Hythe, March afternoon

We only enjoyed this amazing saturated golden sunlight for about ten minutes; most of the time the sun was breaking rather weakly through haze and high cloud. However, it was still good to walk on the seafront promenade, and it felt very peaceful. with fewer people that we often meet there and less traffic on the adjacent road. It's a long, smooth, wide promenade, ideal for wheelchair walks, and we watched a cormorant's long, slow wing flapping as it sat on a post above the water, an elderly dog whose enthusiasm outran its legs trying to chase a ball on the beach, a toddler exploring what both the pebbles and its legs can do... It's a good place for people watching as well as views across the Channel (and it always lifts my spirits to see that France is still there, its chalk cliffs, companions to ours, sparkling white in the low sun).

It was a busy day: the final relaxation in my online yoga class interrupted by the arrival of the BT engineer, who worked for something over two hours, mainly outside, to try to diagnose our ongoing problem with the speed of the internet connection, which in recent evenings has felt like a return to the era of dial-up internet with images failing to load and streaming becoming a frustrating near-impossibility. He thinks he has fixed it - kind of - though it seems that the ideal solution to the issues with our vintage copper cables would require digging up the road. We hope it won't come to that, though renewal is probably desirable in the long term. Meanwhile, I helped J with non-computer activities and lunch, and we were able to go out as planned to take advantage of a rare bright and dry day and to make quick stops at five places where we had little errands to sort out. By evening, J was ready to fall asleep watching a movie while I nodded off over my German and attempts at photo editing.