As I Walked Forth...

As I set out on this last morning in August, the sun was up and dazzlingly bright as it bounced off an East facing window but the grass of the Meadows was covered in frost. This was the first frost of the autumn and hopefully a rogue one, not to be repeated for a few weeks.

As I walked down to the west end and over the Dean Bridge to Queensferry Road the traffic was almost back to full volume making me nostalgic for the empty streets at the beginning of lockdown. I was sauntering and appreciating such a lovely morning after the rainy weather we have been having recently.
I blipped the stately St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral seen from the end of Melville Street and a distant Fettes College from the main road . I would have blipped Stewart’s Melville College and the Dean Village had I been able to see over the parapet of the Dean Bridge . I could carry a stool the next time.

With the baking delivered to Maggie’s and a rapid return home I got involved in trying to get the banking online app for M&S up and running.
For some reason, M&S bank have not been sending me paper copies of my bank balance since May, so having the online banking app seemed sensible. But why do M&S make everything so difficult with far too many hoops to jump through? I got as far as having to produce some telephone code which I didn’t have. No problem, telephone this number, my IPad said. That’s where it all became unstuck. Hanging on the end of a telephone line waiting for someone, probably working from their bedroom in some remote corner of the UK, to answer proved the straw that broke the camel’s back and I hung up. Life is too short, but I still don’t know how much money I have to spend.

I lowered my blood pressure by baking some oatcakes and then taking my frozen chicken stew for a walk to the freezer of one of the Not So Merry Widows where it will spend the next few days before becoming dinner for the 3 of us as we sojourn amongst the sand dunes of Northumbria later this week.