Learning again

Today felt decidedly rest-of-the-year in character - no sunshine, intermittent rain, heavier later but mostly nondescript, grey clouds, all the lights on at midday when I wanted to read. We slept in a bit, and I felt too dozy to do my usual Italian in bed and instead read some journals and noticed things I had to deal with ... but later. By elevenses time the only work I'd done was washing the breakfast stuff and some extra Italian. The awful thing is that I can't think what on earth I did after elevenses, other than have a chat with my sister on the phone ... except that I tried and failed to print off a photo because my connection to the printer seems to have become ... erratic.

The one thing I did get round to at last was breaking out my new watercolour pencils to see how I got on with them. I read up some basic tips online, did some experimental things on scrap paper, then began on a small picture. I still have much to learn about painting skies. It was quietly old-fashioned, somehow - me sitting at the dining room table drawing, Himself in the kitchen making curry for tonight's (and other nights') dinner; it made me think of childhood, though my father never made curry (and nor did anyone else - I didn't taste it till university). However, unlike my child-self, by five o'clock I felt bleary-eyed and frowsty and knew I had to get out before it grew dark.

And so it was that the pair of us marched off in the rain down to the sea front, walked along into the town past the pier, noting how much more decrepit it becomes every time we see it, and came upon some kind of hoolie at the front of the Argyll Hotel - a wedding? It was an island of light and sound at the heart of the now-shut town, in contrast to the quiet of the sea shore on our right, where a heron stood contemplating a silver streak of light on the water.

And that was today. Very not me. And now it's over and I'm off.