f4f3 | Sun, Wind and Rain, and I miss the islands...

The best thing about my current office is that I sit beside a floor to ceiling window. Now that the clocks have gone back I have a view of Christorphone Hill and a lot of sky. Today it's blue, with the last doomed leaves scudding across it. Days like these I want to get in the car and drive to Argyll. I want to get a Cal Mac ferry to Arran, or Islay, or take the fast RIB across to Jura, and watch the play of light and water and listen out for stags calling in the hills. I want to go down to Noel Prentice's wholesale shellfish place in Tarbet, and pick a lobster out of his tank, and have it with some chilli butter and an ice cold bottle of Picpoul de pinet out on the porch, with the wind rattling around the cottage and little waves lined up along the canal. And then blow away the cobwebs in the morning with a walk up Kilmartin Glen, stopping to say hello to the standing stones and maybe linger over coffee and cake and my newspaper in the conservatory of the heritage centre...

There will be weekends like that this Winter, but not this week. On Friday night I'll drive up to the cottage, where my dad and step-mum will have arrived before me, and then my younger sister and her fiance Nick will join us. Friday will probably be curry night, with some beer and wine, and maybe a dram or two. On Saturday morning my dad, Nick and I will drive down to Macrahanish, and play the new Dunes course. When it gets dark we'll all head into Lochgilphead for the lantern parade, bonfire and fireworks. For me that's the night when Winter starts, a bit early by the calendar but for me the year pivots on those hours when the bonfire is lit.

Sunday? Who knows. Up to Kilmartin, maybe, for that coffee and cake, and lunch at the Grey Gull or the Crinan. Not the weekend I'd have chosen, but one I'm very lucky to have.

Only thing is, I need to work another two days to get there, and the view out of the window is calling me now...