The meaning is in the waiting ...

How did I miss the thunder? Apparently Dunoon's thundersnow event happened just about the time I was drinking tea before heading out in the dark to go shopping, but somehow ...Anyway, it was a foul morning to be going anywhere, and I was just glad the ice that I saw forming last night seemed to have gone. Usual Friday morning business; I had a moment in the supermarket when the buying of food and the bother of dealing with it - let alone deciding what to do with it, and when - all seemed beyond me. I suspect another stress-broken night contributed. A phone call from my sister then brought news of the death of a mutual friend, and the reassertion of our status as people whose circles are regularly diminished by mortality. 

The morning was topped off by another two hours in the freezing church, rehearsing and recording. Despite the biggest down jacket I possess and the miraculous new warm trousers, I was again stiff with the cold by the time we got home, and had to sit over lunch thawing out for quite some time. I did manage, however, to fit in a tussle with the printer over its handling of sticky address labels, and to look out this year's Christmas cards, which might after all get written soon.

I'm blipping the cover of my new book for Advent. Each day's chapter covers a poem by my favourite poet, R.S.Thomas, and a meditation on its content. It's very good, and if I could organise myself with greater discipline I would read it in the kind of inner stillness to which, at the moment, I can only aspire. Quite apart from meditational reading, it would make a good introduction to the poet's work for anyone unfamiliar with it.

My title today is a quotation from one of Thomas' well-known poems, Kneeling. I'm not good at waiting ...