immersion, continued

Eddie MacAffer was born on the second floor of a stone building just down the block from my Guest House on Shore Street. Right before this first house.






It would be, from here, a two minute walk to the front gate of the Bowmore Distillery. You could say that his life never strayed from that gate: by 1966 he was working in the Bowmore warehouses and by 2006 he earned the title of Distillery Manager. He stayed that until last year when he was upped to a position new to the Distillery -- that of Master Distiller. He accepted graciously and then asked -- what's that?

I stay up a good part of the night reading up on Islay whisky and island distilleries, because this morning, I have a date to spend a day with Eddie MacAffer. I am not going to waste his time asking questions I may, myself research on the internet!

That I should be this lucky is again the work of my hosts here, at Bowmore Guest House. There is always the possibility of an arranged encounter at the distillery with Eddie. Time permitting, he will spend endless moments talking about Bowmore and whisky, indeed talking about anything at all relating to Islay -- including where the slabs of slate that I found on the beach may come from. (Answer: Islay rocks north of the beach.) But, until Andrew, my host, assured me that it would be okay, I hadn't thought of inserting myself into Eddie's schedule. Why would he want to escort a Scotch novice through the process of Scotch whisky making? Sort of like taking someone to the head of a Champagne house and having that visitor innocently ask if the champagne is a mix of wine and bubbly water.

Once the date was set, I studied. And Andrew has helped me sample a number of Scotches through the morning program of immersion (including a very fine 17 year Bowmore White Sands this morning at breakfast -- goes well with your smoked mackerel on a crumpet -- he tells me). So I'm more or less prepared.



(fish for breakfast)


But it was a busy night. Or rather a busy early morning. I was up to capture the sunrise for you. Out my water view window...






...and too, looking out to the Bowmore Distillery where, miraculously, I see another Islay rainbow. A good omen, I should think.






I'm at the Bowmore Distillery promptly at 10. I was in a great tizzy as to what to wear. It has to be better than a t-shirt, but then, we are to go out into the field. So something rugged. Except that we're to have a sit down lunch at the restaurant now owned by the Distillery. So back to special. In my spin, I forgot to put on my hiking shoes. But it hardly mattered. Eddie's first words when I met him were to a staff person -- get her some wellies and rubber pants. And to me: we'll be on wet ground and there are midges and ticks. Awful amount of them this year.

Terrified of doing or saying the wrong thing, I nodded my head and commented some absurdity about the mosquitoes in Wisconsin.

It took one car ride for me to relax. I was to learn a lot about whisky today, but even more about hard work for someone who did not see himself initially as being a whisky man. To tell you the truth, Eddie tells me, almost in a clandestine fashion -- I don't like the stuff myself for social drinking. I'd much prefer a glass of wine.


I have endless questions, of course, but Eddie rolls me back a bit: I want to take you to where it all begins: the water source.

You'd think this would be an indifferent fragment of the Bowmore story. So the whisky has water. Ho hum. But it's not: Bowmore is Islay's oldest distillery -- the first production took place in 1779.  
And really, they built it in the wrong place, Eddie says. Whereas the other distilleries are close to lakes that provide a good water source, Bowmore is far from it. Fine for small whisky distilling. A problem when they expanded beyond quenching the whisky thirst of a handful.


He parks the car and we walk through an old gate (it's been here since I was a lad), across fields, past a ghost of a house, toward the river.






Where we're standing now is at the place where water is directed from this river, through a pipe, to a 7.5 mile canal that was dug several hundred years ago by hand to bring the water to the distillery.

He pours me a 12 year dram right there at the river source. It's one of many that he wants me to taste at the right moment, in a manner that will bring the drink home to me.











The river is very low. It's one reason why, as of tomorrow, Bowmore is stopping production for about a month. This is the time for their annual maintenance. But they cannot resume until the rains bring in the needed water. They are dependent on it: 1.5 million liters every single day! (They are efficient: spent heated water is used to run the community swimming pool next door.)

Eddie lifts the box through which the water must flow to reach the pipe and eventually the canal.  
This needs to be swept every day. In the past, the shepherd who lived there did it in exchange for a bottle of whisky every Christmas. Now we send out someone from the distillery. See the broom -- it's over there in the wild rhubarb.





