates for an hour after breakfast; even when it seems to be killing me I feel the benefit of my classes in so many ways. It also made me hungry but with no idea of what we might have for lunch; I ended up whipping up butter beans with garlic and olive oil and loads of black pepper and sea salt and slathering it on homemade sourdough with a rasher of bacon on top.

Later, and grumpily, we went out. Because we'd been sheltered a bit by the hillside and the trees, we repeated our walk from yesterday. The river had swollen enormously in 24 hours, and was whipping the low-hanging branches of the overhanging trees as it surged along. But the main joy was the squirrels having their tea at the feeding boxes on the track to Loch Eck. We'd not been talking as we approached, and moved very gently, so that they didn't seem to be too bothered by us. I got a few videos that illustrate their amazingly quick, light surefootedness, but this still is quite pleasing: he'd just gone up the tree and turned, deciding perhaps that we weren't enough of a threat to stop him eating after all.

That was enough to cheer me up despite the weather - that, and the prospect of another episode of Spooks on catch-up. Oh - the slight improvement in jaw-ache and hamster-cheek helped as well. Thanks for asking...