The sea ...

When I'm contemplating a trip to the city, as I am tomorrow, the strip of sea that separates us from The Other Side feels like a threat, an obstacle, especially when wind and rain feature in the weather forecast as they do tonight. But this morning, because it was a still, cold, sunny morning, I walked down to my painting class and instead of taking the shorter back road past the supermarket car park I went all the way down to the seafront to walk along the prom... and the photo above shows my reward. My teacher, Paddy, paints a wonderful sea; so far I can only photograph it, but I know whenever I spend time away from home that I've grown so used to having this amazingly changeable neighbour in my life that I couldn't bear to move away from it.

Painting class was fun; I was the only pupil today, so Paddy and I painted and talked and listened to Leonard Cohen (Alexandra Leaving) and drank tea. I managed to replicate the suggestion of tiles under a gutter on an old church, and to paint a large old pot filled with flowers and a low wall beside it. Then it was time to go home, so I took another couple of sea photos - the two right hand ones in the collage that I've added as an extra. An obliging seagull sat on a rock for one of them and then took off,  creating a perfect shadow on the water below him. 

Otherwise I had two trips to the pharmacy (the second to exchange pills that turned out to have talc filler), did my Italian, did my back exercises, cooked pasta with spinach, cold cooked chicken, tomatoes and sugar snap peas (rather yummy) and collapse over the telly till we went to choir. I'm just back from the singing - hard work this week, on intonation and rhythm. 

The sky has clouded over now, though it's still quiet and still and dry outside. Fingers crossed we get over to Glasgow tomorrow...