Capricious

Because it was taken within minutes of my getting up this morning, it seems appropriate to comment first on today's photo, which is the view out of my north-facing window of the three in the bay of the bedroom. It looked so beautiful after the descent of yesterday's gloom that I wondered if we were being granted a respite, but when I went out to feel the air it was perishing cold in a penetrating wind and when we came out of church towards midday we were suddenly pelted by large and very stinging hailstones. I actually took a mad photo through my streaming windscreen of a friend from church who'd decided to mime Singing in the Rain, only in a duffle-coat, and I'm going to add it as an extra as it's too crazy to put out there in public ...

Here, however, I have to say that our Palm Sunday Eucharist was probably the best such service I've ever attended. Our new rector was away taking the service in our paired church on Bute, and we had our own Canon Paddy taking the service here - a service to which she'd given a great deal of thought, pruning and shaping and consulting Himself about the hymns so that it formed a telling whole rather than the marathon this day often produces. 

Di came for coffee for the first time in ages - either she or we have been otherwise distracted for a while - so lunch was late, the papers asked to be read, we were both exhausted, and the afternoon was well spent before we decided that tired or no we needed some air and took ourselves down to Ardyne for a couple of miles on the farm road. The hail made a comeback on our way back to the car - I was glad I had a cap with me, as it stung!

It's late again. It's past midnight. I was seduced by Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, which turned up on the telly after the news, but I've set the rest of it to record. I love that film, and it's ages since I saw it. I shall go to bed and dream of dancing the tango ...