Leaving and arriving

Every time we have one of these brief visits to Edinburgh, it seems more and more of a faff to get there and then come home again, and this was no exception. A quiet morning that was bright enough for us to have  a last coffee on the patio  saw us heaving enough gubbins for a month's stay out to the car, having a chat with the neighbour, and finally doing the rounds of the house to make sure we'd not left any stray spectacles or socks anywhere, for we'd sort of spread ourselves ... It was while I was doing this that I noticed with joy and for the first time that the Ludlow Bears were sitting importantly on top of a shelf of books in the sitting room, and felt immoderately pleased. Let me explain ...

Long ago, when our #2 son and his wife were still in the child-free early stages of togetherness, we brought home a couple of irresistible bears from an arty shop in Ludlow, where we were visiting with friends. They were clearly a mummy bear and  .... you get the idea. And they were put together looking appealing, in various places around the flat. A couple of years later we were back in Ludlow, on another holiday with the same friends, and saw another bear from the same breed - clearly a baby bear. We bought it, for by then our first grandchild Catriona needed to be included in the bear family. And they've been around like this for 14 years now, and after recent rearrangements of decor and growing up of teenage grandchildren I'd wondered what might have become of them ... and that's my extra photo, because I was so pleased to see them.

And then we drove home, via Sainsbury's (I regard a shopping there on the way home as part of my holiday), into the rain. When we were on the ferry it was torrential, but began to clear slightly as we drove along the shore road in Kirn, just in time for us to see PS Waverley steaming up the firth. I snatched the main photo through the wet window, so it's not the clearest picture of my favourite paddle steamer, but I rather like the crazy parting clouds on the far side of the water and the fat raindrop on the front right. 

This evening there was some lightning, and the rain at midnight is thrashing down outside with some ominous drips from where our neighbour's guttering meets ours outside the front door. But it's too dark to see much and I'm too tired.

See all this gadding about ...?