Blowin' in the wind

The air last night when I was heading for bed was so still I was sure my breathing was audible, and when I opened the front door this morning it was much the same, but throughout the afternoon a wind from the south became really quite strong and we remarked that it must be really warm because the wind didn't seem to cool us down at all. Very unlike our weather, really. Tonight our bedroom feels unbearably warm, but I believe it should be less so by morning, going by the forecast. 

This morning saw me finish the current batch of laundry needing attention when I washed every towel in use and hung them out to dry. This wasn't as simple as it sounds; the new washing machine, though capacious and boasting about three times as many  programmes as the old one, is very fussy when it comes to spinning dry - I had to remove half a load to get it dried at all, then do the second batch on a slower spin because it was just pirouetting uselessly when it should have been racing round. 

In the midst of this I had to leave it gyrating hopelessly to go out and fetch the balance of a prescription from the chemist. When I came out, I heard a poem by Michael Rosen - Don't mention the children - being read over a loudhailer by a man standing with the little group of pro-Palestine protestors outside the Burgh Hall and felt driven to go and join them for a while. They were a delightful lot, outgoing and intelligent, and we had an immediately interesting discussion about the psychological  effect of going on a demo protesting something you feel deeply about. The extra photo shows their flags against the sky that at that time was grey and threatening but beginning to clear.

I went home to have lunch in the garden, after which we decided to escape the noises of town on a weekend of An Event and go out to Ardentinny, where we never go in the winter months. The shore path, from which I took the main photo looking up Loch Long towards the floating submarine dock, was peaceful and quiet, but when we arrived at the beach where we used to take our boys for a swim we found it a seething mass of camper vans and untidy tents. At least the Council are charging overnight and daytime rates nowadays - but we'll not be back till it's quieter again.

The evening became rather fraught with an unexpected upset to plans and a rush to remedy this by booking a hotel for a night, so I did very little in the way of relaxation before it was time for bed ...

Like now.