High living?

No, not me - I must stop saying that - as I had a perfectly ordinary sort of day, though ultimately in beautiful surroundings. Today began grey, with the wet streets from overnight rain which had stopped by the time I got out to do the messages. Morrison's was horribly sparse this morning; a serious young man whom I accosted in the hope of getting orange juice with bits apologised after a foray into the cold store, telling me that it was so full of pallets and loading trolleys that he couldn't get beyond the first rank. Apparently Morrison's have cut jobs and there aren't enough shelf-stackers; I certainly notice that there are far fewer visible staff these days, and there were only two manned (or womanned) checkouts so I had to queue. Memo to self: write snippy Twitter post aimed at the firm ...

After that the morning just happened. I had time after coffee to read through and change bits in my sermon for Sunday - the links weren't clear enough - and do most of an online Sudoku. And after lunch we didn't take quite as long as usual to go out, and headed for Benmore Gardens - which is where my collage in Extras comes from: as the rhododendrons begin to fad, the azaleas are taking over, and the Handkerchief Tree is in full bloom,. 

It was also when I took today's main photo, of two men in orange mending stonework on the spire of St John's Church, which I can see from my window. The new ladder was erected there a couple of weeks back, and today we could see why; the side of the road and the pavement below it were cordoned off with warning notices. I'm especially impressed by the bloke on the left, who's off the ladder and just sort of ...dangling there. Both of them seem to have buckets tied to their waist harness , which seems an added refinement of horror - I loved abseiling, but this dangling from a man-made structure seems somehow worse than a mountain.

Walk over, we went to church for the late afternoon celebration of the Eucharist for the Ascension, marking the end of the Easter season and mercifully free, in our church anyway, of any unhelpful artwork involving feet and clouds. As we came out afterwards, there was a blackbird singing and the yellow azalea beside the church was out; surely it must be one of the most lovely of churches to come out from.

We ate raspberries for our pudding tonight ...