A quiet evening

They're selling off the old church in the village by the wee loch. It's a grand high towered affair and must have been far too large for a village of 200 souls even when church attendance was a thing. Now it's empty and a drain on shrinking finances. We wonder if someone might convert it into a house but would you want to bring up a family with gravestones running up to your front door ? If that wasn't deterrent enough keeping the acre of roof wind and waterproof would cost a small fortune. Perhaps it will be bought and turned into a music venue ?

The church yard is one of those almost cheerful places you could happily spend half a day wandering around. The inn and the village stand on one side and the loch that's home to a dozen swans shields it on the other. The remains of the medieval church provide a framework for some of the grander tombs. Here, high on the hill, earls and barons rub shoulders with ploughmen and farriers. https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/elie/kilconquharchurch/index.html

Some of the villages former residents are 'on a golf course somewhere' which is a suitably Scottish outlook on the hereafter. May they have an eternity of holes in one and entertaining company.

Others demonstrate a ' shoved over the sea dyke' sense of jocularity. A lump of Ledmore marble a reminder of a teuchters home in the far North https://britannicus-stone.co.uk/stones/ledmore

Good taste is simple and brief and made of limestone. The geese carefully carved.

In these northern parts Gaelic is the sacerdotal language rather than Latin. Duine uasal means ' Gentle man' but  English  is too uptight and unemotional a language to do the sentiment full justice. In the old tongue there can be no greater compliment. 

Then of course there's the starkly sad.

We go across the lane to the local pub for a glass of wine and a pint. https://kinneucharinn.com/ The place busy with happy holidaymakers and students working part time behind the bar. The lads that serve us have lilting George Watson's accents. We would  happily opt for a second drink but it's a twisty drive back along winding country lanes to get back home. Three chatty  ladies on horseback trot by as we're getting ready to leave. They stop for a wee blether and add wood worm to the list of problems with the old church. " There's a ton of pigeon poo in the rafters " volunteers the one on the horse at the back. This is not a village where traffic is a problem.

Near where we've parked the car a black marble monument hard enough to last ten thousand years stands by the wall. Johnina is a name neither of us has ever knowingly seen before.

So passes a quiet Friday evening in a part of the world where the weather is hinting that a change of season is on the way. When we walk into the garden at The last wee house before Denmark we scare a family of partridges who have belatedly discovered there's always grain under the bird feeders.

Car seats :https://time.com/7306364/history-car-seat-made-kids-safer/

The Earths core :https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/secret-realm-hidden-earths-core

A mystery illness lays low a choir in Boston :https://www.skeptic.com/article/mystery-illness-strikes-boston-choir-but-was-it-all-in-their-heads/

Wrinkles : https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-finally-explain-why-your-skin-wrinkles-as-you-age