Replenishing

I realised yesterday that it's a month since I last did a normal food shop - normal implying being here in Dunoon (ie not in Arran), involving a sizeable quantity of food for a week bought usually before breakfast on a Thursday. So in a sense today's shopping wasn't really normal, in that it's only Wednesday, but I needed fresh vegetables and more fruit and ... and ... and there were no other pressing matters lined up for this morning, so I got up and dressed and went to Morrison's. When I reached the checkout - there are only at most two in operation at this time of day - I was hailed by my usual checkout lady with the words "this isn't your day!" Sounds like a dire warning, but to me it was a sign that whatever its shortcomings, the local Morrison's is where I shop and where I am known - and where, on this particular morning, I ended up in tucks of laughter with Moira the checkout lady and a totally random and unknown man who was waiting his turn in a wee queue of one. Exit left, laughing still ...

It wasn't much of a day after that, to be honest - the usual late breakfast running into coffee, Italian started just in time to cash in my points and set up more for later (it's a Duolingo thing), washing up the breakfast stuff in time to have lunch (honestly), poaching some prunes for tomorrow ... (Note to self: make a brown loaf tomorrow.) Outside the air was still and damp and smelled rather wonderful, and this lasted into the afternoon, when we looked out the window and chose Toward for a walk as the clouds there looked paler. 

As you can see from the photo, we were mistaken in that idea - the photo is looking north up the firth from Toward Point, where the rain has just stopped. It is clearly brighter up there where we'd come from ... But the smell of damp vegetation and autumn leaves - already quite thick on the road - was wonderful, with something almost cereal-like in it as well as the greenness, and the air was still and I kept taking photos along the roadside because there are still the last shoots of flowers - honeysuckle, convolvulus, wee pink jobs, ditto purple, grasses - and a great web of withered sticky willie. (All these are in the collage extra.) 

We ate far too much for dinner, the order having come with a small whale in place of the usual pair of fish (I don't do the ordering; Himself does), were in good time for Compline but suffered later for the fish. As a result it's now well past midnight and I'm rabbiting on here instead of going to bed - but I don't have to be out early in the morning.

Result!