That's sort of a nice break -- I'm thinking out loud here -- to come out to this pretty spot for a bit...
Aye, you know, in my day, we'd be sent out to clear the river bed -- that's a three week job from start to finish, but we'd take seven weeks, with breaks for football in the fields and sunning and such. The older men would shake their heads, but we'd give them pilfered whisky drams in exchange for their silence. Times have changed. Now, of course, drinking on the job is a sackable offense. In any case, most of the young men who work for us prefer beer.

I smile at that. The younger generation! I have daughters who often will pick a craft beer over a carefully selected by mom wine. Gotta love their own take on life!

Eddie thinks back to the days when he was just that -- a young lad, not wanting to go seek work on the mainland like the rest. A handful of men (every single worker in production is male) started at the Distillery with him, but he outlasted the whole band of them. And of course, he is the one who rose to the position of Distillery Manager. Excuse me -- even more exalted: Master Distiller.

Not surprisingly, there's little turnover at the Distillery. The crew is small: it used to stand at 30, but with mechanization, they're down to 15 in production (there's a whole other world of people who take the finished product and present it to the world). But what a 15 it is! They produce 65 thousand liters of whisky every week!


We drive off again and this time Eddie parks at the side of a forest.  
We'll look at the canal in a minute, but it's time for a bacon roll.






He takes out two sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil: a white bun over thick slabs of bacon.
We all eat these at the distillery. The company provides it. Sometimes it's a fried egg roll or a sausage roll. He bites into it appreciatively and pours for me another dram -- this time from their 17 year bottle.  
Do you taste it? Vanilla, fruits, toffee, he prompts.
It goes well with the bacon roll. (I can't believe I ate the whole thing!)


We watch a bird circle overhead. Eddie tells me there are eagle nests in the forests, but he thinks this may be a hawk. The eagles swoop down and pick up lambs! I think about the hawks back home and wonder how the cheepers are faring.

We walk along the canal. It's damp here: moss grows on the old oak trunks, ferns are abundant.








(footbridge over the narrow canal)


This is the best place to come to. In spring, it's so quiet and the hill is covered with blue bells! No midges, just the simple quiet of the forest...

We stand now and listen and for a while and I don't care that there are horse flies and other flies buzzing overhead. I am transported to a different time, a different season and I stand in Eddie's wellies and breathe the air that gently moves between the twisted oak branches.






We come back to his van.  
We'll go to a peat bog next, he tells me. A silly song keeps running through my head -- and what is peat made of, dear Liza, dear Liza and what is peat made of dear Liza, my dear? Except that I know the answer to my own ditty: peat is all the vegetation that grows in the wet bogs, dried over hundreds of years, rotted and compressed. You cut it, dry it, burn it. Grasses, moss, heather -- yes, lots of heather...






It used to be that islanders would resort to peat to heat their homes. Now, only about 10% still use it domestically. When Eddie was young, he and his brothers would be cutting and drying peat in the month of May -- enough to last for the whole year ahead.

Hard work!  -- I comment, finding it especially difficult to cut through the first layer of grasses. But I keep at it. It takes me a few minutes. It takes Eddie a few seconds.





Not so bad when you're doing it for your own home -- gives you a bit of satisfaction that you've accomplished something for yourself.

As I sink my wellie into the wet bog, I get that kid pleasure of squishing down a boot on muddy ground. I ask if using peat for the distillery -- an important step in the process of giving Islay whisky its distinct peaty smoky flavor -- depletes the island peat bogs.
There are so many layers of it! We don't make a dent!
Will you someday run low ? -- I persist.
When Islay is out of peat, there will be a big hole in the island and the island will sink! -- he laughs.

My bog pal picks off the leaves of a low growing plant. He crushes them and rubs them in his hands. Here, smell! I do. It's so aromatic!  
Bog myrtle, he tells me. People grow it these days for medicinal purposes. He says this with a bit of amusement I think. As in -- what will they discover next...






We drive back to the Distillery. I chat with him about general things that have been on my mind. Island life, for example. And I am not at all surprised when he says that when he retires in a couple of years, he and his wife will likely move to the mainland. Just south of Glasgow.
Funny, you're the first one who doesn't think that's crazy, he tells me.
Of course it makes sense. He has been here all his life. There is nothing left for him to discover. And the mainland is hard to reach -- for medical emergencies, that, of course, but also for things that cannot be found on a remote island off the coast of Scotland.
When we went  for a while to the mainland, there were museums, shows, golf -- we don't have any of that here. I know this island inside out, I don't need to spend my free years here. After we're dead, yes. Not until then.

