Sometimes it's almost impossible not to be happy

It was an inauspicious start, a call from dad's carer to say he'd had trouble breathing and she'd called the doctor; could I come down? We'd been walking and H carried on while I went back home for the car. In the meantime a call from brother A; dad had lost the plot at him for not phoning this morning; A thinks it's dad's medication making him loopy - he's on a cocktail of painkillers and nicotine patches. I get there and he's feeling better; A arrives and dad explains that he was worried A hadn't phoned, as A and the family could have been murdered... Eh?

Anyway things calm down and I leave to visit mum, who is on better form. The sun is shining and although it's windy, the sky is blue and the wind is kicking up a haze that reinforces the atmospheric perspective - hills are blue folds and grey folds. I'm listening to Paul Simon's 'Rythm of the Saints' and everything feels right with the world.

Some days the world feels like it was cobbled together by a malevolent little shit bent on pestilence and suffering, but this wasn't one of them.