Re-entry

This is the first day in over two weeks,  I think, that I could describe as "normality" - no packing to do, no travelling, no Italian cooking or exploring, no frenzied turnaround of bed-making and tidying. Just the rain falling outside - so not as much bed-linen washing as I'd have liked - and the sense that time was just ... passing. And I found it, to be honest, incredibly depressing. Crazy, really, because I was also incredibly tired. I think it's a case of what a military friend of mine used to call "the sads" - the let-down after a period of, in his case, fear and exhilaration and in mine activity and people and new places. 

We slept in a whole hour late this morning, so the day seemed short. I managed to get a couple of washes accommodated (I've surely spent a fortune running the tumble drier, but there's no remede*) as well as catch up with some of the stuff I can only deal with on the desktop computer. I caught up on the local paper, and took delivery of a thin cover-up I'd coveted on one of our holiday companions. I moaned about my back, feeling awful again since the flight home - I'm blaming the BA plane from Bari.

Far too late to be sensible, I decided the only thing to do was go for a walk. I'd seen on Facebook that Benmore Gardens was looking at its autumn best this weekend, so that's where we went, escaping our gloom among the drama of the trees there. We didn't see another soul - only a very tame robin which suddenly appeared at my feet as I sat at the top of the hill in the Andean Refuge. The rain had stopped, the air was entirely still, the scents embraced us in damp waves of loveliness. I took so many photos that it's been hard to pick only one...

Blipping the path past the pond towards the side of the giant redwood avenue. 

I've left out the absurd notion that the Charlatan might return to be PM. Who are these people who think it'd be all right to inflict him on us?