With time...

Today has been ... frustrating, in several ways. The ongoing saga of the strange virus was more of a backdrop in its unpleasant manifestations - the sudden barking cough, the tendency of the mouth ulcers to erupt suddenly like tiny teeth in odd places, the running out of tissues and having to revert to the rather less chic alternative - not all in me, so that the pair of us moped fractiously along, occasionally flaring up as the other irritations of the day appeared.

Take the washing machine. (I wish someone would, and bring me back my old one, miraculously restored). I was sitting outside in intermittently pleasant sunshine after breakfast, doing Italian and wondering how long it'd be before the promised rain arrived, when I struck me that if it was going to rain for days I really ought to try to get some towels washed and out while it was sill possible. 

It was while we were having coffee, also outside, that I realised that the spin function was throwing a wobbler again. You know - that dithering about, back and forth, wee spin, slow down, stop (all the towels flop to the foot of the drum), try again ad infinitum. Useless. I tried everything - manually reorganising the wet towels, removing a few, putting them back, adding a couple of clean, dry towels in case it wasn't full enough - nothing. Eventually I piled the whole sodden lot into the plastic tub, balanced it on the wee trolley we use for shifting heavy stuff, and wheeled it along the lane to my pal Margo's, where her machine - same make as my old one - dealt with it all with familiar-sounding efficiency. I shall have to speak to the dealers, but Saturday isn't a good day for that sort of thing. 

 We had some lunch. We both coughed a bit. I came upstairs and did a sudoku. I felt worse. I decided that the rain didn't look bad and went out, alone. That's when I took the two photos in the collage - maybe I went out because I needed subjects! They both show how, in time, things fail. The beach, for example, along the West Bay, was cleared of plants last year after public moaning because the beach was covered in them. They're back. Naturally. Besides, they anchor the beach where it is instead of all over the prom in a storm. So, not really a sad reversion.

But the church tower in the other photo belongs to the former High Kirk of Dunoon, the building high above the pier by which everyone used to arrive in Dunoon, a dominant feature of the townscape. Now it's closed. The church has amalgamated with two other churches, a union which had already taken in a further church whose building was eventually demolished and replaced by flats. This iconic church building has, I am told, been sold to an American. I have no idea what this buyer wants to do with it, but its former function has ceased as the Church of Scotland pulls its horns in (and it has had so many horns, especially after The Disruption.)

 And with these negative thoughts I went home and felt that maybe we needed to be knocked down as well, as both of us declined gently throughout the evening. At least we enjoyed a proper dinner, but I'm getting fed up with this now. 

Time for  some more meds so that I sleep, I reckon ...