Interesting times?

I think I've referred before to the apocryphal Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times", but however non-genuine its supposed origin it's nevertheless a curse for our times, I think, which become more horribly interesting with each day that passes. So tonight's News at Ten was actually News at Ten-forty because of the football, and was longer, much longer, than usual because of Trump and the football, and now it's again after midnight and I'm blaming the state of the world for the time. Oh, and there was tennis ...

There was also the normal business of Sunday - church, worshipping and church, business (the two are pretty inseparable with a departure and a vacancy coming up). The congregation was smaller than usual because of the combined circumstances of holidays and Covid (heard of another couple of friends with it today) and I had to go off afterwards on some church-related business, so coffee wasn't till after 1pm, by which time I was climbing the walls with cravings. 

The afternoon was lovely - the sun which woke me had vanished while we were in church, but returned in time for a lovely sunny walk at Ardyne. The above photo was taken in much the same place as one out to sea a week ago but facing in the opposite direction, inland, over the farms and fields of the south of the peninsula and south of the Highland Boundary Fault, so that it all looks totally different from the area around Dunoon. The verges were gardens in themselves today, all purples, yellows and whites, with walls brilliant with St John's Wort, and far away on the horizon PS Waverley came into sight and sailed into Rothesay pier. 

I hope without much hope that Biden makes a good fist of speaking to the nation tonight. If ever a country needed the firm hand of a good ruler just now it's surely the USA. 

And on our side of the pond we can be thankful that the nonsense about football "coming home" [the game as we know it originated in Scotland] will be forgotten about for another few years.