Dog-whispering and paddling

For a Sunday - for any day, really, in the life of an adult - today had some wonderfully crazy moments. And it was conducted under a warm summer sun (remember that phenomenon?) that had me with sweat trickling down my face at the end of the afternoon. What more could a lady of a certain age want?

Church this morning was in the hands of the laity, led by one of our Lay Readers as our Rector was on Bute for his last service in our church in Rothesay. I've said it before, but it's worth repeating that for a small fairly rural church we are blessed by several very competent lay people as well as a retired priest who was today there as a member of the congregation. So was her collie, Hoy, who features in my extra today, of the organist turned dog-whisperer as Hoy begs him to play with his stick ...

Di came back for coffee and chat, as usual, so I was just sitting down with my lunch when a text popped in from my friend Sarah, the Bishop-Elect's wife. Would I fancy a walk in the afternoon? No falling asleep after my scrambled egg today - off I went for a jolly walk round the coast road, where we began to look for a suitable place to access the shore (not always easy round that bit of shore road.) We found it outside the house that used to belong to my bestie when I arrived in Dunoon with my 5 week old baby - the wife of one of Himself's new colleagues at the school, a woman with four children who loved babies and - most importantly - knew how to cope with all the things a first time mother can panic about. That's the house in the photo - my baby had his first three years playing there, acquiring four older substitute siblings, learning to love a small white terrier, going mackerel fishing in a rowing boat launched down the slip by which we walked down to the beach, trying not to notice the huge US Navy ship and floating dock in the middle of the loch, with or without a couple of Poseidon missile-carrying submarines. 

Today's memories will certainly join those of 50 years ago, as Sarah and I paddled in the softly incoming tide - Sarah is just rescuing our shoes in the photo before they floated away. Convoys of motor-cyclists passed, heading for the ferry after a weekend of roaring round Argyllshire roads; consumed by a childish impulse we waved at one lot and were left in tucks when they all waved back. We sat on a rock and dried our feet and took daft selfies and behaved like teenagers, which is even more of an absurdity for me than it is for my pal, who could be my daughter ...

Anyway, dinner was insanely late and I've been sleeping in front of people doing crazy things in kayaks and on skateboards. I wasn't sure quite what they were succeeding in (more complicated than a long-distance running event, for example) but it was a mere background to snores. Tomorrow is already today and there is much happening. To bed, to bed ...