Encouragement

Another pretty dismal day, as far as weather is concerned - though in fact it's pretty usual weather for this time of year. I keep a diary, and looking back through a five-year succession of Februaries I can see exactly the same grey misery turning up with monotonous regularity. That is why, after all, I've been in the habit of taking a week abroad in February - or even, as in the first two years of our retirement, an epic overseas trip. I can remember all too clearly thinking last February that I couldn't wait for the Cyprus holiday booked for March ...

However, it was one of these days when I don't seem to have a moment wondering what I'm doing next. Two phone-calls after breakfast, soup-making (leek and potato), prune-stewing (in tea, with maple syrup and star anise), and a nice long phone call with #1 son followed by a couple of sewing jobs that have been lurking for months (I loathe sewing) and it was suddenly lunch time. Then it was the walk in the suddenly intensifying rain up to the church to record this week's batch of music - this went well, except that I twice read "light" instead of "life" in one piece because my eyes were watering and I couldn't really see it ...Bet no-one notices. Unless they read this and listen for it ... The church was calm and somehow welcoming, despite newish water-stains round the east window, and the temperature inside was 8.4ºc instead of 2º, so that was a change.

Blipping the huge rhododendron bush in the church grounds. It's always early to flower, and this year it seemed more welcome than ever. It's way past pruning height these days; I wonder what will become of it.

And finally, a word about politics - without, if possible, being political. The current bourach over Alex Salmond and the Scottish Government is making me so sick that I can barely watch the news till they've stopped discussing it. It's top of the bill in what has become the English news these days; it's as if everyone is revelling in something that most of us don't really get. The UK government perpetrates absurdities all the time, and yet ...

But enough of that. I'm less and less inclined to believe anything I read or hear on the topic. Was there a day when newspapers weren't partisan? Or was I merely naive?