A day of two halves ...

Actually it wasn't halves at all: the pale blue sky lasted only till breakfast was over and by coffee time it was raining and that was it. In between I went to Pilates, going into the studio in dry weather and coming out an hour later to be soaked on my way to the car. Felt well-stretched, however, having raised the usual smiles at being the last to remove my fleece jersey in mid-class: I stand next to an open window and it takes the elbow-supported plank exercise to raise my temperature to this stage.

Other than that, this seemed a pointless sort of day. Our strange existence was underlined by an exchange of texts with my friend along the road, whom I've not seen since the summer. This is the friend with whom we shared that first communal drink in the garden in June, who celebrated our wedding anniversary with us in our house, the one whose house I visited on the day our Cyprus holiday in March was cancelled - and because it's winter and seems to be raining all the time we now never meet at all, despite the fact that I could actually stand at my back gate and shout along to hers. We usually stand side by side to sing in choir every Tuesday - just one of the losses that add up to the current pointlessness.

At four o'clock, with darkness already falling, I decided I needed to get out, even just to march round the wet streets. Dunoon is only in a level 2 area, and the shops are all open, but tonight we might as well have been in full lockdown for the activity I saw; the only busy point was the supermarket. I walked for 40 minutes, aware of how wet it was every time I passed a street light or a car drove by with headlights on. I was soaked by the time I got back, but felt sufficiently enlivened to do almost an hour of Duolingo Italian - I've moved up another league. 

I've chosen the morning sky as my blip today - I was awake too late to see the earlier vividness that others caught - and have added an extra from my walk, looking down at the heaving sea lit up by the streetlights.  There's something incongruous, I feel, about their propinquity. 

How is it possible to write so much about nothing?