Menace

I don't normally mess around with photographs like this, but I've made an exception for today. I should have remembered to put the phone on portrait mode (to blur the background), as I photographed this seagull marching up the bonnet as we sat inside the car, as if it owned the place. It was impervious to me banging on the windscreen, or the side of the car. And we weren't even eating chips or something like that. After it had had its fill of menacing us through the windscreen, it popped onto the roof and walked around, which made for quite an eerie sound, until it got fed up and headed off to another car.

Anyway, this was around the middle of a generally rather busy day, albeit one which started slowly after red wine was consumed on Friday night. It took me until nearly 11am to persuade myself out of my nightclothes and onto the spinning bike for a gentle spin.... But I managed it in the end.

We set off a little earlier than expected, as we decided that we wanted to go and look for some bits and pieces in Inverness that Mr A needed for some cooking he's doing next weekend. Via another trip to Highland Lilliums, we arrived in Inverness from the Beauly side, which is wholly unfamiliar, and found our way to Matthews Asian supermarket and - right next door - the Highland Wholefoods Cooperative. Both are veritable emporia of tasty things. Afterwards, we parked up in the Cathedral car park, and Mr A had a micro snooze, interrupted only by the rude seagull, before we had a stroll along the River Ness, and into The Wee Bar to share a couple of "boards" and enjoy a quick pre concert drink.

The concert itself, which was supposed to be the main event, was a bit disappointing. We booked tickets because we heard Kim Carnie at the Transatlantic Sessions concert at the beginning of February and we discovered she was in Mànran. Sadly, not as "in" as we would have liked, although we enjoyed the parts she was involved in more than anything else. We found the base beat used for all the songs / numbers to be too samey (and a bit loud...) and we felt the music lacked colour and variety. Kim Carnie herself wasn't on the stage for large parts of the concert, which were instrumental only. We could have put up with not liking it as much as we expected had we not also had some very inconsiderate (and drunk) people immediately behind us who preferred to talk (mainly in a foul mouthed fashion which was a bit shocking as there were a few children at the concert) rather than enjoy the music. We were thoroughly fed up of them by the end and left before the encores, etc.


The journey back to Tain was speedy and smooth. I'd definitely go to Eden Court again, but perhaps be a little more careful in the choice of band / artist.