Quiet river

There's a storm coming, we're told - in about seven hours from now, the winds seem to be going to gust madly in the black figures reserved for such things on the BBC app - but right now, as this afternoon, it's calm and strangely mild, with some clear patches of sky as well as mists. A bit like how I always feel at this time of year, in a way - there are so many huvtaes before the month is out, and yet every now and then there are quiet moments when I manage to put them all into their mental boxes and shut the lid on them.

Being involved in church music as well as family life has always meant an Advent not of quiet spiritual preparation but of rehearsals, of stress any time a cough is heard in the vicinity, of the organist disappearing to practise when I want him to write Christmas cards. But today's still moments came with this walk - the river is the Eachaig just past the Benmore bridge - and some time spent looking at artists' representation of the Annunciation.

And that, I'm afraid, stirred a need to write something about Gabriel's visit to Mary - which will have to be revisited, time carved out to play with words. After, of course, the shopping, the Evensong rehearsal, the last present-buying ...