Gilding the skies ...

Some 25 years ago I was singing at the funeral of a friend along with the other three members of our quartet. I coped with the Kontakion, I even coped with the little Breton piece that the friend in his last months had rendered into metrical English and then requested for his funeral. But when it came to the final hymn, one I'd not come across before, I was finished. It was sentimental and folksy and it was just too much That hymn was "I see the sunlight gilding the skies", and this morning - and again in the late afternoon - I had it playing in my head. In fact, it was so amazing to see sunlight and bright sky all day that I was obsessed by it.

Taking the photos in the first collage held me back from getting out to the supermarket, but I needn't have worried: there was hardly a soul shopping (had they all drowned? blown away?) and the shelves were relatively well stocked. And I can confirm that my bill has risen by 25% over the past year. I hurried home to put on a washing - our king-sized bed linen has been waiting for a dry day - and was able to hang out the duvet cover between my porridge and my toast. (No - not that way. You know fine well you can't hang porridge on a line.) Breakfast segued into elevenses while I fought with various stored duvets and before I knew it I had to get some lunch ready before Himself went off to play at a funeral.

The afternoon began for me with the compensatory Zoom call instead of the Coven trip to Lewis, with the benefit of our being able to be joined by the fourth member of the group who lives in the south of England. So though we weren't able to be with Sr Clare, our dear friend and mentor over these past years, we were able to see her and talk and share our lives for an hour or so. Then Himself came back and we chased the declining sun down to Toward, where we walked up the farm road and back down with the sun setting behind Bute away beyond the fields and the Kyles. There were warm silage smells and the lonely cry of curlews, and a heron flapped ponderously from the woods and headed to the sea and it was just lovely. And that sequence is the first of today's extras. 

And finally the moon. I was heading up here to blip when I caught sight of it through the bathroom window and had to trot downstairs again and out to the garden to try to get some kind of photo. That's my other extra - is it Jupiter in attendance? It was still, starry in the darker bits of sky, and perishing cold. My watch suggests 4ºC.

And yes: I have put the winter duvet on our bed!