SAD.

It felt mild when I got up to light the fire at 6.45am. It was 6 degrees in the kitchen and when I opened the door to let Cougar Cat in, it seemed the same outside. Without any breeze, there isn't the chill factor we get at home. With the heat pump and the fire, it was up to 17 degrees within 25 mins.

Spook had the day off and I had to be out the door by 7.45am. I am not accustomed to this role reversal. I got on my hands and knees to polish up floors and Spook got on his bike. He cycled out to Treble Cone roadend. He took this photo of a Dunny on the way. This is at Hospital Flat Conservation Area. Not a very inspired name. There are lot's of wee climbing areas with rings embedded in the rock. They also provide eco toilets called 'long drops'. These are all over the place. We could probably do with these around Fort William, like up at the climbing area of Poll Dubh, half way up the Ben and on the top. The drops are long enough not to be able to examine the efforts of others. Not sure what happens when they fill up.

The day remained grey, but the cloud was quite high and it certainly didn't depress Spook and I they way it does the Wanakonians. There was a little article in the paper today about Seasonal Affective Disorder and explaining to us how it affects around 500,000 people, particularly in June, July and August. I assumed they were talking about a Scottish summer, but no, it was definately Wanaka. The article also explained how the cloud inversion works and complained about all these happy, sparkly-eyed skifield workers who work above the inversion layer. The journalist reckons we have had 4 weeks of it. We had lot's of lovely weather last week. This just proves how resilient we Scots are.

We spent the night trying to get Spooks blog onto the NO Fuss website - it is a long blog and we tried twice. On the 2nd attempt we lost it when we pressed the button to publish it. I didn't cry, but he will be writing it himself on the 3rd attempt!

I am off tomorrow, but will not be going to Cardrona on it's opening day (or will I?) because the children are outraged that I could send them to school and then go off and have fun without them. But the sun will be shining up there and I don't want to be a sad mummy, so I may consider it for health reasons.

grateful for:

the anticipation of the cup of tea my husband is going to bring me in bed tomorrow morning for the 1st time in a couple of weeks.