27 August 2020
A dreich day when they promised better.

A woman came to the door needing a lift to Balure where she had left her mainland car keys. We have all done that. Nothing worse than getting to the ferry and remembering your other car keys are on the hall table especially if you have driven the length of the island. We are unused to people at the door and have no idea what the guidance is about giving lifts to strangers who may have been in a germ war zone. But, she is a visitor. She didn’t have a mask, so H opened windows despite the weather. She offered to pay, to buy us cakes and H said buy the book and review it!
Lismore has two ferries, a five-minute foot passenger ferry from Point to Port Appin and a 50-minute car ferry from Achnacroish into Oban. Having two cars was never agreeable but keeping a car at Port Appin pre-pandemic was convenient; a five-minute frequent crossing making many onward journeys feasible. If we want to walk in Glen Coe for the day, and this is one of the pleasures of living here, we need a car from Port Appin. We had been walking legs of the West Highland Way. Not a miss just now, but it will be once normal life returns.

The final copy of Sleeping With the Captain is here, courtesy of Mòr Media. Am so pleased I can hardly recall the pain it took to produce from my memory, my brain, my confidence, and my ability to remove words not working hard enough. I finished it a few months ago, but I didn’t like the words (I loved Gilly Bridle’s cover designed by Helen Crossan) so started again removing saggy words, lolloping sentences and non-perky paragraphs. Obviously it’s not perfect, but perfection is not in the purview of the writer. Or anyone. We are a flawed species: sometimes that’s a delight, other times a horror.
The prescription crisis is over. Not over but a temporary solution has been found. We each have to sign something to agree to our meds being carried on the ferry by an authorised person who will deliver them to the shop where Laura has also been cleared. Our medical services are a shadow of their former selves. Ironic in a pandemic.
Picked the first plums. The tree is laden after several barren years. I had threatened it with … no idea what . They are delicious.