The loch shows an infinite variety of faces as the light hits it on different days.

Lucky used to be a stray girl but has now found her new identity as a Donich Lodge boy (the vet discovered he was male when we took “her” to be spayed). He would ask you to respect his new pronouns.

The high mountain pass over the Rest and be Thankful is the main route out of the village. Here it is in winter.

Spring sky over the mountain tops.

Sunset from our front door step.

A misty moon over the mountains as darkness falls.

View over towards the loch from near the summit of Cnoc Coinnich.

A rainbow appears in a clear interval between showers.

Lochgoilhead in the distance on a clear spring morning.

As the year turns, the mountains are white on most days.

Looking across the loch from the village, clouds form a band across the hills.

Tora and Schrodi our snow Bengal brothers used to live here. RIP both of you

A dragonfly pauses for a rest by the side of our pond.

The weather here can be appalling. Here gales and torrential rain have blocked one of the village’s few roads.

The colours on the mountains fade to muted browns as autumn approaches.

The Donich Water in one of its kinder moods as it runs through our garden.

One of a myriad insects pollinating our heather.

A group of wild haggis have made a den down by the river.

Our new Highland Tiger Saphy prowling her territory. She is a demon for the wildlife with her specialized prey item being shrews. She is not adverse to mice, voles or birds however.

This is Amber aka as Bramble. She is big, black, rather podgy and a bit of a scaredy cat. We had her cloned shortly after she arrived.

Although we don’t get much snow at loch level, the higher mountains are covered for five months or so of the year

SERRANO - MINIMAL, CLEAN, FRESH

Expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms Purchase

Jan 16th, 2020

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Proof for the RSPB

I have just signed up for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. I do it every year and it always makes me laugh because when I say how many chaffinches I am looking at, the website always thinks I am making a typo when I say 50+ “Are you really sure you can see that many […]

Jan 13th, 2020

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Not doing this again in a hurry

Late last year I laid a new floor in our dining room. It was backbreaking work taking several days and I promised myself I would not be doing any more flooring work as although I am (reasonably) good at doing it, I don’t really have the right specialized tools for the job. But then at […]

Jan 8th, 2020

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Eating us out of house and home

I just can’t believe how much the birds are eating at the moment. They have two large feeders which hold about 1kg of food and they are emptying them at least five times a day. They would empty them a lot more than that if R and I let them. Unfortunately the delivery of the […]

Dec 30th, 2019

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Robin Box

We have at least four robins in the garden at the moment, and got a Christmas present of a nesting box for them. We put it up today, but how we can ensure that only robins (rather than sparrows or blue tits) nest in it, I do not know. It looks nice though. Let’s see […]

Dec 27th, 2019

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Dobbin

The picture is of Dobbin. He was my push on horse when I was a child, but some time in the late 70s he started to deteriorate after much love with his stitching coming undone. Also my brother in his wisdom decided to remove his wheels, so he was left with struts of metal protruding […]

Dec 25th, 2019

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Merry Christmas

A great Christmas was had by all. We had a Lebanese buffet on Christmas Eve (unfortunately my picture of it did not come out). Tora wore his bow tie. Then we had a Christmas competition which R ended up winning slightly ahead of N. On Christmas day we had presents (R bought me a Surface […]

Dec 22nd, 2019

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How to do a synopsis

I’ve read more than my fair share of 19th and 20th century novels. Quite a lot of them are unnecessarily verbose – but for real verbal diarrhoea – you can’t beat Charles Dickens. This for example is the opening page of “Bleak House”. The synopsis is at the bottom, and I must say that with […]

Dec 15th, 2019

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Prawn Cocktails

I’ve noticed that 1970s/80s food seems to be making a comeback. Actually as far as I am concerned, it has never gone away. N and J are coming over today and we are having prawn cocktails for lunch (note that there are only three as R will not touch anything with prawns in it). Then […]

Dec 11th, 2019

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Song Thrush

R and I finally managed to get out for a walk today after it had poured with rain all week. There were three separate days this week when we individually had as much rain (around 7cm) as we had in the whole of April. We were walking down by the school when we saw a […]

Dec 8th, 2019

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What a nonsense

Yet another rant, but our Internet is being ruined by stupid ignorant people. First of all we have this “do you want to accept cookies” nonsense. Here’s the thing, and I will say this as someone who professionally deals with websites on a daily basis. Most websites don’t work without cookies. Obviously the intent was […]