I think about people who come to Islay with new ideas, switching venues, raising children, building dreams, feeling safe and secure here -- how long do you need that? When does that safe and secure feeling translate into restlessness or boredom?


And now comes lunch. We eat at the Harbor Inn -- that great eating venue that I have been avoiding because of the expense.  But this meal is part of my day with Eddie MacAffer! I sink into the comfortable chair and talk the kind of talk you would have with an old friend, speculating whether the waitress is an islander or a newcommer and whether the lobster fisherman outside sells his lobsters here or abroad.

David Kinnes is the new chef at the restaurant and I have to say, his three course lunch is impressive! Garden vegetable salad from the organic community gardens just north of Bowmore.





Roast free range chicken with tempura drumstick and citrus cous cous.

And an absolutely sublime raspberry cranachan with a touch of 12 year old whisky.





And of course, each dish is paired with drams of whisky: the Gold Reef, followed by the Bowmore White Sands 17, followed by the Bowmore 25 year, by which time I would hardly have noticed if it was 125 years, even as I was drinking a lot of water to compensate!

I'd been with Eddie for four hours now and I surely thought my time was running out, but no, not so. He takes me on an ambling stroll through the Distillery. Now, I have to remind you that they're on the last day of production and so I can see none of the sprouting barley, or of the fermenting mash, or even of the distillation. But I listen to the stories and I inspect the machines, the spirit stills -- singularly sleek and beautiful here...






...and earlier in the process, the pine tubs called washbacks...


 
(Smells like beer now...)


....and I peer into one and exclaim how deep it is -- a great place for a murder mystery!

Funny you should mention that... In another distillery, an assistant manager went missing one day and they found him in the washbacks. Did he jump? Fall? Never found out. They had to throw out the whole batch of whisky. He shakes his head in recalling the waste of it all.

As I take a photo, inhale the vapors and generally behave like a person who is a tourist rather than a lover of the finest Scotches, Eddie leans out the window and looks at the clear skies reflected in the gently lapping waters of the bay.





Not a bad place to work, aye? he says quietly.

And I am nearing the finale now. And this is an important part, because really, all that work I've seen thus far -- all it does is produce a clear whisky with a high alcohol content and a taste that will certainly knock your socks of. There is hidden potential, but at this point, it's very well hidden.

We enter the great legendary No.1 Vaults -- the only ones on the island that are partly below the level of the sea. This is where the whisky is stored -- in American bourbon or Spanish sherry casks.





Eddie pours me a 2 hour old whisky that hasn't been stored anywhere. 69% alcohol. I almost spit it out. In my mind it's undrinkable.

He then reaches into a bourbon barrel from the year 2000.

Ah, now it's bronze and full of flavor. Tropical fruits and zest. It's as if the oak and the bourbon allowed the essence to finally come through.

And he reaches into a 1997 sherry first fill and I try that very deeply bronze whisky: dried fruits, plums, dates... he hints. Yes, he is right.

And now I'll tell you a trick I learned just recently: have a sip of the sherry barrel whisky, swish it around and immediately after, take a sip of the bourbon one and swish and swallow. What do you think? A bit of a pow in your mouth, no?

I smile. Yep, there's a pow. Followed by a tingle. This is potent stuff, after all. He lines the shamefully unfinished glasses for me to take photos. I tell him-- they're standing a little tipsy.





Tipsy! That's the name of my dog, he laughs.

Figures.

I'm ready to retire for the day, despite the blueness of the sky and the beautiful sunshine that is streaming down on us right now in the early evening.





I'll see Eddie MacAffer again on Monday because I am to receive a bottle of a hand fill (that's one of those clubby things distillers do for a small number) which should have been ready today but wont be, due to some label issues. For now, we bid each other good bye, as if friends for life which, maybe at some level we are, bound by this day, talking about whisky, but really about life and the whimsy and care and toil and quiet joy that move each day forward.

immersion

Often times when I travel, I do not know what I'm looking for. People have lists of experiences they're ready to have when abroad. Me, I'm just not sure. I hope to have some epiphany when I arrive and if I don't -- well, I have good reading material and writing to do and so I can always take a short walk, then put my time to good use around the written word.

