The boys are back, exhausted and happy.  They’ve had a ball and the concert yesterday was fantastic, a really high standard. They’re full of stories and are both set on going back again next year, so 6 hours a day of music and a hectic social scene has enthused rather than discouraged them.  GP2 went straight to bed when we got home yesterday at 7pm and slept for 14 hours solid.  I suspect he’d been surviving on adrenalin for the last day or so! Plus the odd dousing in North Sea waters, given the state of the clothes that are going into the washing machine. 

So we have a few days at home and then it’s off to Katie Morag country for a week with the dive club.  Here’s hoping Coll is as hot and sunny as it has been on previous visits.  I am completely fed up with rain; even now the weather has improved it has rained all day today. The last time we were on Coll it was Mediterranean wall-to-wall sunshine, the island ran out of water and they had to bring supplies in by tanker.  We’ve camped on previous visits and could lie in the tent at night being kept awake by corncrakes.  And we played rounders on the beach at midnight and saw killer whales in the morning.

I am currently trying to organise a replacement drysuit, as mine was cut up by the paramedics in May.  It somehow didn’t seem top priority whilst I was in plaster but has suddenly become urgent.  I got a call a few days ago asking me to go to St Kilda in September with the BBC; nothing like a bit of diving at St Kilda to promote magical recovery!  It is one of my favourite locations on the planet although it’s several years since I’ve been there.  The first time I went was in the early 1980’s when we camped on the islands for a month and dived from a Zodiac; I was still in a homemade wetsuit in those days.  At the end of the trip, when we’d eaten all our finely calculated rations and taken down the tents, the weather broke and the boat couldn’t get out from the mainland to pick us up.  The army eventually, albeit reluctantly, took pity on us and we slept under the billiard table at the PuffInn for a couple of nights.  Anyhow, now I need a drysuit but I also somehow need to pass my diving medical.  Both may prove something of a challenge, particularly as the drysuit factory has just closed for a fortnight. 

And only two weeks and it’s back to school.  It seems to have come round far too fast!