Racing the weather

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that I've kept a conventional diary since I was 10, but perhaps not that for the past 9 years all my entries have gone into two identical five-year diaries, in the second of which I shall shortly be beginning the bottom section of each page. Thus it is that I can glance up the entries for this day for the past four years and see the one year when lockdown was reinstated, standing out among all the entries saying, in various ways, "home". So that's what today's collage shows - three stages of a journey into the rising westerly wind and the looming clouds as we beat the worst of today's weather and whatever is to come in the next few days. 

I was actually wakened at 5.30am by the sound of my son exhorting his elder boy to get a move on - they were all three of them going for a plane to London for the day for a football match. (It was a Christmas present, I believe). It was hard to sleep again after that, mainly because of Someone's snoring. I managed a half-hour when he got up to make me some tea ...

The first photo in the collage shows the moment we set off, our car absolutely laden with presents so that our cases had to go on the back seat, under a wonderful criss-crossing of con-trails in the bright sky. It was windy, but not yet wild. By the time we reached Harthill, up on the hill of the M8, it was blowing straight at us and reminding us of how much heavier our former car was as we swayed slightly ... until we were soon heading down towards the Firth of Clyde at Langbank, and could see the dark clouds piling up over Argyll to the west and north of us. (Second photo). The bottom right photo is of the ferry we'd just missed because a blue car had dithered along in front of us, though it mattered not because another ferry was hovering offshore waiting to dock.  

By the time we'd brought everything into the house and dispersed it - upstairs, in the kitchen, into the pantry - I had more or less closed the exercise ring on my Apple watch and we were both desperate for our dinner. (We'd substituted a big bit of Christmas cake for lunch - truly delicious in the way it isn't really if you're already full of food the way we were on Christmas Day!). And this, once more, was the joyous bit: daughter-in-law Mary had come up once more with a food package in the form of a succulent shepherd's pie. (the pie was succulent: I can't speak for the shepherd.) So instead of cooking I popped it in the oven and phoned Di for a catch-up instead ...

Tomorrow I shall have to go shopping. I need a load of fresh vegetables. And there is venison to collect from the stalker. Real life will re-establish itself. But we've had a lovely time with both families, and we managed the logistics without mishap. Here's to the next time ...

My extra, the last of the year, is of Po the collie saying goodbye. And it's after midnight again ...