This certainly was true about the Isle of Islay. The weather could have been horrendous (as it is this week in France, for example). The culture -- so much plugged into the operation of the distilleries -- elusive and hard for a person without a history of liking whisky to understand. But, the Guest House looked pleasant and Andrew, the host, even in early email exchanges, was extremely helpful and so I let Islay be the focal point of my trip this summer.

And immediately things started percolating. The first day out with Becky the Welly Walker and the kids was exhilarating. Andrew's sea food dinner -- incredible. The second day was initially a mixed bag. Like the sky outside, it delivered and then held back -- over and over again. I was being pulled in, but very tentatively. And this is a key thing about travel: like a book I pick up for its title, I just dont know what the content will be like. I have no idea.

Who knew, for example, that I would find the distillery tour at Laphroaig more interesting than the hike beforehand (and it was an okay hike in the scheme of things, the occasional shower notwithstanding). But then I hesitated about the whisky and was the only one on the tour that did not purchase a bottle. Only to be floored by the Bowmore Distillery selections, purchasing two there and thinking -- this is really interesting, this selection process, the psychology of it all, the legends, traditions, passions -- I know too little. I wish I knew more.

This is true about all life here in the island: I've read the countless books that Alison and Andrew put out for me at the breakfast table and yet -- it's elusive, this Islay life. I wish I knew more.

And this morning it became abundantly clear to me that what time I have left here (and I have a lot of days, comparatively speaking -- most people come for two days, sample whiskys, buy a few and go on), I'll use to dig deeper. And thanks to Andrew, I have a few resources lined up for myself. Beginning today with Becky the Welly Walker.


So, a look outside in the morning (so lucky with the weather these days! So lucky!)...






...a more substantial breakfast again, this time by the bay window, with a look to the village and the sea...






...and now I am off with the Welly girl (she is actually an accomplished photographer).

We pick up a friend of hers, Jim -- a former IT specialist recently turned island pastor and an enthusiastic walker himself -- and we drive north toward Killinallan and the Loch Gruinart.



(oyster beds at the Loch at low tide)




(the lake spills out to the sea)


Not in a million years would have I found this piece of heaven. Becky tells me -- you're in luck (don't I know it!) -- the pyramidal orchids are at their best ever!

Becky is not a life long inhabitant of Islay, but she has been here for ten years and she certainly is a life long nature enthusiast. She knows her flowers and birds! And she loves the island.
I ask -- So do the islanders accept you as their own by now?
She and Jim laugh, very loudly. We know someone who moved here 35 years ago and she is still regarded as an outsider. But it really doesn't matter. And many will tell you that it's the new arrivals who bring new ideas to the island. 

I can see that. Andrew and Alison run a very modern type of Guest House even if it is in an older building. Becky has initiated her Welly Walkers. The list of new ideas is actually quite long.


We walk through a meadow that is a never ending field of beauty. The flowers are small -- ankle high, but they take my breath away!


























And it's not as if you're viewing them in isolation. I've been mocked for being so addicted to travel -- I've been told that a photo, a movie will give me the same experience without the hassle or expense of a trip. But how do you know which book to pick up? Is there one titled "never ending field of beauty on the Isle of Islay?" And more importantly, can you see it with the gusty wind in your face and the sound of these seals squawking in the distance?



(Gray Seals basking at the water's edge)



And can you inhale the delicate scent of the wild thyme and sea rocket, and catch the quick flight of the common blue butterfly? If so, then I'll throw down my passport and stay home. Until then, may I always find a Becky or someone with a passion for what she finds outside her window to show me a new field of beauty.






She tells me she has never been to America, though she did spend a short time in Nova Scotia. As she asks me if we have this flower or that flower in Wisconsin, she reflects -- it's so different everywhere! I remember waking up the first morning in Nova Scotia and I couldn't wait to see it all, because it's so new and different from what we have here back home!

Yes, it is so different.


Our walk takes us then along the sands that at high tide are partly submerged, all the way to the mouth of this sea lake, or fjord or however you may want to describe it. The waters here are more delicately toned than on the Mediterranean (though a tad colder: you wouldn't get me to swim here)!






Around the bend the ocean-facing beach is wide and empty. Becky and Jim sit with their backs toward the dunes, pausing for a snack, but I'm too eager to explore further, to get closer to the waves, to see every thing from every angle.










