Slipping past

I was reading in a Sunday paper how Melvin Bragg can't believe how old he is (older than me!) and how when Sunday came round again he would think "It can't be Sunday already - it was only yesterday" because time accelerates with every passing year. Facebook reinforced that idea for me in a slightly different fashion today; it turns out that this date was one that in the past saw the cancellation at the last minute of two different holidays. A year ago today my week in Madeira with my friend Di didn't happen because planes couldn't land and we gave up; three years ago on this dat e our holiday in Cyprus was cancelled the day before we were due to leave because of increasing Covid restrictions on the island. Three years - those empty years full of angst instead of living. The best thing right now is that I remember that was when Blipfoto became more alive for me, as I had time to read more journals and find out how people elsewhere - in Scotland, in UK, in the world - were coping with the threat, and some of you now feel like friends.

Today began mild (well - 9ºC when I went out at 10am) and ended chilly (1ºC right now, at 11.30pm). It rained a lot, not violently, and grew windier. I went to Pilates and felt ... very stretched, metaphorically as well as literally. I had a hellish time parking when I had to go back for Himself - the builders are all over the site like a rash, making Crazy Golf layouts where there might have been more parking, covering the hillside in mud and tyre tracks. I thought I'd never get back out of the space into which I put myself. 

I had an hour for a bite of lunch before I had to attend an hour's Zoom meeting of a small group working on a church project, by the end of which I felt so cold and restless and not quite right that I didn't know where to put myself, so I took a couple of paracetamol and went down to the shop to buy spinach and Panko breadcrumbs for a noodle dish I was wanting to make. I managed to sit briefly at No. 1 in the Diamond League of Duolingo by dint of starting in the morning and earning bonus points - sad, really, though my Italian is definitely improving. 

The evening brought a phone call from #1 son, a link from #2 son to a piece about him in TES, and David Attenborough. And now this, and yes, today has slipped past despite all this journalling (vile word). But see, if you can, what is slipping past at the edge of the photo I took from the car this morning (when I wasn't driving!) on the way to Pilates. We were driving along the shore of the Holy Loch of mixed memories when I saw these magnificent cumulus clouds over the way to Glasgow, and I saw the dark shape slipping past almost out of frame to the left, heading to its base. Not Trident this time - just a hunter killer.

"Just"!