The Flight

This picture harks back to an age when 'planes were more like buses, stopping upon the way to their destination to drop and pick up passengers and, because they didn't have the range they have today, to refuel.

This 'plane is a South African Airways Boeing 707, the workhorse of long-distance travel in its time, and is seen at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands in September 1967. It was en route to Johannesburg but, because there were sanctions against the apartheid regime, only certain countries, including Franco's Spain, would allow the national airline landing rights. The other places it stopped were Luanda in Portuguese Angola and Salisbury in Ian Smith's rebel Rhodesia, where we disembarked.

It also harks back to an age when, at every stop, all the passengers had to be disembarked while the 'plane was refuelled. In those days, people simply walked across the tarmac to and from the airport buildings. Everything, including our boarding at Heathrow, was so much more casual and pleasant than today.

Not that flying was always fun. Although jets like the 707, Comet and VC10 suffered much less than the older turboprop 'planes, hitting thermals could be impressive, throwing the 'plane around; and the mechanics were less reliable, so I recall several occasions when an hour's stop turned into many hours and, as happened once in Rome after part of a Bristol Britannia's engine had fallen off over the Mediterranean, almost a day.

Dawn

This was dawn this morning, just after nine, looking out through the silhouettes of two of our cordylines to a wildfire sky swimming over a molten metal sea.

Red sky in the morning is supposed to be a shepherd's warning but, after two days of snow and frost, today has been unexpectedly sunny and mild.

The Cigarette

This picture was taken in 1957, and it's how I like to remember my parents. The memories of them after they had returned to the UK are coloured by the sense that they should never have returned, that they were at their happiest and most content when they lived in exotic places like Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam and, in particular, Zanzibar, where they met. My last memories of them, anyway, aren't pleasant - of my father frustrated by the disabilities of old age - like not being able to lift a full glass of bitter to his lips without spilling it - and of my mother growing fat and fey in an old people's home.

This was taken at the Hoey House at Nyali, an elongate bungalow built so all its rooms faced out across the lawn and through the palm trees to the beach, reef and Indian Ocean. From the direction of the sun, it's early in the morning, perhaps ten, and it's either Saturday or Sunday, the days when my father wore shorts though, as can be seen, even on his days off he was always smartly dressed.

However, there are a couple of intriguing details. Firstly, my mother is wearing her slippers and, secondly, she's smoking a cigarette.

As far as I can recall, she only smoked when she was working. I wish I had a picture of her at her typewriter, banging away at the keys at a fearsome rate, with a fag in her mouth and the smoke rising to irritate her eyes, so she typed with them screwed up.

So, when she was invited out for this picture, probably taken by either Richard or I while we were out there for the two precious months of the summer holiday of 1957, she was sitting at her desk in her slippers working at her typewriter, perhaps writing a letter for my father.

A Snow Dipper

The footbridge across the Golspie Burn just below our house is becoming a prime location for watching....

....dippers at work, even on a day which is giving us a biting northwester gusting to gale force along with frequent snowshowers broken by occasional bright, sunny intervals. Today's dipper was totally unafraid of us, going about its business within ten metres of where we stood on the bridge overlooking it.

The bird sticks its head under the water and then launches itself into the current, strong as it is, completely disappearing for several seconds and often bobbing up to swim on the surface to the next exposed rock.

Most of today's walk was through woodland where we were out of the wind, a silent, slippery world. where little moved - except here where, had I taken the picture a few seconds later, I would have caught a roe deer hurrying across the path.

By the time we crossed the A9 the snow was a little more serious, though it started melting again as soon as the sun came out. Being a bank holiday here in Scotland, the roads were quiet, and judging by the empty car park at the Golspie Inn many people are opting to stay at home in this weather.

The Sound of Silence

We walked yesterday to the far end of Loch Lunndaidh, to the site of the clachan which was cleared some time in the early 1800s - picture shows the remains of the large, circular sheep fank which has two buildings inserted into it - but we lingered there for some time not so much to look at the archaeology as to....

....listen, for places such as this illustrate best the idea that the sounds of every moment of our life has layers.

In these places, far from humans and human activity, the usual loud, blanketing layers of our everyday noise have been stripped away leaving, if one stops to listen, much quieter ones. Here, a constant layer was the distant hum of traffic along the A9, occasionally pushed back by a nearer layer, such as....

....the calls of two crows harassing a red kite. Behind them were even deeper and quieter layers, difficult to hear, such as the wind whispering in the heather, so many that the sound of silence could not, and perhaps can never be heard - except in outer space.

Because It's There!

The young and fit who visit us look at our view, see a hill, and can't resist climbing it. So, on New Year's Day, having 'seen in the bells' peering into the darkness in expectation of fireworks on Beinn Bhraggie's summit - they were postponed because, unsurprisingly, the mist came down just before midnight - we were persuaded to set off with the latest mountaineers....

....on the steeper of the two approaches to the summit. Unfortunately, several other family groups had had the same idea so there were delays - just as there are on Everest - and, since we no longer have the lungs for such a challenge, we gave up about half way in favour of making a gentle descent while....

....the intrepid pair made a push for the summit. With the weather unseasonably warm - it was 13C in the shade - we found a rock on which we could sit to soak up some vitamin D and from which we could....

....watch their progress - in this picture they're visible to the right of and below the Duke.

And here they are at the summit, a bit like Hillary and Tenzing on Everest, giving us a wave, their triumph....

....celebrated in the evening with some belated New Year fireworks.

New Year's Wishes

Best wishes to you all for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2022.

For us on our walks, 2021 was definitely the year of the fungus. One of the joys of finding and learning about this group is the fun people have had in naming them: this one is called plums and custard.

I wonder what 2022 will bring.