I woke in the night…

not knowing where I lay. Gradually I worked out the contours of the room and realised I was home. But however hard I tried (or didn’t) the sea insisted on being outside our bedroom window, a steady swell falling on the beach and sucking at the rocky shore of the Academy all-weather playing field.

Maybe not so surprising. For 10 nights we slept in view of the sea, the big one, and for 24 hours of those ten days we were on it and the Hebridean Sea. Sea legs and sea minds. Sea dreams. The gut-churning cross-cutting, four metre swell of the open Atlantic to St Kilda. The short swells of the Minch to the Shiants and ploughing across to Stornaway from Ullapool. The twisty squeak through skerries to North Uist and the gentle stroll to Ardmore on Barra from Eriskay.

A short transition, a narrow sand isthmus held together by marram grass and hope between there, here and the boiling heat of Italy with 37C at a 10am touchdown forecast for Friday. To think as we cast about in endless seas I thought of gloves and the woman from the Ness of Lewis pined for her bonnet on the steep boulder beach at the Shiants. And now with my extra light linen purchases from TK Max the cathedral of August heat beckons. And crops left to my fragile irrigation systems will soon be revealed after the first but, alas, not last of this summer’s stultifying heatwaves. As the woman behind the counter at TK Max said, ‘Ach, but we never know what we want.’ But maybe through the rime and falling dew that is becoming just a little bit clearer.

(The Botanics are looking at their summer best - this a sempervivum x fauconnetti.)