Too busy talking ...

As is my considered aim, I got up late this morning. After self-imposed tasks (early shopping) or actual huvtaes (sermon-writing), Friday tends to appear as a holiday in my mind, a sort of post-retirement weekend or even - dare I say it? - representative to my mind in my mid-forties of the life that old people enjoyed. I wonder what happened?

Anyway, late I was. I did a modest washing (in winter I find it easier to do it in small loads than to end up with damp clothes hanging in stupid places - so many of them don't tumble dry.) I did my Italian. I had coffee and discussed the last hymn for Sunday - Himself, having chosen it, felt that it didn't really go with the thrust of my sermon. I found some dollar bills in the bottom of the drawer where the current set of holiday papers go. (The bottom of the drawer tends to survive regular purges.)

Then there was a text from friend Di and I had to get a move on with my lunch so that we could walk together - an activity that tends to go by the board in holidays. It is a token of how vigorous our conversation (about the Middle East) became that I clean forgot to take any photos - in fact, this view from the top of the Chilean Garden was the first that I actually noticed. You can see that yesterday's blue sky was a minor player after the early morning, and by the time I was driving home there was a smirr of rain on the windscreen. We did, however, spot a trio of roe deer as we were heading down - they moved off the path when the dog barked, but met up again further down. Too far for a decent still photo - a video worked better. 

This evening I was watching a programme on Vermeer that was aired a couple of evenings ago. It always gives me a start to see his View of Delft hanging on an art gallery wall (in this case the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - this is a rather splendid site) because it's always hung in my house. To be more exact, it hung in my parents' house in a place where I saw it every time I sat at table in the dining room, and now it's on my stairwell; that's where I took the extra photo, stupidly, before I sat down to write this, which is why it's got that big flash flare on it. I may replace it with a daylight one if there's enough natural light some day. Anyway, the programme made me want to look at it more closely - it's a remarkable painting, but even more remarkable is the way a work of art becomes a part of your life in the way, say, your childhood teddy bear did. 

Or your computer. Or Blipfoto ...