Looking forward

I actually hate the preparation for going anywhere - have done for many years now, so that I look back on my teenage years when packing for a holiday was something delightful and filled with anticipation. The pandemic has, I'm afraid, made it worse; all that settled sloth, that knowledge that next week will be identical to this right down to the shopping list - so corrosive of any last sense of adventure. It's not that we've gone nowhere since that fateful packing for a holiday in March 2020 that was cancelled the day before we were due to leave, the suitcases already almost full, lying open in the hall; we've visited family on three occasions, briefly, and spent that September week on Arran. But it still seems unlikely to be packing to go to Stornoway next week, and hard to remember all the little things that used to be automatic.

I'd just started organising this when I noticed out of the study window a real harbinger of better days: the sight of the paddle steamer Waverley heading past Dunoon, presumably on trials. If you live anywhere near the Clyde, you'll remember that her already curtailed season last summer was cut short by her hitting the horribly solid new pier at Brodick and crumpling her bow ... Anyway, she's a joyful sight and the reason for another misty view of the Firth of Clyde for today's blip.

So: packing, printing off notes for my talk next week; doing another lateral flow test in preparation for descending on the Covid-almost-free outer Hebrides. We too have had no new infections for some time - the current uptick in Argyll figures seem to be centred on Garelochhead, which doesn't feel like Argyll for anything other than administrative purposes. I've learned something new: I don 't threaten to heave all over the table while taking a tonsil swab if I (a) don't use a mirror and (b) do it in a matter-of-fact action while thinking of something else. I feel quite pleased about that.

We were out only briefly, popping up to the church to rehearse for Sunday and have a run through some plainsong.

I love plainsong.