First snow ...

We escaped the Christmas snow that some places in Scotland caught, and this morning when I woke I thought it wasn't going to come here again, but by breakfast time there were the first flurries and several not-too-enthusiastic showers left a treacherous film of white, some of which is still on my garden path at midnight. (Note to self:remember to check!)

I had a strangely and untypically sociable day - one which makes me realise just how many layers of friends and acquaintances we've made during our time here. I'd arranged to go down to the café on the West Bay for coffee with a friend (one of our coven!) to catch up on the things there's never time to discuss at church, so we were out quite early sliding carefully down the pavements to treated roads to spend over two hours in non-stop talk and coffee-drinking. While I was there, I was hailed by two other people who had to remove their masks to let me see who they were, and then had a longer conversation on the way out with someone whose son we both taught and with whom conversation is always full-on and peppered with Italian phrases (she is Italian - it's not just pretension). I went home for lunch feeling very cheerful.

Ninety minutes later I was out again, driving out to Benmore Gardens to meet Di for a walk to make a start on compensating for all the excess of the season. We stopped to talk to a couple whom Himself and I have known probably longer than anyone else in Dunoon, who live along the lane, were the first people we socialised with after the first lockdown, the wife having been next to me in the altos ever since we started our original choir here, The Hesperians, back in the autumn of 1974. And finally, we met the robin again, the same (I'm sure) wonderfully tame robin who greets us when we arrive at the Andean Shelter at the top of Benmore Gardens. I've taken the main photo of the view after we'd left it, looking back at its white roof and the hills of Glen Massan beyond.

I've just been catching up on the first episode of A Very British Scandal, not least because of the familiar sight of Inveraray Castle as the backdrop for much of the action. What ghastly people!

Extra photo is an interesting angle on our church, taken from the coast road just past the statue of Highland Mary on Castle Hill - you can make it out in the gap between the buildings as another snow storm come looming over the hills above the Bishop's Glen.