When Blippers meet ...

...They blether! On this lovely day - the first day of meteorological Autumn, but still very much part of the wonderful summer we've had - blipper ElspethAnne  and I drove from our own haunts to meet "for lunch" at Cairndow - parking in the same place as Brown and Prescott met to plan Blair's replacement back in the day. Lunch on this occasion consisted of a sizeable chunk of satsuma and chocolate cake and a large Americano; it felt suitably decadent and flighty for a day off-grid. We sat in the sun at an outside table and talked in the way that people do who already know much of the mood of the other from their journals; it's so easy to be right in there in no time at all that the time flew past.

We decided to make a proper outing of it - we'd each driven quite a distance to meet - so spent the afternoon, or what was left of it, pottering through the woodland garden of Ardkinglas House. For all the years I've driven up and down that road en route for Oban or Inveraray, I've never stopped at the house other from one notable occasion when we had to pick up Lady Anne who wished armfuls of azaleas to be taken (along with her) to the Episcopal Church in Inveraray... So it was fascinating to follow Elspeth through paths, down steps, past an ancient mill-house ... all the time agreeing on how we felt about the business of land ownership. 

We'd had an interesting time manoeuvring our two cars along the increasingly narrow single-track road to get there (involving a change of plan and the need to turn round ...aagh!), but I was relieved to note that the return to the main road was relatively straightforward, and neither of us, you'll be glad to learn, was involved in a lethal crash with a motor cycle or anything else as we emerged onto our right turn, heading to Glasgow and Cowal...

I had a speedy drive home down Loch Eck; poor Elspeth fared rather worse with traffic because the A82 had been closed. I got home to find that Himself had cleaned the oven ...