Love

A great day of multiple japes.

I went off to sea for an early - but not a sunrise - swim. Glorious light. See extra. Mr A didn't come. I think it was ok for him to have a morning off.

After breakfast, we headed into town, meeting A and N by chance on the road. This keeps happening! They were heading to a similar range of places to us. For us, it was the pop up bookshop in the Royal Hotel, the community market (where gin was purchased), Pipers coffee shop and the supermarket. N and Mr A provisionally agreed to meet for a beer whilst A and I were out with the swimmers this evening.

After lunch and some quiet time, we headed out again to North Coast Glass for our glass tile making workshop. A and N were there again. It was quite random that we had been assigned to the same session, and it was just us, which was nice. That was huge fun. You can see one of my tiles in the blip (yeah, yeah), plus the edge of the other one (to the right). Mr A's are the top row. Unfortunately, they are not really visible because of the glare. I took loads of pictures and videos of the process. As we are not here next week when the tiles will be ready to collect, A and N will collect them for us, and we can pick them up from them when we are back. I'm looking forward to seeing them. Obviously they will not be shiny red any more once cooled.

The next treat was a sold out session in the Town Hall with Sally Magnusson talking about her new book, Music in the Dark, about the clearances (and much else besides). As part of the book is set in Easter Ross (in Strathcarron), there were people in the audience who had previously contributed to Magnusson's efforts at oral history capture and who added further snippets in Q&A. It's remarkable to think how those events remain in the living memory through older people remembering people in their families who were directly involved.

Mr A headed home on foot (and welcomed N around for a beer) and I pointed the car in the direction of Tarbet Ness and belatedly joined many of the swimmers at K's house out in the countryside for a curry evening. It was completely hilarious and much absolute nonsense was talked. I was as giddy as the rest of them, despite not having a drop to drink. I dropped three Tain-ers back home on my way back, including A who assured me that N would have been long tucked up in bed (which is where I was also expecting Mr A to be as it was midnight by now). In fact, as I came in the back door, Mr A was just sending N out the front door. Not having lived in a house for many years, I've not encountered that particular quite odd phenomenon in a long time.

The girls were very kind, improvised a cake (see extra), gave me a card, and sang me happy birthday.