Aconites

It's been a strange sort of day, after a very poor night's sleep due to the ferocious heat in the hotel room due to a radiator that could not be turned down. I had to resort to the air conditioning to try to counteract it. But they were using low energy light bulbs, so that's OK!

I had spent an evening dozing in front of what apparently passes for television these days. I chose not to watch an hour of "Live Lambing" from a Welsh hill farm - but when I headed out of the hotel this morning I noticed in the field beside the hotel what I took at first to be a dead sheep but then realised was a sheep half-way through giving birth to a lamb. At least, she was still breathing; I just had to hope that she was doing OK. And yes, I did take a photo, but I have spared you the blip.

These aconites were right in the middle of the campus and much prettier for family viewing. Except someone used aconite in a murder case recently, didn't they? (Oh, stop it!)

This morning's meeting was fine, OK, usual sort of thing. But then I got on a bus to the station; it's about a twenty minute ride and there was a woman shouting into a mobile phone all the way - about how she was sick and fed up of carrying the Devil all by herself and how she survives all these attacks and so must be the chosen one and will use her powers etc etc. It was very loud and unrelenting and full of many references to various bodily parts and much eff-ing and blinding, with small children and elderly folk alike all cowering silently on the bus. She got off near the central church, still going strong. It had begun to dawn on me that there may not have been anyone at the other end of her mobile phone call.

During the hours on the train I finally got through the comment and editorial sections of the paper and turned to the obituaries and saw a photo of my old friend Fred. I know, I know, he died last week but it still took my breath away.

I haven't the energy to go into detail about how noisy the "quiet" coach was on the train, or about the woman who barged in front of me at the no 22 bus stop to tell two confused young language students "There is a queue, you know!". ("Yes, and you just jumped it yourself, bitch!" No, I did not say this out loud.) Or the young feller who sat down on the seat in front of me and proceeded to eat his chip supper on the bus the length of Leith Walk.....I quite like the smell of chips, particularly when I'm hungry, but I do find the reek of "soss" very unpleasant.

This should be the point where I say OK, rant over - but I suspect I've only just PAUSED TO DRAW BREATH.