Keepin' the heid

I began thinking today of when the clocks go forward for the summer - surely it must be soon? I ask because I'm in danger of finding the sun actually shining on my face before I'm ready to waken up unless it changes soon and gives me an hour's respite for a further few weeks - then it'll have to be shutting the right-hand curtain when I go to bed and the gradual increasing of cover right up till midsummer, and I really don't like having my bedroom curtains shut!

I was a bit smartish this morning because I had an appointment with the physiotherapist at the surgery this morning - I ended up going without first having had breakfast because it seemed too much of a rush otherwise. She was lovely - I've seen her before - and now I have a new set of exercises aimed at this specific situation. I also seem to have no reflexes left - do you all still find your foot jumps up when your knee is hit with one of these wee hammers? Maybe I'm dead and hadn't realised ...

I took the extra photo on the way down the road before 9am, just because it was all looking so blue and I thought this view showed how close the town lies to the forested hillside behind it - ten minutes from my house you can be on the hill. But this bit still looks quite grand, in a shabby way - I remember when we first moved here and I was living in a council house on the outskirts of town I used to walk along here with the pram and think it was enough like Glasgow to feel more like home. 

This outing over, I spent the morning doing inconsequential things. I risked hanging out a washing of fairly lightweight items on the broken whirligig and nothing fell over, I did some Italian but fell asleep over it and typed nonsense, I rang Di who also has a sore back but different, just to share a moan. We had a sinful black pudding slice in a roll for lunch - with dollops of tomato sauce, natch - and I fell irresistibly asleep again. 

It took an effort to rouse myself - and Himself - from this comatose state (what is wrong with us?) to go out, but we did. I didn't feel like going far in the car, but let Himself drive us to Benmore Gardens again, which we seemed to have more or less to ourselves apart from the gardeners, two of whom stopped their little vehicle - they whizz around in these, carrying heavy equipment in the back - to greet us, say it was nice to see us back again, tell us about the hundreds of trees lost on the upper reaches of the gardens, which we'll not be allowed to visit till they've cleared them. But once they'd gone, it was silent and beautiful; a woodpecker was giving it laldy on the hillside above us while other birds sang incredible counterpoint. The main photo is of an extraordinarily gnarled, huge conifer that has survived the storm, presumably because it's in the lower gardens, with its amazing bark that peels off in long strips - you can see it caught in the low sunlight. 

The title of today's blip actually applies to what happened between our return home and dinner, when I phoned the travel insurers that Hays had dealt with when insuring our next holiday. We never used to have this faff, but the advent of the regular prescription regime of the aged means I had to add some medical information and the website of this lot made me wish I'd just stuck with Avanti and done it all myself from the start. I had to fight not to explode at the questions that the hapless operative had to ask - the way one answers triggers a whole lot of supplementaries, and I thought I'd never get the dinner on. Anyway, it's done. 

We made it to online Compline, but I think I've slept all evening since. Now I'll probably lie awake and cross ... hard though it must be to believe I get cross. Moi?