Toward

Every time I write the name "Toward" here - and goodness knows we go there often enough, for it's a pleasant bit at the south of the Cowal peninsula and south of the Highland Fault line, with quite markedly different weather at times from wot we have seven miles to the north - I wonder if people are pronouncing it in their minds and making it mean movement, with the stress on the second syllable. In fact it is pronounced to rhyme with "Howard", stress on the first syllable, and Robin Jenkins the author, who lived just up the road from where this photo was taken, set one of his novels, The Changeling, here. 

These clouds didn't actually rain on us before our brief walk (just over a mile) was finished; we'd been tempted out when we also had to be elsewhere "just for a wee walk" because despite still feeing pretty wabbit we're hopeless at taking things easy in the true meaning of the expression. We'd had a frustrating morning trying to sort out choir dates - when almost all the people in a small choir are retired, so are liable to going off randomly on holidays at unpredictable times, and when the still-working are also socially much in demand arranging new gigs is very challenging, with rehearsals often missing a whole part, as happened on Tuesday. 

After the walk, we were off to my friend and art mentor Paddy's for a sort of preview opening of her studio before the Cowal Open Studios event. There was cake, cheese straws, all sorts of home-baked temptation - and paintings, cards, jewellery, clocks, mugs ... all to admire and to buy. Quite a wee throng turned up in the event, and conversation flowed around the art and the two attendant dogs who only briefly started cavorting (an elderly collie and a young Airedale - a bit big for a crowded cavort). I had some of Paddy's fresh-picked rosemary, lavender and mint tea (my insides are among the things affected by the jags) and brought home a clutch of cards and a pot of bramble jam which I know Paddy had picked and made yesterday. I'm in awe...

Despite my feeling tired last night, I didn't in fact manage to sleep till after three had struck. My normally idyllically comfortable bed felt like a fakir's bed of nails and everything began to hurt ... I'm hoping tonight is better. Five hours of sleep really ain't enough.