They're back

I find mornings increasingly difficult. No matter how I might resolve to be brisk in my getting up, to have breakfast without any pauses to follow some interesting threat (or indeed some Blips) on my phone, to rise from the table, do the dishes, organise my bags - no resolve can survive, as today, the sudden panicky awareness that I can't think where my keys - car and house - can possibly be. Did I leave them somehow in St Mun's hall on Thursday? Was I wearing an unaccustomed garment in whose pocket they could be lurking? They turned up, after much rummaging, in the bag tidy I'd used - yes, on Thursday - to transfer necessaries from handbag to small rucksack. All this meant that I arrived at church not wearing little boots and socks - it was a chilly, damp morning after all - but bare feet in a pair of red Mary Janes that happened to be the first pair I came upon. By the time we got home I felt I was in the early stages of hypothermia...

But that wasn't all that was bothering me by then. Take a look at the extra photo. It is a view through the wet windscreen of our car after church, looking into the church porch where there is a large wooden Celtic cross on the wall. See all these little white flecks? These are midges. Clouds and clouds of them, bouncing in the air, pouring into our car as we opened the doors, crawling in our hair, driving us made. They're back after their delayed appearance (warm, dry, sunny weather doesn't attract them) and our church car park is their favourite spot. They come into the church as well, so that they are stuck in one's hair and driving the organist mad as he tries to play. 

The main photo was taken at teatime, when the rain had stopped and given us a bright window in which to have  a pre-dinner walk. It shows Kilmun Pier, now only used, I think, to tie up a spare ferry at times; it used to feature in the activities of the US Navy Submarine Base when it was here - I believe Himself once boarded the captain's launch here to whisk him and some officers across to catch a ferry to Arran where they wanted to climb. (I was cross they didn't ask me to be their guide; they clearly thought a woman with two small children wouldn't be suitable.) We had a brisk two-mile walk, the return leg into the face of a considerable wind gusting down the Holy Loch - we were overheated and felt we'd walked far further by the time we got back to the car.

Dinner was late, and it's late now. And tomorrow I will again have to be brisk ...