Chillin'

I think I may be getting the hang of this busy doing nothing ideal that I used to have off to a T when I was much younger and we took our boys abroad for a hot fortnight in Crete or Portugal, when I knew how to spend a whole afternoon in a deck-chair with a book, perhaps slipping into the pool to cool off, perhaps making the effort to go to a beach, or for a coffee ... all the things that seem so difficult when you're in your own house, where small things beckon to you as needing done and bigger tasks lurk, becoming bigger by the week. But today?

Today it was still cloudy over wet streets when I reluctantly got out of bed (I made the mistake of going back to sleep after having my tea and doing some Italian, early to get the bonus points in the evening - it's a Duolingo thing). However, by the time I was having breakfast the sky was clearing and by 11ses time it was sunny, although briskly windy. I did achieve something before lunch: I found what seemed to be a poem scrawled in my writing on the bottom of an NHS hospital appointment letter for some months ago and managed to decipher most of it and type it out and save the file. I don't know that it's much good, though the sentiment still holds - I'll let it brew for a bit.

I fell asleep after lunch. I think the new antihistamines, though not actually doing much for my eyes, make me terribly dozy. When I came round it looked so gorgeous outside that I took my undemanding book (Richard Coles's Murder Before Evensong - very soothing and gently amusing) outside with a couple of cushions and my sunglasses and sat reading peaceably until it was time to go along the lane for drinks and nibbles with our oldest Dunoon friends. I've put as an extra the photo I took when our host was fetching the drinks - Himself has a rather odd expression which may herald the arrival of the same - partly because I've seen so many people saying they were having trouble with extras; maybe I'm not getting the circumstances. Anyway, we had a jolly two and a half hours of drinking and chatting and laughing and drinking and the sun disappeared behind the clouds that the eagle-eyed might discern above Himself in the photo and the wind became more insistent ... and by the time we stood up, both bottles and glasses were empty, the plate of canapés likewise, and we were all decidedly chilly. These are the first people we socialised with as the first lockdown eased, the people who came to christen our new patio last year, the people with whom we just ... talk. It's great. 

To end my non-doing day, I ate the curry which Himself had cooked earlier and collapsed just in time to see the ten o'clock news. Result!

Main photo, by the way, is of the dwarf fuchsia which used to live in that blue pot beside the front garden path. I thought it had died, brought it through to dispose of, forgot about it - and then found it bursting with life only after I'd added a nasturtium or two and a sweet pea seed just to use them up.

 I think it's glorious.