A breath of fresh air

Yesterday I firmly told James that I wanted a lovely day of leisure, but this had the result of making poor James feel cooped up. Although he also relaxed and pottered around a bit, I could tell he was longing to go for a walk; I even found him looking out of the window once or twice, like an animal in a cage. So today we decided to get some fresh air and we set off to Chatelherault Park with Jamie and Davie. Alasdair stayed at home with the intention of studying. I do hope that intention was translated into action; when we left he was still in bed using his laptop but when I suggested that he get up he told me witheringly that he was very busy downloading work from the school website. When we got to Chatelherault we noticed a dad smoking as he walked along with his tiny children; Jamie approached him and told him how damaging smoke is to young developing lungs. Needless to say this didn't go down too well and the angry parents shouted at him and told him to "beat it"! I was half horrified and half extremely proud. Luckily the furious family didn't catch up with us on the walk, probably because their fitness was affected by all that smoking! The rest of the walk was thankfully less eventful; we walked to the green bridge, crossed the river and walked back on the other side. At one point I stopped to admire some beautiful leaves which were an amazing pale gold colour - they actually looked gilded - however I was mocked by my cynical family who thought that I was stopping to catch my breath! By the time we got home Ally was already on his way into town to watch "Sherlock Holmes" with friends. James, David and I thought that this was a splendid idea so we went to see it ourselves at the Quay, and very good it was too, great fun, with Jude Law and particularly Robert Downey Jr. hamming it up excellently. And here we are back home in time for tea, with the evening still ahead of us. How nice it is to be on holiday.