So foul and fair a day ...

I'm at the literary associations again today - this one perhaps more understandable after all that Macbeth study with my granddaughter the other day; this title refers to the fact that today was at once glorious (blue on blue with gold) and deadly (eyes streaming, ocular migraine, headache) because of the insanely high pollen reading - the dreaded red VH on the BBC weather app.

I was out early for the shopping, and spent less on this week's shop than I have in months. Partly this was because of having a further couple of days away from home coming up, but mainly it was because of sudden great gaps in the shelves of stuff I usually buy - things like happy chicken fillets (I know they're not happy as fillets, but you get my drift), my preferred orange juice, carrots (really), aubergines ... I decided not to fret but just to abandon any thought of planning and go with the flow, ie home for breakfast.

Don't know where the rest of the morning went - on the phone to my sister, washing a few things and hanging them out, doing my Italian outside in the sun - but it seemed suddenly to be lunchtime. Can beans and flatbread count as lunch or am I a failure?

Then, pollen forecast or no, we had to make the most of the day and have a walk - this time what I think of as the second leg of Loch Striven, past Inverchaolain Church (now in private hands, I think). We were sheltered from the wind for much of the time, with the result that it was positively hot. The yellow iris spikes are all pushing up, there is golden gorse everywhere, we heard a willow warbler as well as all the usual songsters. A sizeable deer cantered across the road ahead of us, and a heron stood motionless at the water's edge. And as we walked, I suddenly realised I was having an ocular migraine, beginning with a flashing rectangle in the upper corner of one eye, becoming the more familiar flashing hedgehog back before resolving into a headache. Meanwhile my eyes were streaming - I've still got the headache now, at bedtime, but hope things subside gradually.

Blipping a familiar view currently spectacular with gorse: the view of Inverchaolain from the bend in the road approaching from the south. The blues were every bit as vivid as they look here.