You'll have had your ... summer?

There was a moment today, when I looked out at the rain suddenly battering down where a moment before it had been sunny, when I felt that summer was over, we'd reverted to March. And I thought of the possibly apocryphal saying of the Edinburgher you've just visited, "You'll have had your tea?"

Part of this gloomy introspection was no doubt caused by the fact that I seem to have caught a cold, progressing through the day from a sore throat and post-nasal drip to my only too familiar barking cough and stuffy nose and the realisation that after rehearsing all that Byrd I may in fact not be able to sing in the Evensong... But I shall not give up just yet. 

I woke at 5ish, and simply could not get back to sleep because my throat was so uncomfortable, so I'd decided long before breakfast that I wasn't going to make it to church. Instead I went back to bed - it's ages since I did that - wrapped in my fleecy dressing-gown (I find bed is never so warm once you've been out of it, and besides, I was miserable). Two paracetamol and the early waking ensured that I fell asleep for quite some time, getting up at noon when Himself came home and we had coffee.

The rest of the day just ... passed. I read the local paper (bad idea: it's more illiterate than ever. I think proof readers may be an extinct species) and progressed to the Observer. I became restless when the sun came out and went outside for a look round the garden, where I ended up sitting on the flatly uncomfortable bench and falling asleep in the sun. I woke up, boiling, just as the next phalanx of clouds rolled in. 

Before that, I'd taken the only photo of the day: the randomly cheerful pot in which I threw some nasturtium seeds beside a small wooden relic that I suspected may have been that little miniature fuchsia I'd planted years ago. Behold, the fuchsia lives to flower again, in a tiny fashion and the nasturtiums are doing better that any of the other seeds from the same packet which I planted in more recently-prepared pots. They do say they do best in poor soil ...

My half-French family are now on the Brittany ferry heading for St Malo, in a far bigger cabin than we used to get on our cross-channel trips. Truly they know how to live in style. Me, I'm just glad I'm not going anywhere right now, feeling like this. I dare say I'll recover. 

Some day.