Getting on with stuff

A nondescript day, weather-wise: grey, but with tantalising strips of blue sky that never seemed to be in the right place for a bit of sun; slight drizzle coming and going in the afternoon; warmer but not warm. The kind of day that in the past would have seen me accomplish far more than I managed today - though I did inadvertently clock up over 10,000 steps just doing what I had to. The morning saw me washing a load of clothes that Himself wore while cooking the curry batch yesterday - it's not good to come across that unmistakable smell lingering anywhere. I wrote the last of the cards that I wanted to put a note into, and looked out the ones that are heading abroad - to the States and to France. Himself had gone out to discuss programme layout for the carol service with the chap that's producing them, so I then treated myself to my coffee with the Sunday paper that I hadn't yet read.

After lunch I had an appointment at the Community Hospital for a chest X-ray, and as usual I underestimated the distance from the house and arrived overheated and slightly out of breath - I'd left the car to Himself, who was at the church practising and whose music case, complete with fat hymnbook and slim shoes, weights a ton. I was in the department for a total of ten minutes, I'd say, and out again before I'd cooled down at all. On my way home I posted the foreign cards; I met a former pupil accompanying her little boy from school and a friend from church whose car stalled on the steep hill I was waiting to cross. This led to my having to do a traffic cop routine, waving the car behind her out onto the main road and cursing quietly because she was so slow doing it that she kept missing chances ...

And then we went out together for a walk. I realise now that I'd already walked two miles at 21 minutes per mile, but we went down to the West Bay and back through the secondary shopping street - which is where I suddenly remembered that the only photos I'd taken today were the kind of seascapes I'm always posting on here, and decided to opt for something entirely different. So the first photo was taken through a shop window where they sell crafts and carved driftwood and is one of their rather magical sea-urchin lights, of which there were many sitting around in pairs and in singles. The other is the post-box on the pavement outside; I don't know if anyone yet knows who's responsible for cheering all the boxes in town up but the local paper didn't when I last checked. 

I went home after that; I had a jolly phone call with my pal Sarah which was more hilarious than texting and made the day a better place - a good, tears-rolling-down-cheeks laugh with a friend is a great remedy for stress. And then I put the marzipan on the Christmas cake, which I'll have to get round to icing next week.

I started watching an old James Bond movie after the news - I don't know that I ever saw You Only Live Twice, unless it was in a Christmas holiday on the telly when I slept through most of it -but I've set it to record in favour of doing this and going to bed. I found myself enjoying the recognisably old-fashioned nature of the film - and the young Sean Connery - and recalling how I saw the first of his Bond films, Dr No, when I was sixteen and went with a boy I'd met on holiday ...

But we'll not go there.