Leap Year

I returned to Inverness yesterday after a couple of social activities, leaving a rather dreich morning in Glasgow which brightened up as the train travelled through Perthshire, and by the time we approached Inverness the sun was breaking through the clouds. I alternately read my book and enjoyed the beautiful views of mountains and fields. I do enjoy a train journey. I met up with James at Inverness Station and we had lunch before heading back to Ullapool. 

Today is 29th February because this is a Leap Year, and it felt like a kind of bonus day. After a walk round the village with James in the sunshine, I spent the rest of the day updating the Ullapool Notes book, a record that I keep of our activities here. It’s not like my blog, it’s more a series of dates and bullet points with topical lists at the back, such as places that we have eaten and walked and swum and visited. I managed to finish it right up to date and I was very pleased with myself. This evening we watched a film I have been wanting to see, called “It Happened One Night” starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, a romantic comedy which won many Oscars in 1935. It had its witty and quite funny moments, but was inevitably very dated. When we were discussing it we agreed that it was probably very daring at the time, for example an unmarried couple sharing a room, even though it was divided by a blanket on a rope. At nearly ninety years old there are probably jokes in the film which James and I simply don’t “get.” It was mildly amusing and somehow a bit reminiscent of the dialogue in “It’s a Wonderful Life” which is not surprising because they were both directed by Frank Capra.