Stretching and other pursuits

Today I was wakened by torrential rain - all the bedroom windows were open, so I couldn't miss the sound of it battering down - and by the time I was relatively compos mentis and sitting up drinking tea there was a great lightning flash followed by a most satisfactory crack of thunder. (I don't know I'd have appreciated it so much had I known about the roof strike in the north ...) It was still raining when I went out to Pilates, but the sun began to shine while we were still stretching and grunting and by lunchtime it was once more warm and sunny. 

Because I can't bear to sit around after doing all that stretching and strengthening we went out later - first to post my old driving licence off so that they'll send me another one, then on to Benmore Gardens for what I promised would be a gentle walk. At first the gardens were not peaceful - our schools go back in the next couple of days, but there were several excitable families with hosts of weans kicking off in several corners of the lower reaches. We climbed slightly higher than I'd intended, which meant that by the time we'd sat on a bench having a text chat with #2 son, currently 3 hours ahead of us in Dubai, working, the families seemed to be gone for their tea and we descended in peace. 

The photo comes from the ornamental pond. When we first lived here there were goldfish in the pond and the water was clear; now there are no fish, merely some water lilies and a carpet of pond weed. I thought it looked rather lovely with that large red-leaved plant in the foreground.

I'm wondering if the infuriating and often totally inconvenient dry cough I'm currently being annoyed by could have any connection to the virus I had from the start of June and which I now think might have been whooping cough. Whatever it is - that, or too much talking last week - it's driving me mad. Or maybe it's something growing out there just now ...

Tomorrow charming Irish Allan from EE is phoning us again; yet another bit of buckshee equipment arrived in today's post in an attempt to boost our WiFi signal to anything like what we had before. I'm not holding my breath ...