The high life

Just like a good, clichéd football match, today was a day of two halves. I felt no need to get out of bed this morning, because outside the window was grey and misty and it was still raining, though without last night's ferocity. It stayed grey and wet all morning - until suddenly it wasn't. The clouds parted and the sun shone with some actual warmth, which there was no wind to dissipate. Amazing.

The only pleasant thing about the morning was a good long chat with #1 son - mainly about physio exercises and our older grandson, who's already making choices that will see him beyond school. It's alarming the way time's flashing past - I'm sure it was never like that with my own children, let alone myself. 

By the time the sun was out I had decided there was no time for frivolities like going for a walk, so I attacked a bit of the garden instead. We have an old stone wall separating us from our neighbour's garden, and it's held together by ivy which grows on our side and extends right over the top. The gardener has already dealt with the stuff on the wall (it gets out of hand and I'm past dealing with it) but we have an old weigela bush which is being strangled by offshoots and I set about rescuing it. This involved much grovelling round the back, between the wall and the bush, cutting infuriatingly tough strands of ivy and tugging it off. I managed not to put my eye out on a branch ... just.

By 5pm we were both shredded - Himself had been repairing grout in the shower cubicle - but put on some relatively glad rags (can I describe an almost entirely black outfit as "glad"?) and set off to walk to the Catholic church hall along the East Bay, where our church (we don't have a hall - yet) had borrowed the hall to have our annual quiz night. We had the remains of a rather nice bottle of red in a rucksack, having been at these things before - it always helps the little grey cells to lubricate their action!

It sounds douce, but actually became increasingly more hilarious as the evening wore on. We formed a team of 4 with Di and Rob, but all the other teams were much larger, so - and this is our story, and we're sticking to it - we had to be far more inventive to keep up. And apparently I was the only person to recognise Chernobyl in the picture round ...

My photo shows the amazing evening as we walked home - such a change from last night! Even my new phone camera couldn't define the crescent moon properly because it was so bright - but look at the stars! If I hadn't felt half dead I'd have stayed out longer, but ...

But it's now 12.42am and high time I was in bed. I'm blaming the coffee - there was no decaf. That's my story anyway, and I'm sticking to it.