No rest ...

One of these days with not quite enough hours in it. What, however, did I fill it with? For a start, I got two loads of washing done and on the line before I'd even finished breakfast, and the other product of the day, a large round sourdough loaf, is just out of the oven. (I do get bored with the mess that actual baking makes in my tiny kitchen - flour and drips of starter everywhere.) I went to the Post Office to post a heavy parcel left for a neighbour who moved south at least two years ago and probably longer. (It cost over £13 to post.) And then, somehow, the morning was over.

In the afternoon I gave up on achievement and went for a walk with my pal Di. As she was carless for the afternoon we walked from her house in Blairmore - "round the block", we call it - up the hill, along a road, up through a wood and the remains of a forestry plantation, over the top of the golf course and onto the high forestry road; down past the quarry where a man in a digger was arranging stones (that's what it looked like), through the field that didn't have any beasts in it (I'd have drawn the line at cows), back down to the shore road and all the way back through the ribbon length of Blairmore. We talked incessantly except when I was too much out of breath (Di has longer legs than I have) and got decidedly hot as the afternoon grew greyer and more humid. By the time I'd finished I'd walked over 7 miles, half of it very decidedly uphill. 

We ended up having a cup of tea in her kitchen before I drove home. This is what we used to do, pre-pandemic, pre-retirement, when weekends were the only time we saw each other, and it felt wonderfully normal. We're both fully vaccinated, we both leave similarly restricted lives, we both spend a great deal of time walking around the countryside, and we're fed up with FaceTime...

Blipping the gardens of a row of bungalows at the far end of Blairmore, overlooking Loch Long. We think the owners vie with each other in the splendour of their pieris plants and the blazing glory of their rhododendrons and azaleas, all of which plants do terribly well in our neck of the woods. They'll have faded by the time I walk this way again ...

And I had prawn pasta for dinner. Surely I shall sleep tonight ...?