Summer Solstice

Yesterday, 21st June, Was the Summer Solstice and the longest day of the year.  It did not go dark at all here tonight in the north of the Hebrides.  The Butt of Lewis is almost on the same latitude as the most northerly coast of the Scottish mainland. 

My garden is in full bloom. Most of my plants are perennials but there are some annuals as well.  This is only part of garden part of the plot on which the bungalow is built.  

As for the weather the irony is that I am wearing exactly the same clothes at the moment that I wear in the winter: including my Hoggs of Fife winter lined Bushwhacker trousers. As Victor Meldrew would have said "I don't believe it!"

Caring Less

I frequently hear people saying "I couldn't care less." I have said it myself.

However, when I heard it today it suddenly occurred to me that what was actually meant was that the person could not care (at all). The implication being that if I 'could not care less' then, to make sense, that had to be followed by '...than (some defined level of care).  

For example: 'I could not care less about the colour of your socks' means that I care about them at a defined level. If I want to say that I actually don't care about your socks then what I should say is "I do not care about the colour of your socks".

What on earth started me on that esoteric linguistic train of thought?

Come to think of it I could not care less about the topic of this post.

Back in Blogland - Eventually

It's 6am [Tuesday 21 April]. I'm just home from driving my last visitor to the morning ferry for her journey home to Glasgow. 

For the last month and more I have had visitors. It's been wonderful. Fraser of my New Zealand family and his partner came and stayed for a while and for the last week, Sue, one of my oldest friends has been staying.

John and Sue came to the Island, as I did, in 1974 but they arrived a few months earlier.  We became close friends almost immediately and we have been close friends ever since then although, sadly, John died in 2019. When John retired they moved to Glasgow to be nearer their children. My surviving son, on the other hand, is an Islander through and through and still lives here (although he's away at sea a lot - he's a chief engineer on super-yachts). Working at sea was - and to some extent is - typical of Islanders from here.

The first thing I discovered when I tried to blog this morning was that my absence from Blogland (I assume that was the reason) meant that I had to jump through hoops to get back into my blog. I even had to find my password which was rather frightening for a while.

Apart from having just become Treasurer of the Bowling Club almost my commitments are easing off. I have discovered that I'm not as young as I was although I am, I confess, surprised at how much energy I have lost now I'm in my 80s.

My parents were still walking up Blencathra in the English Lake District when they were in their late 80s and early 90s. In my early 80s I still frequently walk the three miles rounds the Castle Grounds but it's fairly flat and the 'usual' walk is just 3 miles.

I wrote the above on the date at the start of the post and then went out and when I came back I couldn't get into my blog.  I've no idea what happened but it was a bit scary.  All those years of blogging and all of a sudden......nothing.  Until this evening when I tried a different platform and in I got: but I had to use my password. Thank heaven it was stored away somewhere.

So I shall post this whilst all is going well. Hopefully a more interesting post will follow soon.

The Ability to Remember and Memories.

I woke very early this morning. Apart from anything I had cramp.  I got up, walked around and eventually went back to bed. Sleep obviously wasn't an option so I decided to have a thinking session. Thinking has never been one of my strong points. That was my Brother, CJ's, forté. However, I came up with some good ideas relating to a combination of the mundane (practical things like meals for the next few days) to blogging. I lay there writing blogs in what passes for my mind. I decided on a plan for those days this coming week where I had 'free time' (not many!). Then disaster struck. I dozed off for a short while. When I woke I couldn't recall a single idea that I'd had. 

I'm writing this this evening, some hours later.  I'm sure that many of you will have read occasional tales of woe about my lack of a memory. I come from a family with phenomenal memories. 

As an example, in 2001, my father as he lay dying at the age of 94 (when his heart had failed and wouldn't even give him enough oxygen to allow him to raise an arm) was taken into a nursing home. I was at home on Lewis. I got into the car and went for the lunchtime ferry and, with an overnight stop, arrived in Liverpool around lunchtime the next day.

I was saying hello to my father when a lady with a clipboard and briefcase came in. She introduced herself as being from the welfare department. She had come to assess my father for his suitability for a nursing home place (or, presumably, an alternative). I should say that my father had heart failure and couldn't raise his arm or even a hand to his face to give himself a drink.

The welfare officer started asking my father the usual, and to me at that moment silly, questions to asses his mental faculties. At this point, I (who was obviously very tired both physically and emotionally) completely unreasonably berated the social worker for harassing someone in my father's condition. She was rather taken aback but my father saved the day by saying "Oh for heaven's sake stop acting like a couple of children.  I assume you want to know how compos mentis I am. I'm in a nursing facility. We live in a constitutional monarchy."  He then went on to name members of the government and so on until the social worker turned to me and said "Well that's us well and truly put in our place. I don't think I need to bother your father any more. I think we can safely say I have all the information I need to approve the placement".  She thanked my father and said cheerio. 

Dad died a few days later..