On the wild side

The weather seems to have reverted, does it not, to normal Scottish summer? In my neck of the woods this tends to mean feeling chilly in the morning so putting on a jacket in the afternoon and then hauling it off and walking with it tied round your waist as the sweat drips off you under a pale grey sky with just a hint of drizzle in it ...

Last night, just as I was thinking of sleep, Himself informed me that we really needed to make a recording for the online service this Sunday. (We've  been raiding our back catalogue a bit recently). Was I up to it? I decided that a strong coffee might just give me the oomph to do this thing, and so it was - we drove up to the church, I sang perfectly satisfactorily, the recording went without a hitch, we came home again. I was knackered. 

Lunch, however - sourdough toast with a chunk of poached salmon, a mini cucumber and a dollop of mayonnaise - seemed to help, so I pinged my pal and joined her as she took two dogs - not hers, this was an act of mercy - for a walk in the Bishop's Glen. (These dogs are wee King Charles spaniels, and have the benefit of shorter legs and therefore shorter walks). I've not been there for a while - because it's full of dogs - and was amazed at how jungly it's become. There were new fallen trees - when was there a gale? - and every bush, every tree, every patch of grass and wildflowers ... all were hugely lush, so that our path wound enticingly among high banks of vegetation (and ticks, I imagine.)

We finished our walk by coming down the doggy path to the church, which is where I took this photo of the amazing profusion of things, be they purple spikes of flowers, red sorrel, or golden dry grasses. We could hear the distant sound of music (Himself had returned to the church for some peaceful organ practice) and agreed that our churchyard was a place neither of us would be unhappy with ending up in.

This did lead us, briefly but dispiritingly, to consider our ends - diminished in some way by strokes or dementia, falling to bits sans teeth, sans eyes ... but it was too dismal to contemplate and seemed a waste of the time we were currently enjoying. But it's there, what Philip Larkin once referred to as "a standing chill". Blooming poets, eh?