Bitty

The high pressure area has settled itself nicely over us now, and though today was rather cloudier than yesterday, there were some lovely moments. It turned into one of these days when I seem not to do the things that I ought to have done (Anglicans can finish off the rest of that sentence, though I didn't do too many things that I ought not to have done ...)

Partly I allowed myself to be seduced by all the argument about the SNP leadership contest and the relative merits/demerits of each candidate. I thought the comment feature by Brian Wilson in today's Scotsman was spot on when he talked about the "shallow opportunists" who so rapidly turned against Kate Forbes; it's an unedifying cesspit of uninformed and bigoted comment that we've suddenly found ourselves smelling. 

Himself was away practising in the church again, so I had to be on hand with the coffee when he got back, but I'd had time to tidy up tomorrow's sermon (temptation and fasting, folks ...) and hope that it still hangs together, which is not always the case when you've written something over several days. I washed a pair of slippers and hung them out to drip, and I read the Scotsman, and after the coffee we had a wee sing in preparation for tomorrow, when the Lent Prose makes its first appearance of the year.

We went out for a walk again just because it was dry and calm and ... well, that's what we do. I pushed the pace a bit; I realised that because of The Knee, Himself has been walking more and more slowly and then complaining of muscle cramps, and it struck me that we were both getting what I call Art Gallery Legs - that awful exhaustion that a prolonged wander through an art gallery brings and which can be put down, I believe, to lactic acid in the muscles. Anyway, I felt the need to up the pace so that the blood circulated more vigorously and by the time we'd done three miles I was warm enough to open my jacket and my legs and back had stopped aching. Result! 

We finished with more of a stroll out the beach road at the Ardyne, and that's where I took this photo. Toward Sailing Club stands out on its point, the sea is very calm, and the darker clouds are quite dramatic in the low sun. There was a great gang of Canada Geese in the field to my left, from which subgroups periodically took off and flew around squawking, and I stood for ages listening to a thrush in the woods round Castle Toward. 

When we got home I remembered I'd meant to poach pears ... and did so.