The Last Stand

So that is the last full week off for the summer holidays, normality will slowly start to set back in… I say slowly… because a week on Monday they are due to, finally, start repairing the road from the village to our house! It has been out of action since Hogmanay 2024 when a land slide almost cut us off. Equally exciting… I believe that they are going to run the fibre cable up the road at the same time to bring us modern fibre connectivity to the internet which is going to make work so much easier! Our downloads through Starlink are okay, but the uploads are woeful, which is an issue when I am sending video to clients. Most want standard HD at the moment, which is a saving grace as 4k was a real killer!

Anyway, we spent the last weekend of the holidays having a last family adventure before the return to school, and our eldest’s first exam year. I had booked a trip on the glass bottomed boat on Gairloch for last weekend, which was moved from the Saturday to the Sunday due to weather… and then to this Saturday when everything came together perfectly! Their was a rare appearance in the bay of a pod of dolphins (apparently they only see them a couple of times a year), the trip out before us they had been more interested in feeding than anything else so were not particularly impressive… but for us… they put on a show! Jumping, playing around the boat and swimming under it so close we could have touched them! I think it is only the second time I have been quite so up close with these magnificent marine creatures - the last time I recall was in 1996 on my then girlfriend’s, Dad’s, boat on the Moray Firth.

The car is fully fixed now, too, so I am hoping that I can up the productivity as we run through the traditionally busy time of year which generally runs through until late October before slowing as we head towards Christmas. I also took a Bronze this month in the British Institute of Professional Photography’s monthly awards, which sees me finally break out of the commended grouping and into the full awards!

Looking ahead to the next week I have an interesting wee assignment to shoot some stills and videos for a local business which is going to be an interestingly different job to usual. I have a day out in Elgin and Nairn and a day up to Tain and Golspie scheduled in too so I think it should be a pretty good week!