Trees

We’ve come north again as we have some business up here. We’re just staying one night in a little overgrown B&B / undersized boutique hotel out in the middle of nowhere. The view from our room is in the extras as are the acquilegias on the balcony which are looking great.

We’ve had a super productive day. We were up early and after breakfast and before other things started kicking off, we both managed about two hours of solid writing - him on his essay, me on the paper I’ll be giving in ten days in Florence. We were both immensely pleased by progress.

Mr A prepared some soup for lunch as we were not clear where dinner might be coming from, but in the end that resolved itself, and our wee B&B does simple suppers, and so we have had one here. Then stuff started happening! The firm that sold us the sofa bed found another firm that was prepared to deliver it, or so they said. We had little confidence. Two guys arrived, and obviously they had not been told there was no lift and had not been shown the picture of the stairs I had sent to the sofa bed firm. But this lot, rather than turning around and going away again rolled up their sleeves and made the delivery. They had taken the sofa bed apart as far as it would go, so Mr A and I helped with some lighter items like cushions, and with making sure they knew where they were going. But they brought the main sofa bed mechanism (heavy!) up the stairs, along with the arms and the back and various other bits. They put it together in about five minutes flat and so we now have a sofa bed (i.e. spare bed) as well as somewhere comfortable to sit in the winter in what we are starting to think of as our snug. The willingness of these workers - both migrants - to shoulder the burden, literally, restored our faith in humans, and they were duly rewarded. And we are totally happy with what we have bought. We thought it might be too big, but actually it fits in fine.

After I’d done a quick peloton, we ate our soup, waiting around for what we thought was another delivery, but DPD destroyed our faith in humans by redirecting the delivery to a collection point, because, apparently, “we missed you”. Nonsense. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. We can collect that tomorrow on the way back into town from the north.

On the road around 1.30pm we made incredibly good time and arrived at our destination in less than four hours. We were delighted to see the Tesco train near Slochd summit. Well, it caught us by the surprise because we had no idea about it, but when we saw a freight train with Tesco wagons our curiosity was naturally piqued. Mr A reads the Guardian so carefully every day that I’m amazed he missed that article.

Anyway, we had time for a quick rest before a light supper, and then afterwards we headed down to the shoreline nearby just for a bit of a leg stretch. We are now finishing off a bottle of wine, and feeling thoroughly chilled and tremendously satisfied by our day!