That's better ...

Now there's a thing. Two days of online moaning about purposeless walks and rain and what happens? Sun. That's what happened. Sun and no rain and temperatures that might be considered Springlike, if you chose your position well. And it changed everything, quite absurdly.

The morning flew past in a  haze of hanging out laundry and phone calls - not the least of these being the news from my friend (rapidly becoming my agent, I think) in Stornaway, that it looks as if the Poetry and Faith event we're planning can go ahead in person rather than the dreaded Zoom. They're going down to Level 1, and we're going to be Level 2, and suddenly life looks rosier. 

It wasn't warm enough to sit in the garden - I did experiment, briefly - but the sun tempted us down to Loch Striven for a walk that was long enough and - at my suggestion - brisk enough to banish the sluggish leg syndrome, or Art Gallery Legs, apparently caused by a build-up of lactic acid in the muscles. It was utterly gorgeous - think real Scottish bluebells (extra) as opposed to the Spanish ones we have in the garden, japonica, violets, primroses, dangling catkins on new-leaf trees; think anxious oyster-catchers on the shore and a meadow pipit singing its heart out above our heads. Even the  incongruous presence of a RFA ship, the Tidesurge, at the POL depot pier was more interesting than annoying - it's a relatively new ship, one of these ones with the interesting angles and odd planes. Look at the way the sloping sides of the bridge shine brilliantly, reflecting in the water...

We came home happy for a change and ate pasta with prawns, asparagus and pesto. A good day. 

But in other news - anyone else seen the news about a spike in radioactivity from an inaccessible area in the buried reactor at Chernobyl?