A visit from the past

Today began with the alarm going off at 6.30am to accommodate the expected arrival of an electrician at 8.30 to fit new worktop lights in the kitchen. You know how it is with work in the kitchen - you have to clear away so much stuff, and it's best if you've had your breakfast first, and washed the dishes, and put them all in the cupboards instead of leaving them to drain (no: I don't have a dishwasher - I have a tiny kitchen of the type it used to be fashionable to call a "galley kitchen"). In the event the guy turned up at 10.30; Mr PB had acrimonious words with his employer about timings and worksheets and proper mask-wearing and disposable gloves; the lights were fitted and now I'll be able to read recipes without having to put on my reading glasses. I hate cooking in specs.

I opted out of all this domesticity and hid in the study writing a sermon. Sometimes it's good just to leave the domesticity behind.

The best bit of the day was a visit from someone I knew when we first came to Dunoon in 1974. Then, she was a schoolgirl and her mother was my first best friend in the area, someone I met on the first occasion I managed to leave my 6 week-old firstborn and go to church. We had a suitably distanced walk round Dunoon revisiting her memories and reliving the days when her mum and I had identical anoraks from a local shop, and both wore Nature Trek shoes - remember? The ones that looked like Cornish pasties? We sang in the church choir together, as well as in The Hesperians, the choir Mr PB started to keep us sane; we went out walks in the evening without any children; I learned all about looking after babies (she'd had 4); we spent hours on the phone first thing in the morning after the baby was down for a nap. It was then that I first knew that the secret to enjoying life in a place, whether you've just arrived or have been there for decades, is to have a pal, just one, to whom you can tell anything. Up until my arrival here I'd relied on people I'd known from schooldays and university, and my life was an extension of my childhood; moving here broke that chain.

My photo shows Mr PB with our visitors in the church where we first met, discussing the changes and the similarities over a gap of 40 years or so. Quite a thought - and a lovely afternoon despite the dreich weather.

All this meant we'd ignored the news until the evening. Now we find that Glasgow and two more areas in Scotland have to restrict any visits to people's homes because of an upturn in Covid infections, which are apparently generated in a domestic context. And the move towards another Independence referendum has begun with the FM's announcement that a timetable was being prepared for this parliamentary session.

And now I'm so tired that I keep forgetting the words I want to write and sit staring at the screen till they return to me. Either this is the beginning of a slippery slope or I've just overdone things ...