We have had a short but sweet trip up. Peppered with things you might expect to get you down, but they have been clouds with golden linings. Rather like this walk around Arthur’s Seat, late afternoon with my niece. 

Not that a walk with my niece was likely to get me down, a walk and talk is almost always therapeutic. Mind you I can tell I am walking less as my joints could feel it and was not an unusual length. I either need a better exercise regime or new joints.

Shane had been contemplating making this trip north on his own. He didn’t have multiple medical appointments, clustered around this time and it might have made the proposed October/November visit from our Sheffield friends, Heather and Benny, more flexible if I stayed on the boat.

T However as it transpired, they had completed their canal cruise before November and my aunt’s funeral was on the same day as Shane’s treatment, so we both had a reason for a short trip up. It couldn’t really have worked out better. My aunt was 103 and her funeral was indeed a celebration of a long and active life and a chance to meet up with all of my sisters, a rare event indeed – there were several references to the 5 sisters (not of Kintail). There was Gaelic singing at the service from the minister, a choir singing at the start and a beautiful rainbow as we emerged into the graveyard at Dollar church. What a beautiful setting indeed at the foothills of the Ochils. The minister told us later that it had been very rainy there for several days and this was the first bit of sunshine they had. The day before, I had got drenched going out, but on the way home had been treated to a variety of views of rainbows in the still grey sky. It was an ever changing picture in the short walk back home.

In our visit of a few days there have been a fair amount of showers but Shane has managed a bike ride, slightly wet but spirits undamped, and we have had a few visitors, meets and walks in the weather windows, interspersed with the showers and it has flown by. Shane continues to be minimally affected by treatment. Back to Bartimaeus tomorrow. Goodnight Edinburgh and surely the drought restrictions are now all lifted, just in time for the winter works stoppages to start.