Snapper snapped, blethering

It's not often I nick someone else's photo for my blip, but today it seemed appropriate ...

A chilly Sunday. I find it really sad that in July I have to think about what to wear to church so's not to be frozen by the end of the service, and that really there's so little change from most of the year in the number of garments it's wise to wear. I chanced a thin t-shirt under the leather jacket I used to wear as a teacher (and I retired almost 20 years ago) and by the time I got home I was frozen. One of God's frozen people?

Actually, our church isn't full of frozen people in any but the physical sense. It seemed particularly obvious this morning that the congregation was very much alive - the singing was electrifying, the mood charged with an indefinable emotion, and afterwards, over coffee, the conversations with friends and strangers alike was animated and genuine. There's a lot of love about in our church at the moment - it may seem a strange thing to say, that it should be the norm, but when it's alive and thriving it's very clear that this is not ordinary. I think we're very fortunate. 

It was during this post-service period that the Rector, now our Bishop-elect, suddenly whipped out his phone and took the above photo, of me and a pal comparing grandchildren's photos on our phones. He was laughing - at us or with us - and we do look a pair of mad grannies sitting there as the rest of the congregation pile into the narthex for coffee. 

All this singing and socialising fairly takes it out of us these decrepit days - we didn't sit down to lunch till 2pm, as Di came for coffee and a post-Covid (her, not me) catch-up. We both began drifting off to sleep after we ate, but forced ourselves to get up and go out, down to the Ardyne for a modest, old fogey-type walk along the beach road in the teeth of a brisk wind. We talked to the wee black bulls lying down in the lee of the gorse bushes but they just flapped their magnificent eye-lashes at us. (Have you ever looked at a cow's eyelashes? Fabulous!) I took photos of wild flowers and tried to ignore the slate-grey sea and the very obvious rain showers falling on the Ayrshire coast and the Cumbraes. We came home to steak burgers and strawberries and that was that. 

An awful lot has to happen in this coming fortnight - no more hiding away in Edinburgh and saying "we're on holiday". But right now I'm banishing it from my mind.

Compartmentalisation - that's the secret.