Not waving, but swimming ...

Before saying anything else, I feel I should point out that for a change we haven't had any of the dire weather of the past 24 hours - no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no hailstorms, no floods. We've been lucky.

We don't often get days like this in the West of Scotland, days which remind me of holidays in Crete, with the air warm and still from when I first went out at 7.50am to get the week's shopping over by 9; the car thermometer said 19ºC when I first got into it, and 21º an hour later when I returned with the messages. It made me behave differently, I think - wandering along the lane to see my friends' wisteria before pruning some tendrils off my own and ending up staying for a blether and coming home with a carrot, a cucumber and a tall and bounteous basil plant!

But the best was in the afternoon, when we were both sticky from sitting outside with our lunch - it gets amazingly hot, even under a parasol. We couldn't really face much of a walk, and we felt that inland was not the place to be. And so it was that we found ourselves back on the shore road at Toward - only this time I'd slipped a swimming costume into my little rucksack, along with a small waterproof stuff sack. When I saw the sea, saw some people bathing randomly along the coast, I could resist no longer. I was down among the pebbles, checking that there was in fact sand under the water just a couple of metres out, pulling on my swimsuit and pulling off my dress. So my blip is of me, swimming. I didn't take it, natch, and I know it's not remotely recognisable, but that wee dark blob  on the water is my head and I'm swimming back in to the shore, having reccied the outward route for the odd rock (there was a biggie that would have taken off a lot of skin) and any stray jellyfish (none today). After the initial creeping chill on the hot bod, I found the water silky soft in its warmth on the surface, cooler underneath, salty as ever. 

My summer is made. It's not summer without at least one sea bathe. 

Perfect, in fact - just perfect.

Virtual Mars Bar if you recognise the reference in the title of this ...