A Guid New Year to ane and a’….. and so the story goes. Burns night tonight, and yes, we shall eat haggis, neeps and tatties. We are all trying to follow the calendar, do what we have always done, watch the sunrises and sunsets and sometimes, against some horrible odds, we try to keep cheerful.

There have been some black days and it’s easy to have an excuse to be down and disheartened,  but I am reminded of our minister in Glenelg who used to visit a blind woman once a week. They would sit and she would talk, and he listened to tales of travel and countries and  Tahiti and Sri Lanka. He watched her face glow as she relived her times rattling over rough laterite tracks in the back of a jeep. Red dust ingrained itself round her eyes, and he laughed with her, seeing her as she might once have been.  He heard the waves pound the shore, and could hear the wind rattle the coconut blinds and although her eyes could no longer see, she painted her pictures and he too was watching the forked lightning and heard the steady beat of the monsoon rain.

Happiness they say is bankable. We store it up, and can draw on it at will. I have been looking through past photographs and I too remember the sleepy sounds from a tropical veranda, or the cruel winds that battered the West Coast of Scotland. Now we are all confined, but today I chose to wear my Peru jumper and the beads and earrings I bought from the Shaman on the Amazon River. I close my eyes and I am there. So many wonderful things that just trigger a memory. Sorry, whilst uploading pictures, the Amazon and the Hebrides got mixed up! easily done!

I see the Banksia man that I brought back from Australia, the Buddhas from Thailand and Burma, the picture from China, the ornament from Ukraine, the cloth and paintings from Vietnam. Suddenly I am transported. 

Life recently has  been tough but I think I have been coping with all the new challenges. 

We have Darcey and Dillon twice a week, and John and I have to cope with some terrible truths. ‘You are so bouncy, Granny,’ or ‘Why is your face a little crumbly?’  or ‘Why have you red things in your eyes?’ and finally, ‘You and John are really old and you are going to die… we aren’t because we are new.’

John and I just look away, and quickly draw on the happiness bank… what can cheer us up? Maybe the fantastic beaches of the Isle of Harris on the Outer Hebrides. Fabulous wide, windswept spaces and totally empty. No horrible questions or stark statements, just the cries of the gulls.

Sadly we lost a legend last week. Christopher Main of Glenelg  passed away, and left so many of us sad and introspective. His humour and sense of fun was infectious, and no one who spent any time in the Kintail Lodge or the Glenelg Inn will ever forget his unique approach to hospitality. I can see him now, passing between tables joking with everyone, the pub busy and the band playing and people dancing, and Chris pulling me up and we swayed to the Wild Mountain Thyme.

Christmas was wonderful. I was so lucky to have had Natasha and family make the journey. For a few days life felt normal, and Bonnie and Hazel sang the Beatles karaoke song with Tasha and Leo, and performed the 12 days of Christmas on Christmas Eve. John was bemused as the kitchen was totally taken over by the Vegan Chefs, and our Christmas table was full of strange stuffed celeriacs and delicious stuffings. 

I can no longer do my University courses, but I have bought the books for 20^th Century French literature, so at present I am lost in The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir. I love it. 

John and I have been walking the paths around us, and it has been tough, slipping on ice and frosty rocks and stones. We did get a little snow,  though not as much as those who live away from the sea. Darcey and Dillon made the most amazing snowman… I was so impressed.

Instead we walked and held our faces up to the winter sunshine, the frozen trees looks dramatic against a perfectly blue sky.

There was one that looked as though it could not make up its mind which way it wanted to grow, it had twisted and turned and now looked like a giant cork screw.

And as we walked home, look what we saw. The first sign of spring!

No need to shut my eyes and conjure up memories, for here was the present and the hope for better days to come!