Today was huge.  I woke early, cold.  It had been such a clear, starlit night.  My socks, that I'd washed through in the stream and tried to dry a bit yesterday, had frozen solid.  So too my walking boots with hard frozen laces.  Rub and mould the socks till I can get them onto my feet, and back into the sleeping bag to warm them a bit.  ...

Well here I am, eight or so miles up Glen Affric, lying in a little one man tent in the rain.  I'm 59 today.  I woke at 2.30am wanting a pee and murmured a quiet "Happy birthday" to myself before choosing a moment between showers to stumble out to relieve myself.  I could see a few stars through the clouds.  Since then it's been raining pretty much every time I've woken. ...

I'm at my friend Larry's flat in Glasgow.  We're doing one of our three-to-four monthly check-ins -  reviewing and planning how our lives are going.  I arrived here from Edinburgh yesterday evening and we spent time catching up and looking ahead.  This morning though, when I woke, I found it hard to think clearly about the time between now and early August when we next plan to meet like this...