Time out

Despite dispiriting weather forecasts, today was really rather pleasant, marred only by a brief and rather localised shower in the afternoon. I was so struck by the sunny morning when I arrived in the supermarket car park at 8.30am that I even took a photo there - I'll stick it in as an extra, partly because it shows how conveniently-situated my house is up on the hill above the town.

You will gather from this that I was trying very hard today to regain a normal sort of rhythm to my life; I simply couldn't be bothered with another week of random meals because my larder was being randomly replenished. In fact, if I hadn't been thrown back on that chilli on Tuesday the Quorn Horror might never have happened ... I glowered at the ranks of textured mould as I passed it this morning and felt like writing warning graffiti on the shelves.

I just had time for breakfast before I had to go and see my lovely GP - an appointment made earlier in the week to try to sort out the allergic problems of eyes and coughing. He'd seen the note from NHS24, was most solicitous, and checked me over before agreeing that indeed all my problems seemed allergy-based, and that I was in fact functioning pretty well otherwise. New eye drops and stronger antihistamines to try ...

After lunch I took myself off to meet Di at Benmore Gardens for an old lady walk that turned out to be reasonably strenuous as the usual path up the hill was roped off for maintenance and we ended up using one of the steep ones with lots of steps. That's where the rather odd blip photo comes from, as we came down through the woods - I was struck by the way that mossy tree-stump seems to be invaded by aliens sucking the life-force from it, though Di opined that the tree beside it was just taking nutrition from its probable parent tree. We saw a red squirrel scampering down the hillside and up the tree beside us, which was good, because we've seen far fewer than usual this year.

Thanks to all the Blip-friends who sent commiserations - I'll do my best to be more upbeat in future!