Back in Mordor

Well, really. I took these two photos from my bedroom window as I was unpacking and thinking it really was time someone made me dinner - until I realised that if I didn't get a move on there wouldn't be one. But look at that gentle, winsome light on the hills on The Other Side - how the point where the river turns east at Gourock is lit up, how even the blinking ferry is lit up - look at these and look at the gloom in which Dunoon is engulfed. We travelled home, as so often, from the light into the dark clouds, and though they retreated slightly before us they made a stand over the town and here we are.

Home again. 

Fellow -blipper Lady Findhorn remarked only the other day how odd it felt to be home after a break, and I have to say I agree. I'm going to cheat a bit and let Philip Larkin, another of my favourite poets, say it for me, in words that return to haunt me every time I find myself back, chez nous, in Mordor at home.

Home is so Sad
Philip Larkin - 1922-1985
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.