Ne'erday

Every year, as I stagger to bed in the early hours of January 1st, I promise myself a really lazy morning, drifting towards midday in my Kat Slater dressing gown perhaps, reading one of my new books in bed with a cup of tea, luxuriating in the lack of any pressures ...

And then we had this glorious morning. Not a cloud in the sky. Lighter than it's been in days. And I ping awake, more or less at the usual time, despite putting the light out at 2.45am, and see the light sky and think of ... washing the big tablecloth. Hanging it out. Washing the other stuff filling up the laundry basket. Hanging it out. And then ... a walk, while the sun is still high (or as high as it gets).

And so I'm up, popping into the garden in that furry spotty garment, doing all this laundry, driven by the thought of fitting in a coffee as well as breakfast and then GETTING OUT. So that's why my Ne'erday blip is of one of my favourite good weather walks along Loch Striven, where herons flap indignantly off the water's edge as we approach above them and berries glow red by the roadside. There's a wind in our faces, and it's a tad chillier than it has been, and it's absolutely glorious. 

Later, I feel asleep over a book of Leonard Cohen's last poems. Walking is clearly bad for you...