Days are where we live ...

There's a poem by Philip Larkin that expresses rather well this strange limbo in which we're living just now - "we" being people like me, with not enough to do other than living - not the heroic NHS personnel who are in another kind of world altogether. "Days" has always appealed to me for the power of its final image, but has taken on a new significance now, when one day slides onto the next and we ask ourselves "What are days for?"

So today my day was for ... what? Well, I'd earmarked the first part of it for sorting my hair - I'd made a hash of using the clippers on the back and roped in Mr PB to even things out before I recoloured it. (I know - who's looking? I am, for a start.) After coffee we set off into a beautiful morning to walk to church so that I could sort the crèche: we're celebrating the Epiphany tomorrow and I suddenly remembered we needed to change the scene. So while Mr PB tried out different registrations on the organ, I removed the shepherds, the donkey-and-the-cow-which-are-on-one-base, and the kneeling Mary and substituted the sitting Mary with child on lap, three exotic-looking Magi one of whom is clearly Chinese, and the solitary camel, whose partner several years ago now met with an accident and is no more. I had great fun with the remaining camel, who is now peering out from behind a small pillar on the front of the altar while the rest congregate indoors (the story tells us how, "on entering the house" they saw the child, so clearly we're not talking a crowded stable at this point). And because Mr PB was still playing, I had time to find some pink berries and dark leaves in the church grounds - which are the subject of my extra today - and create a wee ornamental bush at the entrance, anchored in some BlueTack that I found in a Sunday School box. Who says Excellent Women don't have childish fun?

Later we went out again - because it was still beautiful and that's what we do. We climbed through the woodland to the top of Benmore Gardens and came down as the sky darkened and the temperature fell. My main photo is the River Eachaig from the frosty bridge as we headed back to the road, with the snow still lying patchily in the field where the sun hadn't penetrated.  And when I got home I did some Italian and sent off a couple of recent poems to see if they might meet someone's ideas of what constitutes a good poem. 

So, a full day. No time to stand and ask what I was going to do next, for there seemed to be no time. But what was it for? 


Ah, solving that question ...