Visitors

Last Monday visitors from The US (and Blogland) arrived. We'd never met. We'd never spoken. In fact we'd only shared a few emails. Mrs Slapthing aka Marcheline aka my brother Scriptor Senex's Friend-uber-special together with her Mum and Hubby were 'doing Scotland' and ended up with me on Lewis for 22 hours: 22 absolutely wonderful, zany, experience-filled hours (brief sleep time excepted) before they continued on their merry way to see Harris before they got the (very) early ferry to Skye from Tarbert. The rest of my day after they left was very flat indeed.

Marcheline was very keen to re-visit the Callanish Standing Stones which she had visited many years ago before she was married. They drove to my home from the ferry and, after briefly settling in, we set off for lunch at The Woodlands and then Callanish.

Photographing the photographer

It was as if Marcheline just couldn't stop laughing. Mind you with the strong wind I had the advantage (I was wearing a well anchored hat and, in any case, I don't have much hair to be blown around).

Then we went to see The Broch at Dun Carloway.

The angle and the lens I used made the broch look much squatter than it really is.

Smile please

We then went via the Garenin Black House Village to Dalmore where the oil rig had been stranded a few weeks ago. It seemed impossible to believe that the quiet bay had been such a hive of activity and national interest then.

An impressed and happy Marcheline's Mum.

Relaxed and happy.

It's definitely a stone!

Then home and dinner and an evening of laughter and conversation; the sharing of information and experiences of four people who have never met before and who have so many years of experience to share.

What struck me very forcibly though was just how at home my visitors were from the moment they stepped through the front door. I am always delighted when people make themselves at home at Tigh na Mara and this was instant 'at homeness'.

The laughter stopped briefly whilst we all slept and then continued during 'breakfast' which went on for several hours.

One thing I have found is a fellow human who who can start three consecutive sentences without finishing any of them and who, instinctively, started finishing my sentences almost as soon as we met. People who know me well will understand the last sentence only too well.

Autumn

No season of mists an mellow fruitfulness; no beautiful golden red leaves; no misty mornings which one knows instinctively is an 'autumn morning'. For me no discussions about meteorological use of months or general acceptance of the equinox as an indication of autumn. It's not the fact that this morning it's still raining and blowing a gale just as it was when I went to bed. It's the fact that this morning I was up at 6.25am and I had to put the lights on. For me that means it's now autumn. Soon I'll be able to get up at 8.30am and have to put the lights on. Then it will be winter.

Oh what a difference a day makes. Yesterday around 7am it was like this:

Today it's like this:

Adrian

A number of us have been wondering what has happened to Adrian of Adrian's Images because he hasn't blogged for 5 weeks and hasn't been answering emails or his cellphone (mobile phone).

I have spoken to Adrian at the farm and he is safe and well. Apparently they changed their internet provider at the farm and there have been problems. Because the mobile phone signal is very patchy they use the internet to access mobile phones too.

Adrian is popping down to his sister's to have the dogs' hair cut so he'll hopefully post from there.

I'm Still Alive

This may have been the longest gap in my blogging  for a long time: perhaps since I started. I've been so occupied with changing the decoration of parts of my house so thoroughly that I've had little time for anything else. I've learned a lot though. If you remove seven doors in order to paint them it takes a long time to get to the end. I paint them in my workshop when they are horizontal. I can only do two at a time. Each door has to be sanded down and an undercoat applied and then two top coats. So that is three days for each side of each door (to allow the paint to dry between coats) and assumes that nothing poops on your paint from above (which something, of course, did). Anyway it's all over now bar the clearing up and the new curtains being hung. Hopefully I'll be spending a lot more time back in Blogland.

We have had some bizarre weather here in the UK and, although we've not had the heatwave those further South have experienced we've had some cracking days (as in Yorkshire cracking à la Wallace and Grommit) as well as some, how shall I say, less cracking days.

Some of the sunrises have been spectacular:

More soon!

Thankful Thursday: A New Month

This morning is the 867th new month in my life. It's not a very significant number in itself but it's one helluva lot more than many people are fortunate to have. In fact if it hadn't been for the British National Health Service I almost certainly wouldn't have had 667 of those months. For the NHS I am thankful.

When one wakes up to a morning like this one can be nothing but thankful.

I complain about the dire weather we sometimes have here in the Outer Hebrides but in reality it's not that bad, particularly compared with the weather many people have with drought and storms at opposite ends of the spectrum.

In weather parlance today is the first day of Autumn. My garden has suffered this year from unusual summer gales but the geranium Roxanne has been prolific from Spring and is still going strong:

So whilst I may find it hard sometimes to be thankful for our weather I am thankful that it allows me to have a wonderful garden.

Right. New carpets are due to be laid tomorrow so I had better stop enjoying myself blogging and get back to work on the house: my home. For which, I have to say, I am very thankful.