Channelling Gray

That title today has everything to do with my photo and nothing whatsoever with anything momentous that happened - though the death of a myth might figure, I suppose. It's been quite an interesting day, in a faintly Pythonesque fashion - is there an element of tragedy about what's going on, or of farce? Or are we merely living in a Chinese curse? (Though I've just learned the closest Chinese approximation is ""Better to be a dog in times of tranquillity than a human in times of chaos." (寧為太平犬，不做亂世人)"

Enough of this literary dabbling. I have been traumatised enough today - and I'm not talking politics. This morning, having decided I could live no longer on the left-overs in the larder, I had to go to the supermarket. (There are two in Dunoon, but one isn't really super enough for variety.) And in the week since I last visited it, they've gone and moved everything. Including the shelves. Some of them seem to have crept claustrophobically closer to one another, so that passing other trolleys became like a jousting session. Some have opened out into wide squares, with seemingly random juxtapositions (toothpaste opposite the baked beans seemed the strangest.) Not only could I barely locate some staples, I also found I was forgetting the most obvious things because I wasn't seeing them. And because I'd not got up early and gone before breakfast the shop was full of bemused pensioners and women with trolleys full of young children (I'm exaggerating slightly: it's stress). I greeted more than one complete stranger with the words "This is hellish" and ended up feeling like their new best friend. And then the poor checkout lady was mortified at having to wait at least ten minutes for some supervisor to validate a coupon proffered by the woman in front of me, presumably because Morrison's have cut back on staffing...

I recuperated with lunch in the garden, though it was only just warm enough, Dunoon being situated in the accursed shadow of the lurking cold front on the periphery of the current High. We wondered if we should just have stayed in Edinburgh, where people were complaining of the heat. Later, Himself went up to church to try out something we're planning to sing on Sunday, and I walked up later to add the vocals. (Does that make us sound like a pop group?). Tomorrow I need to work on my upper register ...
I decided to walk round by the West Bay to give me some exercise afterwards, which is when I took the photo of the churchyard, due a grass-cutting session for which I believe there is a new volunteer. 

Sixteen years ago tonight we were in a château in Brittany celebrating my #2 son's wedding. The evening ended with a piper (from Dunoon) piping the newly-weds down through the garden to their room, after a great evening of eating and dancing - including an eightsome reel for which our son, in kilt and shirt-sleeves, called the moves in French for the benefit of his new family and their friends. It was the greatest fun, and the talk of the Binic steamie for the following week. Tonight, instead, I've been watching Question Time and Alistair Campbell's trenchant comments - all good clean political dirt. 

I know where I'd rather be.