Looking for the sun

I may find it trying to be wakened by the sun in my eyes - or even by a dramatic red sky - but it's intensely discouraging, I find, to waken to the rain and the grey that has been so prominently missing this summer. That period of semi-wakefulness, which for me tends to end with a cup of tea before I actually get up, is a time when existential doom creeps out of its shadows and parades through my dawning consciousness. It was dissipated this morning by a text chat with my pal, currently on holiday in a cottage that seems to have no phone connection but copes with SMS ...

We're off tomorrow, just for a couple of nights. I realise to my horror that I'm no longer used to packing a bag, lifting just the right stuff and dealing with it. I know that some of my friends on here travel all over in camper vans and envy them their easy relationship with the open road - I seem to have lost the knack. Here's hoping tomorrow retrieves some of it.

We had choir again tonight, our numbers gradually creeping back to full complement. We're going to get back to our usual rehearsal venue for our next rehearsal, but I have to say I love singing in the church with its great acoustic. We stood for ninety minutes; it's quite a tiring thing. Cheeringly, we have a gig pencilled in for the coming term, and then there'll be Christmas ...

Blipping the Holy Loch, one time home of the US Navy Submarine Site One and its flotilla of Poseidon submarines. Now it's a peaceful place, the only fixture a former Western Ferry now used as a diving platform, the hum of generators replaced by the sound of gulls. We chose to walk along the northern shore because it appeared to be the only sunny place on offer, and it was rather lovely. 

I hear we've to start getting booster vaccinations ...