Loose ends

Today felt strangely inconclusive after the rest of the week, where there were more than usual fixed points and meetings. Today all I had in mind was trying to deal with the rest of the cards I intend to post (and I think we're done now) and sorting out the last presents I need to buy, and somehow, though the latter task is still inconclusive, I found time to read the paper and go for a walk. Maybe that's all old people are supposed to be able to do ...

Actually I also did a washing - it didn't dry much outside, but came in smelling of outdoors - and my daily Italian lesson, and had a good chat with my #1 son who reduced me to helpless giggles before we finished. My blip comes, however, from the afternoon, which is already darkening at the time when I took the photo. We walked a bit up the Glen Massan road, but couldn't go as far as we'd have liked because of increasing iciness - it became horribly slippy, especially with the trainers I was wearing, which have very hard rubber soles. You can see from the photo how thick the frost was in this very sheltered glen - none of that white is snow, and the frost had made crystals on individual gorse needles. It was actually rather lovely, with the unmistakeable scent of fresh earth cracked open by the cold, though in the near distance the sound of repeated gunfire suggested the stalkers were out on the hill. 

We listened over dinner to Michael Tippett's wonderful 1944 oratorio A Child of Our Time - it was performed live last week and hearing a bit of it inspired us to get out the CD. Long ago, Himself and I sang in a performance of it by the University of Glasgow Choral Society, though we hadn't met by then. It was the first term of my second year, and I'd just joined the choir - it somehow didn't cross my radar when I first matriculated - and found it at once exciting and perplexing because we didn't hear the whole piece, with orchestra and soloists, until the final rehearsal. If you've never heard it, you might be interested - it seems once again horribly relevant as stories emerge from Ukraine of Russian atrocities. 

And then there was the football. Again, 'nuff said.