Taking a holiday

I had resolved some time ago that today would be our Ne'erday holiday - lovely though yesterday morning was in church, it was nevertheless time-specific and involved concentration! Today, however, was free - and it was sunny and frosty and lovely. We had set no alarm clock, but I was wakened by the lightening of the sky with the orange pre-sunrise line at 8.15am, and sat, happily reading blips and other interesting things on my phone for ages with a large mug of Darjeeling. 

At this point I have to confess that I went to bed last night hugely cheered by a Twitter conversation with a long-ago former pupil (we're talking more than 50 years ago!) who is now a pretty well-known Scottish politician; she told me that I had inspired her, and other heart-warming things, and put my first years in teaching into a new light for me because I'd always looked back and thought I must've been boring while I was learning the job... 

That aside, today was in itself just a perfect Ne'erday. I cleared away breakfast at 11am, made coffee shortly afterwards, drank it with a wonderful last morsel of chocolate fruit cake. Then we drove out to Benmore Gardens and climbed to the Andean Refuge, which I've shown in the thumbnail from my collage. There were drifts of mist and cloud on hillsides and forests, and the air was almost completely still. The only rather disconcerting factor was the noise of gunfire from the next glen - it did sound as if there was a battle going on at one point. I think it must've been birds; there'd have been no deer left if they were stalking!

We were home again after 2pm, neither of us ready for lunch, so we ate half a banana and a shortbread biscuit or two and drank mugs of jasmine tea before Himself got on with some paperwork and I did some Italian before uploading some of my Christmas photos to Flickr. 

I've just paid to upgrade my collage-maker, so I have more frames to play with: today's blip from top L-R shows a lovely copper beech on the hillside; the view from the high road to Sandbank of the snowy hills above Benmore; the sun on the low path through the gardens; the mist boiling up from Glen Massan; the Andean Refuge on the top of the hill.