Wetter still and wetter ...

I find myself singing adapted words to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory - "wetter still and wetter shall thy days become ..." - but that way madness lies and I shall desist. It really was a foul day, however, and one which might well bring the madness within us all to the fore; I don't think it stopped raining till now, about midnight, when I don't see any movement in the puddles in the road below us.

I felt so tired again this morning, but roused myself to refill the bird feeders - feeling more like St Francis every day. Within minutes of my going back inside the bird table was mobbed - blue tits, a couple of coal tits, hordes of dunnocks from the hedge and a squadron of four pigeons, who turned up hopefully but had to make do with the spillage from the messy eaters above.

I went out before lunch, driven primarily by a kind of rage. The postie has taken to turning up early, about 8am, and shoving the envelopes willy-nilly, often folded over together, into the letterbox leaving them sticking out into the rain. Today's post was at least meant for us, unlike the other day's, but two Christmas cards were decidedly soggy after their sojourn stuck in the flap. Our former post person  tended to open the door and drop the mail inside the porch, or even leave it neatly on the shelf therein, but this operative seems incapable of taking care. So I took my irritation down the road to the sorting office and explained my complaint to not one but two men behind the screen - the boss came after I'd already told the story, so I had to repeat it to him. They promised to have a word. I wasn't horrid, by the way - just in case you should think I'm not aware of the opportunity for reprisals!

I was wet when I got home, but the coat and trousers had dried by 4pm when I went out again, this time to walk to the church to join Himself who had driven up to practise. It's better to rehearse the piece for communion in situ, so I marched up through the gathering gloom and got this photo as I approached the old bridge over the burn from the Bishop's Glen. You can make out the outline of the church above and to the left of the street lights, perched on its hill among the trees. I met two young women on the steep driveway, who asked if I was the choir (!) and confessed to having kept Himself off by chatting to him - but they want to return for the carol service, so that's good.

And that was that, really. Apart, that is, for watching obsessively as #2 son's plane crawled its way across China, the foothills of the Himalaya, Afghanistan ... he's now crossing the Gulf, on his way home. It's been night all the way, I think ...

And it's night here, now, and time for bed. Again.