Jollity vs Gloom

I always feel a tad bereft the day after we come home from seeing the family - a combination of missing their lives going on around us and assuming once more the business of making our life go on again. Today when I woke - and goodness, waking was hard! - it was so dark I had little idea of what time it was. The overnight wind was still whipping up the sea which I couldn't see for another 45 minutes and the rain was studded on the north-facing window and there was no way I was going to carry out my usual practice (wrong day, but necessary) of going shopping before breakfast.

Instead I took my time, then washed all the towels without the least idea of how they were to be dried and had a leisurely breakfast. Meanwhile, Himself had dressed and was off out heroically into the rain to go up the glen to the stalkers to pick up the venison for Hogmanay dinner. When he got back, we fortified ourselves with strong coffee (I had to open a new packet halfway and think I put in an extra scoop) before going together to brave Morrison's car park, a nightmare of manoeuvring business. In the end we got parked in a small flood at the far end of the carpark, where there's a little slope and the hard edge of the grass. The water closed over my feet when I got out of the car - but I do tend to go shopping in my walking trainers and all was more or less well.

More horrors awaited us in the store. There were already lacunae in the stock - I managed to grab the last basket of superior clementines, and there was no fresh coriander. But I had a laugh with a man who helped me reach down the orange juice that was too high for either me or Himself (who looked rather surprised that mild flirtation between the aged could happen under his nose) and another with one who overheard me saying we'd not bother with the feeble selection of bread left on offer as I'd make some - he tried to persuade me that in this season of goodwill I'd like to make him some too. And then there was the talkative couple (whom we might have known from some long-ago encounter) in the enormous check-out queue, and the woman who is usually on the kiosk but who was manning an extra emergency checkout and who heard me addressing Himself as "John". She couldn't get over the fact that to her we'd always be Mr and Mrs Mc - even though it must be 35 years ago when she was in a class of mine, in the same year group as #2 son. She was expeditious and jolly and suddenly we were outside again in the rain, with our full trolley and a sense of triumph.

The afternoon was less jolly. It began torpid with the papers, and became silly when we both felt a walk coming on as dusk began to fall. I had intended posting a rather good photo of the west bay in the gloaming, with the curve of the lights of the hotels, but dumped it in favour of my knitted carol singers and one of the candles (to say nothing of the whole room, and me, in reflections...) We ate truffle-pesto pasta with mushrooms, broad beans, garlic, onion and two sliced smallish tomatoes, scattered with grated Pecorino, and drank red wine that left a wonderfully cinnamon after-sensation on the palate, and gave up for the evening. 

Except that I caught up on Call the Midwife (feel-good) and EastEnders (feel-terrible-it's-Christmas-what-do-you-expect?) so that now it's once again past midnight.

Some people just never learn, huh?