Eventually we walk back. Keeping to the beach we focus now more on the birds. The noisy oyster catcher. The heron which Becky reminds me is not the blue heron of North America but the grey heron of Scotland.

But I learn that despite the racket of the small birds here, it is a quiet time for these wetlands and sandy banks. Winter is another story. This is a stop for the great migration of the Greenland Barnacle Geese and the White Fronts too. They come by the thousands. Becky should know -- she is a goose counter. Why count them? Because they are rare and protected, but they do damage to the farmers' fields and so the government pays the farmer subsidies, depending on how many geese pass through. Becky supplies them with the numbers.

The sun is warm now. Were it not for the ocean breeze, we'd throw off sweaters and take off our shoes and socks. But Islay weather will forever be moderate. Wetter and cooler in the winter and gentler in the summer, but a far cry from Wisconsin's hot or cold. I can always make people gasp in horror as I describe, say, this year's winter back home.

We drive back toward Bowmore...


 


...and make plans to walk again later in the week.


In the meantime, I make my daily trip "into town," this time buying some cookies and staring hard at a lovely Scottish wool sweater, then exercising my best will power to walk away from it.

I sit outside on the main square for a while, and look on at the young ones of Islay, hanging out as only preteens know how to do it. The girls:





The boys:





How many of them will spend their adult lives here? Becky's grown children have both gone on to the mainland. Jim's three, too, are scattered between Great Britain and New Zealand. It's as if island life tickles your adult senses, but ultimately, unless you're lucky, it doesn't guarantee a good life for those starting out. Croft farming and distillery work and tourism are the three engines that keep the island humming. You can see why so many leave, even as so many come anew, to experiment with a change of direction or a fresh idea.


In the evening Andrew cooks dinner for himself and Alison and, too, for a person who is doing some work for the government on the island and is staying at the Guest House as a longer term resident. I'm invited to join in. The daughters have gone on to spend some vacation weeks with grandparents and so the kitchen and dining areas are eerily quiet now in the evenings.

We eat delicious spaghetti and meatballs and I listen to tales of island life, as told by those who have moved here - with spunk and ideas and a great deal of humor.






After, I again settle into my comfortable chair by the window to watch the sun move slowly toward the western horizon.

even slower

Can you believe it -- I am slowing down even more. There is a coastline to walk (Islay has a 120 mile circumference). There are a handful of villages scattered throughout. (I'm in Bowmore -- one of the larger ones at 300 inhabitants. Large enough to warrant a school. And by the way, don't be like me and give it a mainland pronunciation. The right way to say it is Boh-more -- it's Gaelic for sea rock, of which there are many.) But this morning, I linger. I stare out the window for a good bit. Ah, there's rain out there across the bay. Is it heading our way?






Breakfast? I ask for my home stalwart -- oatmeal, called porridge here, with fruit and honey.





Yesterday's dinner was an eating indulgence. I need to scale it down for a few days.

My hosts leave me interesting reading materials each time I come down for a meal. For instance, there is the Islay newsletter. Even for this small island where surely everyone knows everything about everyone, there is a "letters to the editor" section where people opine about the forthcoming referendum on Scotland. They feel the editors have made assumptions (that Scotland will stay part of the UK; I myself have heard this before -- Scots are slow to embrace change and when given a choice, they inevitably pick the tried and true). The readers want to correct this. One person writes:

The independence referendum is the most important event in Scottish history in the last 300 years. (We should) allow Scotland's wealth to improve the lives of ordinary Scots rather than propping up a failed British economy, run for the benefit of a small elite in London.

(She then goes on to say that everyone she knows is voting for independence.)






This, of course, is the standard argument for all breakaway movements. Substitute Catalonia for Scotland and Madrid for London and you've just made a speech I've heard many times in the south of Europe.


Eventually I decide I should take in a distillery today. There are three I want to visit and Andrew, my host, tells me it's better to spread them out. So today it will be the one with the best (I'm told) tour -- Laphroaig (pronounced La-froyg).

I'm sure you don't know the lay of the island, so I'll give you a quick island tour: Bowmore, is on a bay, to the west. To the south, you'll find Port Ellen and three of the big distilleries are just up the coast from Port Ellen. One other significant port is to the east -- Port Askaig, from where you can board a ferry to the neighboring Jura Island, or go full blast and travel to the mainland. People who come by car always come in this way.

