Between rains

That was some rain last night - I was looking out at monsoon quantities of water just before I got into bed, and could hear it through the open windows, washing down in great sheets. Mercifully it seemed to have passed by morning; the front garden was covered in leaves from the silver birch tree and the flowers at the back were looking shocked and bashed and blown back against the hedge. 

I felt a bit like that too - not because of wind and rain but because I woke myself up coughing in the night. I've been like this since I had whooping cough at the age of seven - every URTI produces thus compulsion to cough uncontrollably. I don't know how much sleep I missed out on, but I certainly found myself falling asleep at the table at the end of breakfast while I was listening to Fergal Keane on the radio. (I did it again later, when I was trying to do some Italian on my phone: maddening, because I kept dropping my finger randomly on the screen and losing marks...)

As promised, the weather began to clear up towards the late afternoon, and after a lengthy text chat with Di (why do we not phone each other? Strange ...) and the return of Himself from practising the organ we went out, south, back down to the Ardyne shore which is becoming more of a favourite with each passing year. The sun came out as we arrived - you can see from the photo that we were right at the southern extremity of the heavy cloud which still hadn't cleared from Dunoon when we got home. Himself got a fantastic photo of the fields glowing yellow in the sunlight under a purple sky, but you'll have to do with the steely light on the grey sea under that darkness over north Bute. That tree stump has been there for a while, but at the far sound of the beach we suddenly heard the noise of a chainsaw and came upon a man of about our age demolishing a tree, one of three whole trees that had washed up on the shore. The strong wind of yesterday must have brought down some trees into the river; they then found their way onto the shore. One of them was quite big, complete with leaves and branches that belonged on shore with no sign of the sea-bleaching that characterises the stump in the foreground. 

I felt ever so much better of the outing; days indoors do my head in. I spent some time looking at photos from both boys' families, and remembered that seventeen years ago today we were all in Brittany, celebrating the wedding of Ewan to Morgane in la Mairie in Binic, processing along the harbour behind a piper from Dunoon, riding round the bay in a motor boat for some wedding photos, and then on to a chateau in the country where the pipes played them to their room at midnight ...

And the morning after, when I overheard the couple behind us at breakfast in the château: "I'm sure I heard pipes last night"..."Well, they play pipes in Brittany you know"... "Yes, but these pipes were playing Campbeltown Loch!"


Such fun!