Seascapes

Whilst I'm in the mood: more photos. I love seascapes.

A couple more photos

My blogs are usually lacking in visuals so to make up for it here's some sky.....

and some shells........

11111 page views.

Probably many of the 11111 page views over the years were mine but it was still an impressive number to see come up.

More photos of the afternoon, since I managed to take some for once. It was a very dog-friendly do, this roast. The meat and crackling were so beyond delicious that it was hard to share, but Dizzy and Kes did get some nice titbits, both being unashamed moochers. The rather handsome pair of dogs in the photo were VERY badly behaved, getting tangled around everyone and peeing on my chair in an attempt to mark their territory. They didn't succeed in becoming Top Dogs because Kes is bigger than both of them, but it was a brave attempt.

II

Hog roast day.

This, that and the other.

Off to a Hog Roast this afternoon. As one of my favourite crime novels centred round such an event  I have great hopes of a dramatic time. In the story the unlikeable hostess ends up in the roaster. This one is organised by the Rotary Club and I'm not sure the roaster could get them all in in one go.

We have had every sort of weather this week: snow that closed the passes; east winds with sleety rain; wild wind that stopped the ferries running; and now almost-scorching sunshine. Yesterday I went for a walk on a nearby beach where surfers were chilly their bits catching huge waves. The sky was an amazing blue and perfectly clear. No, of course I didn't have my camera. I shall take it today and hope to remember to use it.

Because a friend has been mopping up the Wagner season BBC Radio 3 have been doing, I 've started watching a production of the Ring cycle lent to me by the ex. I have to time it so I watch early afternoon or I fall asleep and have to do a bit again. I've no pretentious to understanding music but can tell it's Good Stuff (though the Rhine Maidens do rather give me the pip. they go on so and are so high). I much prefer the giants; their gigantic music is truly impressive.

The allergies that thrive in the spring tra la! have also been giving me the pip. Cortisone has been on the menu again and I'd quite forgotten how nasty it is. It also keeps me awake at night, something I hadn't noticed before, probably because I was taking it such a lot and we can get used to anything if we have to. I resort to melatonin but when I come round in the morning I'm fit for nothing, have black rings under my eyes and am very grumpy. Good thing there's no-one else here.

The sad news's that after 10 years of placidly comfortable life Sandy's rabbit had to put to sleep because she had an enormous growth that was growing so fast the vet claimed she could almost see the cells divide under the microscope. Little Miss Velvet had cataracts and was deaf, so for the last year she has been living in Sandy's bedroom, sleeping often on his pillow (until Chloe went in to separate them) and never going further than the end of the wooly rug during the day when she was let out of her very comfortable accommodation. She seemed happy enough and then suddenly last week she didn't. It's easy  to tell when an animal has had enough.  very difficult and upsetting for Sanders of course. He takes everything so hard, and although he is rapidly approaching 6' he is still a child. To my surprise the school have been really good and let him go home to grieve. Obviously G'stoun has come a long way from the era of cold showers and stiff upper lips, for which we are all grateful.

My ex and his wife have finished translating a paper on the Right to Die. It was written by her brother, in french since he is Belgian, and was probably a therapeutic exercise  for him since his wife died a year or so back and they had to run the gamut of Belgian laws for her to be able to choose her moment. At least it is possible there. The paper has been published on a Scottish site the name of which I forget but I don't suppose any of you folk will actually want to read it. I do find that sort of thing interesting in moderation. D tends to wallow in it given half a chance. I'm not sure if that means she's facing up to death better or is more frightened of it than me. Could be either reason really.

That's about it for now.




 

Culture Day

In September we are having a Culture Day in this area.Sounds like it should be spelt with a K. It took me a while to understand what it meant in hard terms and how it was going to wake and shake the good people of the town and surroundings into spontaneity and involvement. Not words I would normally associate with most of the population, unless it's involvement in coffee mornings. Now I have the picture (I think) I’m buzzing with ideas. The young woman at the centre of it all has created similar events in Dublin, Cork, and other places across the UK,  and I commend her energy, courage, dedication, courage again - in fact mostly her sheer nerve! She isn’t alone of course; there are teams already on the job that have proved their worth in creating big events. One of them has started the ball rolling by putting huge wicker faces up into the trees in the local woodland. I saw these giants last week  (I didn’t have a camera). They are mightily impressive, benign thank heavens, and story-tellers are already taking parties of children through the woods telling tales about them (I’m guessing, but anyway, telling tales!) 

There will be installations, displays, exhibitions, but the main aim is to get people to participate in something they wouldn’t normally do, therefore impromptu painting/writing poems on paper table cloths in cafes, dancing, singing with a suddenly appearing choir (will there finally be a flash mob in our street)?  The writer’s group are going to be a part of this. I have ideas. So does everyone else, getting more and more fantastical. It should be a lot of fun.

By the way, is anyone else blogging in this place able to create more space between lines? I can't and I feel cramped. 

Lochadrenaline

I scared myself half to death turning into an impossible hair-pin bend in pursuit of this loch. The hair-pin was actually the approach lane, no more than a tiny path, from the opposite direction but I missed the one for me and didn't work that out until I found myself stuck halfway round with the nose of my car hanging over what felt like a precipice. No going back - too much of a step down that would have to be be powered up hard against, shooting me out backwards into the road on a blind corner. As usual in an emergency involving height or slipperiness  I froze completely and sat glued to my seat for a good two minutes quite unable to move.

Eventually I opened the door, slid out, and saw that with the wheel still turned full lock I could just make it without one hoof disappearing into the void (a steepish rocky hillside but hey, it's the panic that counts).

After that it was a bit of an anticlimax. The boringly flat ruins on the tiny island in the centre are of a castle once used to imprison the local bad boy, the Wolfe of Badenoch who set fire to churches, castles and a substantial abbey whilst in a pet about not being allowed a divorce. (Pre Henry VIII, but they obviously had something in common to moan about once they met on the Other Side.)

The waters were choppy and the sky grey. I drove the circumference, loosened tense muscles and recovered my aplomb in a passing place, then drove away to coffee and quiche in the nearest café.

An unexpected success.

I’m very, very chuffed. For the first time ever I submitted a poem to a magazine and it was accepted almost return of email.  The Dawntreader is a magazine that comes out in print - doesn’t just appear online. (I’m too old to think of appearing in on-line poetry sites as ‘getting published’.) The very best thing is that it and the other magazines put out by the same publishers, IndigoDreams, has accepted poems from my daughter; there’s one of hers in the latest edition. 

The writer’s group here has taken over my life, or rather the writing it generates has. The members are very supportive and the standard good. There’s a lot of energy for achievement, no messing. Maybe that has something to do with the considerable male presence. Whatever. It works for me. 

The last meeting, which was timetabled to include a discussion of ‘activities,‘ did highlight the one downside, that is the danger of filling precious free time producing something for the group to raise money for workshops or jaunts rather than getting on with individual projects. Opinion was divided. It probably always will be. 

Other than that life has jogged along rather pleasantly. There was lunch with a friend last week in a cosily posh local hotel promoting the whisky festival in these parts. We got a free signed copy of the proprietor’s new book about the distilleries hereabouts. It’s a neat small format with good photos, a nice change from the swanky coffee table glossies with lots of sophisticated white space and b*!!*r all actual information.