Living life

On Thursday I ended up doing quite a bit of driving. I attended Sharon’s Dad’s funeral in the morning in Blantyre, then went straight over to the west end for my French class, then back to meet up with Jennifer in East Kilbride. While driving around I did a lot of thinking and felt quite philosophical. Sharon’s Dad had led a good life of family and friends and work. He was well loved and had a good retirement. Like with Heather’s Dad I very much felt that this was an excellent example of how to live life well. There’s an aspirational phrase that I have seen on social media and heard young people on the radio saying recently; “living my best life.” I noticed it because I like its positivity. Well on reflection it seems to me that many of the older generation had already worked this out.
This morning James and I packed up the car for our trip up north. We are spending a couple of nights at Newtonmore and then three nights at Alison and Hugh’s new house in Nairn. The journey went smoothly apart from a rather hair-raising incident on a single carriageway part of the A9. A stupid car driver overtook a horse box a couple of cars in front of us without leaving enough room to get back into his or her own lane because there was traffic coming the other way. As a result, a small car coming the other way had to brake very hard to avoid a head on crash, but the lorry behind her couldn’t slow down fast enough and crashed into the back of her. Neither driver was hurt but the car looked a mess at the back. The driver that had caused it drove on, probably without realising what they had done, and soon disappeared into the distance. I wish I had got a note of their registration because I would have grassed them up like a shot. What a dangerous idiot.
We had lunch at the Route 7 café in Aviemore and then went for a walk around Loch an Eilean, which was about 6 km. It was grey but dry and actually fairly warm considering that it’s still January. The loch looked very pretty with its wee island castle and there were quite a few people walking around it. And now we are at our hotel in Newtonmore and about to join the rest of the hill-walking group for drinks and dinner.