Back to busy ...

For all that the weather was pretty grim, today was one of these days that make me appreciate the retirement I've enjoyed increasingly over the past 14 years. I was up rather later than usual on a Monday - our Pilates teacher was taking the half term with her family - so the first thing I did was linger over breakfast listening to Radio 4, in my dressing gown. However, after that there was a week's worth of washing (which I had to dry indoors, as it was sleeting hard outside) and the shopping for the coming week as the larder was undeniably bare. So far, so domestic.

The afternoon was taken up first by a phone-call about a workshop that a friend has proposed I do on Lewis, in June. I'd already arranged a brief holiday there, but this is the icing on that particular cake, as I get to talk about poetry and faith and to sing Compline in the ancient St Moluag's chapel in the north of the island. Later, I put what look to be the finishing touches to the manuscript (can you call it that when it's a computer file?) for the collection of poetry I'm having published. The most exciting addition today was the purchase of an ISBN and bar code - proved strangely finicky to get accurate. I also removed one poem (there are about 100 of them) and substituted another for it on the grounds that it seemed better as a poem. We'll see ...Anyway, it's back to the printer tomorrow, along with the artist who's given me the cover image and the section line drawings. Exciting stuff.

We also fitted in a quick walk in which we managed to avoid the sleet storms until we were almost back at the car. Five minutes was enough, however, to soak us. Blipping the yellow gorse and beyond it the dark line of Loch Eck with the snowy hills overlooking the water, which is our water supply.