I have been
desperately feeble today – I who scaled Mt Dublin Street yesterday and made
kimchi. Helen came, but the only possible walk was to get to the garden and sit
for a while on the nearest bench. I may not have eaten enough yesterday.
Appetite has been poor lately.
Not much knitting,
either. A few more rounds on the current sock. I settled down this morning to
watch Franklin’s vlog about the Men’s Knitting Retreat – not without interest,
but very short. Why didn’t those lambs have woolly mothers to look after them?
A new issue of
Knitting magazine pointed me to titityy.fi – a delicious Finnish yarn shop. I
am greatly taken with their Uschitita Yak Singles (a Dutch yarn, in fact) but
it would be ridiculous to buy yarn when I sit here day after day not getting
much of anything done.
Cruise
Beth, I’m sure you’re
right (comment yesterday) – the Stevensons designed and engineered lighthouses;
didn’t own them. There was a book about the family on a small but useful bookshelf
on the boat, but one of us commandeered it at the beginning of the voyage. Many
of their lighthouses were built at inhospitable places, including both
Ardnamurchan Point and Cape Wrath. I saw Muckle Flugga once, on my first trip
to Shetland. It’s another Stevenson, on a tiny rocky outpost off the north of
Unst – the most northerly geographical point of the British Isles. How do you
get the men and materials there, to build a lighthouse?
Tamar, I agree
with you – I take that picture yesterday to be of lobster pots.
Weavinfool asked
on Sunday whether our fellow passengers were from Scotland, a propos of
my mentioning the evening when the conversation at dinner was about Scottish
independence and C. and I were silent. Essentially, yes. There were three
married couples in the other three double cabins: two of them lived in
Scotland, the other couple were thoroughly Scottish but lived in England. The
two single travellers lived in England and were as silent as C. and I. The one
thing everybody agreed on – C. and I could join in here – was that Boris
Johnson has nothing to say to Scotland.
Shandy, I’ll get
to birds. We had a real expert aboard. He claimed to have seen 63 different species
on the cruise, and crowned his list with a golden eagle the last day.
Here’s another of
my reports:
“Today was
Inverewe and at the last moment I decided not to go, to C.’s disgust.
When they all came back complaining of midges I felt I had made the right
decision. C. took lots of pictures and
it looks wonderful. I have promised to go ashore with her at the much more
boring Tobermory -- with luck, it won't be early afternoon when I am at my
feeblest.
Now we are
on our way to Loch Torridon where we will spend the night. I was there 50 or 60
years ago in the youth hostel.”
Some pictures from Inverewe: