収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

We got to our lovely Airbnb flat not long after 9 this evening.

The day started with a fire alarm in our hotel at 7:20am, which didn't feel like a great start -- though at least it stopped while we were still sleepily pulling on enough clothes to go outside. And, more importantly, it gave D the chance to check right away if he could book an earlier sailing than Saturday. And he could! This afternoon! So it was nice to have some good news first thing...even if this booking was of course immediately followed by the same automated text he got yesterday about how the sailing could be canceled at short notice because of the weather.

D and I got up for breakfast, I had tasty mushrooms and eggs and was introduced to the tattie scone which immediately enters the small pantheon of potato products I'm actually excited to see (I'm usually pretty indifferent to them) because it was amazing.

We took some breakfast back for V, D told his boss why he wouldn't be working today as planned, and we all got ready to go just in time for checkout at 11. We hung around for a lovely walk in the grounds of the hotel with V pointing out bugs on the flowers and even picking up some lichen that they knew had fallen off the trees (very tall, with lots of what even I could recognize as Douglas firs along many other massive old trees) to let me see and touch it. It's so lovely how they carefully describe what I can't see so I can enjoy all the flora and fauna that they do.

After sharing a restorative pot of tea in the hotel bar, we went literally down the road to what had been the Strathpeffer Spa train station and is now a café, gift shop, and the Highland Museum of Childhood. I am fascinated by Strathpeffer as a name, and not just because I find it impossible to say (it always goes wrong when I get to -thp-!). It finally got me to look up the word strath which I figured out from context clues would be something Gaelic to do with a river and sure enough. "Peffer" feels so German to my Minnesotan brain, and I noted Strathpeffer being described as "the most un-Scottish of Scottish towns...variously compared to Harrogate in Yorkshire and to a Bavarian mountain resort." But that's just a coincidence; Bavarian perhaps in architecture but not in name. According to what I can find about how the place got its name, it and the other "Peffer streams" ("Peffer occurs as a burn name in Inverpeffray (Crieff), and there are two Peffer burns in Athelstaneford (Haddington), also a Peffer Mill at Duddingston...") are "likely to be connected with the root seen in Welsh ‘pefr’, beautiful, fair; ‘pefrin’, radiant; ‘pefru’, to radiate."

Anyway. We enjoyed the museum, bought treats in the shop (mostly for me: fingerless gloves in a Fair Isle knitted pattern, socks with space designs on them, and a fancy bar of chocolate, but V got a teeny cute thing of some kind which they'd picked up and said "I'm turning into an old person, I'm collecting tchotchkes!" as they held it up). We had lunch at the café, with the help of an adorable spaniel who flopped right down like he'd been our dog forever, who turned out to be called Fudge and worked hard for the teeny crusts of cheesy bread I gave him and a bit of tuna mayonnaise from V's sandwich. He's well known to the café staff, who told us his name.

From there we went to Ullapool, still hopeful for the ferry, and with an hour to kill looked in the bookstore and some touristy stores where I was told how nice a £150 wool sweater would look on me, and bought some boring stuff at Boots (my eczema has been hellish lately because I've been so stressed, and also I bought my own razor now that I need one!) before sitting by the harbor watching the boats and the gulls and just having a nice time until it was time to head back to the car which we'd left in line for the ferry. Even as we were driving on to the boat I was trying not to let myself get too relieved, remembering the RVs I saw having to drive back off again yesterday with the last-minute cancellation. But it was fine. We went up on to the deck to watch the ferry leave the harbor, had dinner (I was tempted by Calmac and cheese but I'd just had mac and cheese for lunch and thought I could use slightly more variety in my diet so went for a veggie burger and salad) and then sat in the "observation lounge" where there was increasingly less to observe as we got away from the islands near shore and also it got dark but we had relatively comfy seats and everyone was tired by then. I didn't sleep but listened to an audiobook and rested my eyes.

And like I said we got to Stornoway slightly delayed but otherwise fine, it was a very smooth crossing -- V was surprised how much so --and since we're staying in the same flat those two had last year they know the location and the layout and everything, it was the easy welcome we needed.

We hauled our stuff inside and have done various things to make ourselves feel at home: D has set up his PS5 to do his daily tasks in the couple of games he's playing, V put away the food we brought, I had a shower. D and I have also had a bit of a bottle of cherry wine I was won over by yesterday thanks to the copy on the label:

Luxury cherries from Blairgowrie make this thrilling wine a cherrylicious event.
Rich and moist, dark and silky, Little Red Riding Hood lost in the Black Forest.
Van Morrison was always going on about Sweet Cherry Wine, in an unrelated incident.

We bought it yesterday, saying we'd have it when we got to our flat that evening, and then of course we didn't. It tasted great tonight.

Welp. Remember when you told me I shouldn't need to chair a work meeting while I'm on vacation?

The good news is, I'm not going to.

The bad news is, it's because I can't. The plan was that we'd be at our Airbnb by tonight and D and I would both work from there tomorrow while V started to recover from the journey.

And we're not at the Airbnb because our ferry to the island we're actually planning to visit, where V's son lives, was canceled. So last-minute that when we got to the port we saw vehicles driving off of it that had already boarded.

We couldn't stay anywhere in the small town where the ferry port is. It has hotels and B&Bs but not enough for an extra ferryload of people at short notice. Poor D had to drive forty minutes back the way we came just for us to get a room at all.

And our ferry crossing has been re-booked, for Saturday. No ferries until then. Allegedly; apparently this can change at short notice. But even if it does, it's hard to plan accommodation or anything else.

And in the meantime we're grateful just to have a roof over our heads (we're staying in the attic, so the slanted roof is only just over my head on this side of the room!). And we'll figure out what happens tomorrow.

But in the meantime, checkout is at 11, and so is this precious meeting. I already told my boss, when we didn't know where if anywhere we'd be tonight to explain, and he wrote back that he was sorry to hear this and to message him in the morning if he's needed to sit in. If! I'm not impressed that even I don't know where I'll sleep tonight and I won't have WiFi tomorrow lunchtime isn't enough to get him to understand that he has to chair this meeting.

Except for this massive snag and the possibility of V not being able to see their kid at all this year, which is a real "other than that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play," we've actually had a lovely day. We all were up and at 'em in good time to leave the nice place in Stirling where we broke the journey last night. We had time to visit the Highland Folk Museum on the way, which D picked up a brochure about when he was in a long queue to buy sandwiches for lunch at the café with the highland coo (Scottish for "cow") statue everyone gets their photo taken next to, including me now, and we were delighted at the serendipity. It was lovely to see an example of the blackhouses that I'd heard V talk about, and a loom shed for weaving the famous Harris tweed.

I am with my two humans and we are going to wait for more decision-making information and capacity after a night's sleep and maybe some updates from the much-cursed ferry operator.