Wild, again

It's not often that I decide by lunchtime that there's going to be no walk in the rest of the day, but today was one of these days. The morning grew increasingly windy and wild - wild and mild, really - and then there was some rain and gusts that wanted to blow you over (I made a brief foray to the recycling bin, which Himself had already put out in the street for collection tomorrow morning) and now it's completely calm and dry. And as for 19.6ºC in the north: worryingly absurd. 

Church gave us the first inkling of how the day was to turn out: we should have been having a first visit of a retired priest now living on Bute, while our rector took the service on Bute, but the two of them had agreed yesterday that the forecast looked as if the ferry might just go off and leave them both stranded on the wrong sides, so we had service as normal as far as celebrant went. We also had great singing - the final hymn, when Himself opened up the organ and gave it laldy, had everyone fair carried away. It's great to have singing men in a church - it makes such a difference.

As going to church was the highlight of the day, I've made it the subject of this blip, a photo I took as we went in, the wind already tugging at us, because I thought it looked warm and welcoming with the lights on in the gloom. I also think, now that I see the photo, that the definition achieved with the new phone camera shows up more than in a landscape ... I've given you a seascape too, in the extra, because it shows the madness of Dunoon east bay at high tide, with the waves breaking onto the pavement and out over the road, while the Western Ferries ship sails serenely on its way.

Apart from church, that was it, really. Di came for coffee and we discussed how we are both sickened and upset by just about everything in the news and yet feel compelled to keep up with it. There are programmes on television that I seek out to be soothing (Landscape Artist of the Year, for example) or feel good (Call the Midwife - though Himself finds the birth scenes hard to take) or intriguing despite (or because of) a well-worn formula (Silent Witness - the combination of danger/unpleasantness/gruesomeness with a safe space where the protagonists can operate in peace) - these are the pegs on which I hang my evenings, although the News is always there at ten o'clock. 

And we're just catching up on the last part of Mr Bates and the Post Office - and suddenly hearing more of the case on the News and realising how long it's gone on. But I'm not personally upset by that. I'm angry.