Get up!

I was saying today that January seems to be going on for ever, but the mornings are definitely growing lighter as well as the late afternoons - I always thought the mornings when school returned in January were so dark, so hard. But today I was still sitting in bed reading all your lovely comments about how I should be keeping warm while I was singing, still downing the last of my tea, when I looked up and saw ... this. A fabulously colourful sunrise exhorting me to get up and get on with this day because it was magnificent.

So I did. And I hung out of the window in the 1ºC temperature specially to take the photo, before pulling myself back in to put some warm clothes on and get my porridge and some more tea. I washed some things, hung them out, and managed a quick phone call with my sister in Ayr about the run-out of vaccines there - their surgery is expecting to summon them soon. And then it was time for coffee, and a bit of Christmas cake (we'll be eating it till Easter) before heading out to walk in the sunniest part of the day in the sunniest bit of our east-facing coast - the west-facing side of Loch Striven. There was a huge, empty tanker at the POL depot pier - the Sea Shark, registered in Bremen - but it was quiet, not smelly, not annoying anyone. We walked about 4 miles before the cake's effects disappeared and we needed sustenance again.

After that the only thing I achieved, apart from several Italian exercises, was to struggle with a Keynote presentation slide for my next poetry online class - it's a longer poem, and required more know-how than I possess. I was rescued by my #1 son, to whom I mailed the whole shebang; he then shared screens with me while he sorted the mess I'd made and created what I wanted before mailing it back to me. It reminded me irresistibly of the days when I was in charge of the school newspaper and he was the editor; he knew how to use Aldus Pagemaker and I was still learning and desperate to master it before he left school ... In the event he was long gone, and his wee brother had followed him, and in despair I finally became the omnipotent editorial figure I had dreamed of.

I've just been outside. It's midnight, and the moon is so bright, even though only half-full, that it's casting shadows in the garden; the stars are amazing and Orion is the first thing I see when I step out of the back door. It's fabulous - so today has been bookended in fabulousness. But it's freezing cold out there.

Hot bath. Bed. Sleep ...