Seizing the moment

Well, that was a lovely day. All that sunshine - and much less wind than before. The sun even had some warmth in it, so much so that we had our coffee outside in the place where we intend to make the patio, though because the sun had just come round the side of the house I was the only one to have a sunny bit of bench to sit on. I'd earlier hung out some big bath towels, and was able to take them in, bone dry, in mid-afternoon. Joy! 

The morning actually felt quite busy, largely because I was driven by all this brightness to clean the floor and some of the corners where the light don't shine. And then I went for a prescription, met a friend who was looking for LFD tests, and came home with a collection for myself - the pharmacy had so many it was annoying them. 

Our walk in the afternoon took us south again, along the road between the fields. I was reminded of the way I used to feel as a child on holiday in Arran, when I would suddenly feel aware of everything conspiring to make a perfect moment that I somehow had to seize and own. There was a woodpecker drumming away in the Castle Toward woods, geese calling somewhere deep among the fields, some tiny tulips along with the daffodils in a pot outside a cottage, the creaking song of a Great Tit ... and nothing else. Just us. And then this last look along the shore before I got into the car - a couple are walking their dogs on the Ardyne beach, the tide is going out, the wet sand gleaming in the long sunlight over the water.

Later, a phone call from #1 son - they'd both come down post-Covid with beastly tonsillitis and had felt rotten all week: were we ok? (Apparently they stopped feeling ok just after we'd left; I can't think we made them feel wonderful, but ...) And dinner while listening to a glorious CD of English Song, sung by a lovely tenor with whom we'd sung in our octet just after university. I got in touch with him on Facebook Messenger a few months back, and we've been renewing our friendship, so this was a delight.

And all the time people in Ukraine are dying, fleeing, watching their homes burn, and that madman appears to be having a devil's tea party with a group of girl guides (or whatever) with individual teapots and little trays of cakes, surrounded by pots of greenery. 

Was it a nightmare?