Remembering Tuesdays

For so many years until this last horrid one, Tuesday was choir practice day. Our choir, 8+1, met on Tuesday evenings, and I liked to orientate the whole day towards that rehearsal. Usually, this meant having a walk in the middle of the day, eating a meal about 3pm, and then relaxing - over the telly in the winter, but perhaps in the garden with a book in the summer - until it was time for a quick cup of tea before going out. This was because in my declining years I realised I couldn't sing on a full stomach, but it came to be a routine I enjoyed for itself.

Sadly, we can't meet yet. I think the arts have been forgotten, neglected in favour of restoring spectators to football matches (where you see crowds standing, masks round their chins, cheering on a team). Occasionally there's a small, ambiguous paragraph somewhere in a government pronouncement which then seems to be contradicted elsewhere - or statements in a newspaper which state you can sing in Scotland but not England (this seems to be merely wrong). The ruling bodies seem as keen to keep us from this homicidal activity as they were a year ago and I begin to wonder if the vaccination programme is not brought into the equation at all. 

Rant over. What brought that on? Oh - today. I opened the door this morning on blue sky and warm sunshine (in the two photos blipped together) and decided, in the light of threatened rain later, that we should walk early. I washed and hung out towels, had a phone consultation with my GP (seeing him on Thursday), downed a quick coffee and set off south to walk with views of the Arran hills and the puffs of pink thrift on the seashore. We had a late lunch in the garden, and I dozed over a piece of music I'm trying to learn for this week. I was wakened by rain falling on the paper ...

There the resemblance to normal Tuesdays ended. We ate quite late because I was writing a snippy email to Rohan about a disastrous pair of trainers, of which more, perhaps, another day. Dinner was leftovers pasta tarted up with chilli pesto, followed by Scottish strawberries. We watched the heartbreaking Hospital programme about premature babies and I fell asleep over the News. 

But I'd rather have been singing - and eating toast and marmalade at bedtime.