Fair daffodils ...

This should have been my last day in Madeira; by now I should have packed to come home. Does it feel a long time since last Sunday when it all went pear-shaped? Well, no - not at all, but it's my experience that normality  flies past unnoticed while extraordinary weeks are slower, more noticed. I also realised, however, that yesterday and today I've been more content than I've been in a long time - I realised it, rather inconveniently, while we were singing our final hymn this morning. ("Be still my soul ..." to Finlandia - glorious tune!) The fact that I was in church, rather than heading to an airport, meant I could also sing the Lent Prose, which I enjoyed despite the continual racket from a toddler at the back of the church, who from the number of times he said "NO!" during the service indicated that he wasn't exactly having a ball. 

The afternoon was so brilliantly sunny that despite my inclination to fall asleep in a chair after lunch (a very elderly thing to do) we simply had to get out. I had thought of embarking on some more pruning, but decided a gentle walk would be more therapeutic. So a couple of miles in the vicinity of Toward lighthouse filled the bill, with the noise of a gang of crows in the treetops (were these nests I saw? Or were they rooks?) pursued us for a good half-mile before the robin and blackbird took over. That's where I saw those amazing daffodils by the roadside - that vibrant yellow against the blue of sea and sky very much sums up today.

On the downward side, I read some awful stories coming out of Mariupol in today's Observer as well as some interesting analysis of Putin's mindset on the BBC site. And I couldn't help noticing that, along with the rest of the country, we are seeing far more cases of Covid than ever before - there were several members of our congregation missing this morning, as well as the Rector and his wife. Meanwhile the advisory committee is talking about returning to the use of the Common Cup ...

Hmm.