Note: The theme song was only known as 'Sitting on the Moon' (Other version) (Enigma) for more than six years until I found what the actual version was called (above).

I and the Emperor were going to the Isle of Arran today.

We caught the ferry from the mainland town of Ardrossan, at half past 12. Now, it must be said, that we're used to catching this same ship to go to Arran, having done the same trip about once a year since we were very little.

After we boarded the ship, the Emperor had a good idea: “let's go to the top deck, deck 6”.

So we went to the top deck, and saw something we'd never seen before on this ship. A ‘WET PAINT’ sign!

In fact, the whole floor of deck 6 had a new coating of green paint, which was drying. We could see wet patches around us. An area of the deck was cordoned off, and the Emperor audaciously ducked under the rope and sat overconfidently in the empty section.

We did have traces of green paint on the soles of our shoes after this. "Green soles".

The speakers blasted: DING DENG DANG! Then on came the awesomely clear voice: "WELCOME ABOARD MOTOR VESSEL CALEDONIAN ISLES. YOUR ATTENTION IS DRAWN TO..." After the speech: DENG DANG DONG! (this was written that way to demonstrate slightly lower pitch).

Then it was talking about the safety message: "...THE ASSEMBLY STATIONS ARE LOCATED IN THE PASSENGER LOUNGE, THE OBSERVATION LOUNGE, AND THE CAFETERIA..."

Unfortunately, the weather in Scotland being as unpredictable as ever, it suddenly decided to rain. The rain got heavier, and heavier, and heavier. We tried to shelter, but unfortunately deck 6 doesn't have much or a shelter, so we had to go down to deck 5 and inside for a while. Due to Murphy's 1st Law of physics, the rain stopped as soon as we went inside, so we went back out to deck 6 to see the view.

By the way, the "wet paint" was now truly "wet"...

There were heavy rain clouds in various directions. We could see a big sailing ship in the distance, which looked like a pirate ship, and one of the heavy rain clouds was on top of it. There was another one ahead of us, but it passed by before we reached it.

At 13:25, we docked at Brodick, on the isle of Arran.

“Shall we check the times for the bus tour around the island?” I asked.

“Yes”, said the Emperor.

So, we went to the timetable, and saw that the only convenient time to tour the island was quarter to 2, which was 8 minutes away.

“I don't want to eat my sandwiches on the bus”, said the Emperor.

Well, that put an end to the idea of the bus tour. We went to some nearby benches and had our lunch. One round of paté butties and one round of salami butties.

After that, we walked up the beach to Duchess Café. In this café, we ordered some mochas (that is, hot chocolate coffees).

Rain started and got heavy.

We had to get our mint choc chip flavour ice creams from the cheese shop nearby, because they are no longer sold in Duchess Café.

We remembered that we were supposed to be looking for Arran Blondes. We had heard that they were in the brewery.

In the brewery, we saw the Arran Blondes on a shelf. They are in fact a type of ale. So we bought a bottle each. Then we wandered into the lower grounds of Brodick Castle, to drink the ale.

The forest was very damp, because it had just taken some heavy rain. We found a wet mossy log to sit on.

“Oh no!” I realised. “We don’t have any bottle openers”.

“I do” said the Emperor, taking out his Swiss Army Knife. So we opened one of the bottles and shared it, and saved the other one for when we got back home.

We chattered about controversial things until about 17:15, then we went back to the terminal.

We went to the fish and chips shop. The Emperor bought a spicy haggis supper, and I bought a Scotch pie supper.

Then we went to have coffees at the coffee shop / restaurant (next to the fish and chips shop). I had a latte, and the Emperor had a cappuccino.

Then we had about 45 minutes of sitting in the terminal, talking about uncontroversial issues (such as hotel prices and island trips).

I tried to get my mp3 player to work with a headphone jack that was too small (smaller than 3.5mm), and found that I could indeed hold it in a particular way that would make it work. So I could listen to today's theme tune.

On the sea voyage back from Brodick to Ardrossan, deck 6 still warned of wet paint, but we were the only ones who knew it had dried by now.

So we had the whole top deck to ourselves, and it was a beautiful sunny day once more.

I took a picture of the scene through my sunglasses:-