settling

Here are a selection of pictures taken (with my phone) over the past few days. Though I’ve been using the camera phone more out of necessity than anything, I have been quite enjoying seeing what I can do with it, and it is particularly useful for capturing fleeting effects of light when I’m out and about on the hill. The light – much like the weather – moves very quickly out here and there is certainly something in the oft-repeated four-seasons-in-one day Scottish stereotype. I met a Dutch couple out on the West Highland Way the other day, and, after enquiring about places to camp the woman asked me rather despondently when it was going to stop raining. I told her that this was Scotland and that it would soon shift. Sure enough, an hour or so later, the landscape was bathed in glorious sunshine.

We are slowly settling in to our new house and its lovely location. We have had our first visitors, and it has been particularly nice to be able to eat outside on these soft end-of-summer days, watching the trees start to turn on the other side of the loch, while the swallows dart about us. Upstairs, I have started decorating (my idea is to turn all of the rooms on the upper floor into one big Hammershøi-inspired interior) while downstairs has a rather temporary and disorganised feel as we await arrival of . . . the components of a new kitchen. Having very recently fitted one in the flat we’ve just left you may think we are totally bonkers to go through it all again . . . but I feel that if we don’t do it now we never shall. Plus, there will be an actual RANGE. I promise there will be pictures when it is all done.

Thankyou so much for all your good wishes and lovely comments, which have really been a joy for us both to read. Now, its time to don my boiler suit again and apply some undercoat. See you soon!