It has been so long since I have written, New Year has come and gone and now it is Chinese New Year, and plum blossom and dancing lions are adorning the air waves. I am writing on John’s computer as mine is sadly at a workshop being diagnosed. I will know tomorrow if I will get a replacement, thanks to the care plan I had when I purchased the new Apple Air. Oh what a sad day that was and followed by such a sleepless night. I felt so foolish, but accidents happen and the coke took a tumble. What else is there to be said?

A new baby has been born since I wrote last, and I am delighted to announce the birth of Gerry and Cathal’s little girl, Darcey Aisling (pronounced Ashling).

Amazingly she is a month old already,

and we have had lots of visits and walks, and Natasha and Bonnie flew up especially to meet her. I loved it all, and especially having Bonnie chattering away. Her new thing is, ‘I don’t love that anymore.’ That could be about a song or a story or a TV programme!

We have been curled on the sofa, glued to TV, seeing pop legends and Terry Wogan sadly pass on. I am determined to get fitter and John and I are now on a new regime. He is running, and I am walking up ‘the brae’ every day, very fast and with no stopping. I was nearly spitting blood the first time, my breath was so ragged, but I am determined. I passed the community hall and saw some ladies bent into the wind struggling with their mats. I stopped one and enquired what they were up to, and found out it was Pilates. I am now on ‘the list’ and might be contacted for the next block, starting on the 26^th. I am ecstatic. Places are like pieces of gold, everyone fighting over them! This is a way to make friends and get fit all at once. No one is going to come knocking at my door, so I am being proactive.

Then John and I spent the whole of Thursday afternoon pouring over maps of The West Highland Way, a 96 mile walk through the wild and rugged wilderness from Glasgow to Fort William. We plotted the trip and then he spent hours booking accommodation for us. The places he chose are quite diverse. From warm cosy coach houses with Jacuzzis to a basic Hobbit structure which was a choice between that or a wigwam. Hmmm. You can see why I am keen to get up ‘the brae’ in one go now.

As part of our training we set off yesterday to do part of the East Coast path. We did manage 16 kms to Aberdour.

It rained, my jeans were soaked, mud was spattered all over us and my dodgy knee was playing up. I hurt it whilst on the ski slopes in Austria. I must have been snow ploughing too enthusiastically on the learner runs. It blew up with water and has never been the same since. This does not bode well for the coming marathon walk, over tough terrain, so I think an elastic bandage might do the trick.

We did go to a Burns Night celebration with the rugby players of the Northern Club in Edinburgh in January. Fabulous haggis, brilliant speeches, happy friends and altogether a guid nicht oot.

We are plotting and planning a new kitchen, which is fun. Been to countless showrooms, and hummed and hawed over granite, wood, oak and ranges. The plans are coming together now, just the flooring needs to be decided on. It should all happen soon.

Today the sun is on the sea, there is a glimmer of better days to come, snowdrops are parading around under the stark, dark trees of winter and I feel quite uplifted.

It is good to be home, I mean in Scotland. It may not be so full of the primary colours of India or have the exotic feel of so many of the countries we have been in lately, but there is something that I connect with. The terrible stark beauty that answers a darkness in me that likes rain and wind but always has the promise of a change. Sometimes you ache for a place, but I wonder if it is the place itself? You connect the place with the person you once were, the friends you had, the experiences you had. You are nostalgic for a house, for a garden, for a time. It may be an era that is burned in your memory, and you wish you could recapture those years. It might be the years when your children were small, or a time when you were close to a friend and she is gone now. So the time and the place and the hills and the sea become a collective ache for a loss.

My friend Irene has been delving into the records of my family tree, and has gone back to my great great grandfather on both my mother’s and father’s side. There are domestic servants, and land workers, and marriages that link villages in the highlands. No one travelled too far. It is no wonder I feel this is where I belong. I walked yesterday beside the ploughed fields of Fife, and thought of my relatives building stone walls and driving horses behind the plough. I saw magpies and crows and it was raining, and I was soaked. My knee hurt but I was glad of the pint and sandwich in the Aberdour Hotel, served by the granddaughter of my dear friend Mary in Glenelg. ‘How is so and so, and fancy that, imagine!’ What a lovely surprise, and it was sheer chance, and the girl’s features were those of her aunties that I knew when I lived across the field from them.

So I came home and dived into a boiling hot bath and thought of this nostalgia that comes upon me for a place, which I now see is not just the place but of a time.

So onwards and upwards. I shall continue to try and get fit, and spare the rescue helicopter from a trip out to Rannoch Moor or wherever!

Here is  a little auk that we rescued. It flew in on a high wind.

And here is someone that loves the smell of sandal wood!