Idle ...

Writing this at at time when I should be peeling a potato or two, I feel my day has been incredibly idle. I've sat reading the papers, full of assessments of our FM and her possible successors, and I've done my Italian for today. I've also had a wee sleep after lunch ... But then I look back at why this was so, and remember that going to church isn't exactly a restful morning - not for me, anyway.

Apart from the singing - and I have to confess I enjoyed singing a hymn to which I wrote the words, because when I get to sing it alone I can make it sound the way it does in my head - I had some church business to take part in, a woman to convince that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to punctuation and that there are times when it's not simply a matter of opinion/taste/whatever nonsense she had in mind.  (She doesn't really know me.) There was the delightfully animated conversation with the couple who are moving up here and who turned up because it's mid-term in England and whom I heard singing at the back of the church before I'd seen them, and the other business of being part of an amazingly lively group of people. When so many churches are declining, I realise that the way ours seems to replenish itself is from the people who in middle-life realise they need something more and find their way to our beautiful, chilly building peopled by a totally diverse group, and they stay ...

Because the day has been progressively more dreich, with the rain intensifying and the wind gearing up for the black gusts promised on the weather app, I've chosen to blip a collage of the arrangements our fantastic flower arranger did for the memorial service last week. (There was another one, with hair-threatening candles, but it was in the midst of a mob when I was taking the photos.) Candles and flowers: what more could one ask for amidst the February gloom?

And now I feel the call of a nice glass of red ...