Respite

I seem to have been so preoccupied with huvtaes (you remember huvtaes?) these past weeks that today felt the first day when I was free to let my mind slide just a bit. It's not that I sat around doing nothing - because right now sitting around seems to be the worst thing I can do - but apart from making the wrong loaf for lunch (it was meant to be a brown loaf; I was distracted and it ended up a whiter shade of pale, only with seeds in it) what I wanted to do slotted into the time. The washing was done and hung out and more or less dried, tomorrow's sermon was tided up and printed out, we were eating our lunch by 1pm instead of an hour later.

This was part of the plan: we wanted to take advantage of the pleasant day it had become and still be home in time for the rugby. We were early enough to go that little bit further to walk in one of my absolute favourite places, along the shore road of Loch Striven. There was no ship in refuelling, so the loch was silent apart from the birds - the usual small ones, as well as the disgruntled squawk of a raven and the rather screechier sound of a heron we disturbed along the shore. The loch was utterly still, as was the air - and as the car thermometer told us, the temperature was 14.5ºC - half a degree lower than was forecast for Funchal today - and I found myself too hot by the time we'd walked a couple of miles, and took my jacket off. The cars that passed us all had polite drivers who waved to us for stepping off the road to let them by, and there were long stretches with nothing but ourselves. The photo is of one of the lovely features of the road near the beginning, where there used to be a row of four timber houses for workers - not sure if it was forestry or construction workers or what - with gardens. Now the houses are gone, and all that remains are clumps of daffodils on either side of the road, like this lot beside the beach. They are so golden, so random, so lovely. 

We were home just in time for the national anthems. I actually love hearing the Welsh sing theirs, and there were clearly a great many Welsh fans at Murrayfield, but again there was that thrill at the way Flower of Scotland was absolutely in time with the piper and the band, and the total unanimity of the second, unaccompanied verse with all the implications it holds. And the match? Totally exhausting! What a result!

As a footnote to that, I had a grandmotherly swell of pride this morning at the news that my younger grandson James had been selected to play for his school’s first team in the Rugby 7s tournament today - he's only in S3, so it's quite a thing. He scored in the first match ...

All these fit chaps running around have fairly left me exhausted. There are nights when I feel my age: this is one of them. But one advantage is that I seem to have missed the news in a bout of total somnolence. Can't be too bad...