Today is the slender filling of home in a very large travel sandwich. Tomorrow we leave for three weeks in Scotland. Was this trip planned by a madwoman? Yes, of course, and that madwoman would be me. 

So yesterday and today it’s a flurry of laundry and repacking, of settling in but not settling down, of checking lists and paring them to a sliver of their former selves. 

Tomorrow evening we take off for a country I visited once decades ago and found much to admire: castles and lochs and vistas galore. 

But before that, the dust will be flying.