Seven

Woke today with the realisation that I had not a single huvtae and suddenly filled with the panic of too much emptiness. I've reached the conclusion that the different imperatives in my day-to-day life are necessary for mental wellbeing, whether it's something I want to do, like choir, Pilates, going to church, or something I don't - shopping, for instance, or defrosting the freezer or cleaning the shower (if you're a tad slatternly, this last becomes quite a task). And it was grey and damp and reached 10ºc quite early on, so  there seemed nothing to distinguish the day.

Except...

Except that I made a phone call to old friends whom we don't see these days (the whole of England and a bit of Scotland is in the way), and there were the two of them on the other end and we laughed and were serious and caught up and that was lovely. We spent hours together when our children were 5 and 2, and have been on two holidays abroad together, to say nothing of an amazing week in Cambridge with the church choir when all the world was young ... So that was good.

And I arranged a walk with Di in the afternoon. Don't let's leave it too late, she said. So at 2.20pm we set off to walk round the perimeter of Benmore Gardens and out along the track along the west side of Loch Eck (blipped above).  It's a while since I've walked further than the water works, that being the limit of Himself's knee, but today, despite our both having aching hips (this ageing malarkey again?) we carried on out along the track to where the forestry works have arrived in their trail of desolation. We watched a massive machine high on the hillside swing a tree-trunk onto an overhead line down which it dangled all the way to the foot of the hill before dropping with a mighty crash beside a stack to which some other machine will likely add it; that over we scurried past the van and the two caravans in a lay-by (for the foresters) and the frying pan on a small beach where they must have been having a fry-up until we thought it wise to turn round before we were so tired we'd just have to lie down in the mud and the drizzle. 

By the end of our walk we'd done 7 kilometres by Di's watch; mine is set to miles and looked less impressive. I was hot and sticky and damp, but we'd talked about everything and life felt full again. Curry and red wine (drunk before the curry!) and the last episode of Endeavour followed, so it ended as a good day after all!

Extra photo of the ditch back along the track when we were in a wooded part - I thought it was wonderfully vivid and beautiful.