Lent 2

I've run out of creativity for a heading tonight - it's too late (again.) Lent 2 it is. Not that we're fasting or any participating in any other approved observance; but  it means that in church Himself and I get to lead the congregation through the Lent Prose, which is a lovely chant, in place of singing the Gloria. Somehow we didn't leave church today until 12.45 pm - a whole 75 minutes after the service ended, in a church that was never warm even with the heating on but chills down perceptibly when the time-clock switches it off...

We were so cold when we got home that even while the coffee was brewing I was upstairs changing from a shirt and cardigan into my hairy comfort-blanket of a fleece top, and the pair of us sat over the fire nursing our cups so that lunch, always doomed to be a bit late, was well into the afternoon. This is why we were only leaving the house after 4pm for the walk that is even more necessary than usual. As the weather seemed uniformly cloudy today, we headed north for a change, passing by the Puck's Glen car park where we'd thought to park because it was busy and we didn't want busy. West Loch Eck, on the other hand, was utterly peaceful. We stopped to talk to one man outside his gate - he hailed us - about the wonderful silence of the place, and the return of the red squirrels; another solitary man hailed us with the customary "Y'right?" - and that was that.

A moment of hilarity came when there pinged into my phone a clip from Edinburgh where my older granddaughter was playing in her weekly jazz band session. I couldn't resist playing the clip, quite loudly - until I saw a sheep in the field below us staring quizzically at us, and desisted so that I could take his photo instead. The photo was taken from the point on the walk when the loch begins to stretch out in front of you, with its wonderful symmetry of points and angles so that you don't know where hillside ends and reflections begin. The birds were singing their wee heads off and and was positively therapeutic.

Talking of therapy - I'm back to taking next to no pills unless it's a paracetamol when I'm desperate. Apparently ( I looked it up today) a side-effect of the drug I was taking is on your sleep, and can give rise to unsettling dreams. I hadn't read that when I had a strange dream between 6 and 7am today, in which I was simultaneously trying to get someone to help an injured cyclist in Bath Street in Glasgow (the Charing Cross end) and couldn't seem to get the words out to an annoying man who didn't know what to do. When I got up, Himself asked what I'd been talking about - apparently I was making a dreadful noise in my sleep. 

Midnight again. My pumpkin is here ...