Two of the distilleries I'll likely pop into are close to Port Ellen. And luckily, the bus connections to Port Ellen are moderately good. I am able to say "no thank you" to the ever obliging Andrew and tell him I don't need any lifts today: I'm riding the buses.

I thought myself to be oh so clever in fitting in a modest hike before the distillery tour. We all checked the weather forecast  and it assures us that it will not rain. Fine. I take my pack and set out.

I don't know if it's the love one has for one's own turf or whether I am indeed objective, but I have to say, Port Ellen takes a backseat in my eyes to Bowmore. Not that it's not pretty -- it has that island look that your grow fond of here.






And when I gaze out across the small harbor, I like that single row of white houses. Very dramatic, with very imposing clouds rolling in today! (Gulp...)






But I've become attached to Bowmore. Though why compare? Let's just say Port Ellen is different: more somber. Or am I influenced by the weather?

The clouds keep coming and sure enough, within a few minutes the rain comes down. I hide in a covered alley and dig into my pack to retrieve the rain jacket.

And I continue on the hike. Up a narrow road, then veering into a path through the woods. Spooky woods! Wet woods, overgrown with ... oh I don't know. Stuff. I do later identify the foliage of what they locally call a trinity flower -- a lily of sorts. It's not blooming now, but the clumps of leaves are quite striking. Unexpected, here on a very northern island of Europe.






Eventually I come out to a strip of sand. They call it Whispering Sands. It's drizzling a bit and perhaps I am influenced by that, or maybe it just doesn't stand up to Machir Bay -- the sands from yesterday's outing. I look out, snap a photo, turn back.






And now it's time to walk to the distillery -- some 40 minutes up the coast from Port Ellen. A nice path takes you along pastures spilling out into the northern most part of the Irish sea.





It's newly built to accommodate visitors, though today, I am the only one on it there and back. Free samples of whisky notwithstanding, everyone else drives.

The tour of the distillery is fairly interesting. I have in my life been on tours of beer breweries, wineries, liquor distilleries, bourbon distilleries and now scotch distilleries and that's all rather curious since, with the exception of wine, I drink none of the above. And yet, I almost always like the tours. There is a great deal of local pride that's quite evident when you visit these places. Today's tour guide is a woman born and raised in Islay. It's probably part of the job description that she be that. (She tells me -- I worked as a social worker and for years no one wanted to listen to me so I quit and now I do this and it's so much more rewarding to talk about island history to a group that really is curious about it) She is quite good. Knows her stuff, speaks enthusiastically, projects well.

You dont really want to know the ins and outs of scotch whisky production. Get barley, allow it to sprout, smoke it with local peat, mash it, ferment it, store it in barrels imported from bourbon country (that would be Kentucky!). There you have it.






Of course, the story is finer in the detail. It's when you consider, for example, the relationship between the peat -- which is nothing more than compressed heather, grasses, moss, whatever grows in these parts -- and the barley that is smoked in it that you begin to realize how truly unique the final product is going to be. I mean, this is Islay scotch for you -- that smoky taste, the hints of a landscape that runs down to the sea.





At the end of the tour, I buy nothing. Not even as a present, though I have some Scotch drinkers back home who may have liked any number of the whiskys I sampled (a person on the tour asked her boyfriend -- why is it that only men like whisky?  Curious, isn't it, how the vast majority of people you know who drink it will indeed be male). My nose tells me that I will do even better along the smoky peaty continuum at the other distilleries.

And indeed: I walk back to Port Ellen and catch the bus back to Bowmore, where I go straight to the Bowmore Distillery, sample their scotches and purchase gift bottles there. I tell myself that the notes on the Bowmore batches are much more pronounced than in the earlier samples from the tour. But is it that, or is it that I favor something coming from the village which is much closer to my heart?


Dinner: eating in Islay is not easy. There is a good sandwich place  but it's closed today for a private event. There is an upscale restaurant -- reluctantly I go there, only to find that it's fully booked. That only leaves me  with the place I ate the first night here. Pub like food. With lots of boiled vegetables on the side. I ordered Scotch broth (a dense soup with lots of barley in it)...





... and a slice of Scottish salmon. All fine, though last night I swore to myself I would never eat seafood again and here I am eating fish.

The skies cleared tonight. If I stay awake long enough, I may finally see a classy and classic sunset. Oh, it's 10:00 o'clock. Here it is! For you. With good wishes for a sweet and restful night.