Seeing clearly...

I'm loving the camera on my new iPhone. I ordered it away back at the beginning of this lockdown, and it's been a joy to find how much clearer the photos - even those taken on the run, as it were - have turned out. The weather changed today; after a clear start cumulus clouds, some tall and majestic, others grey and rain-bearing, started moving down from the north. But with that change came a new clarity; combined with the new phone it resulted in this shot of the Arran mountains over the top of Bute. Last week they were pale and hazy; not today. And although my own surroundings were beautiful, and we were enjoying walking, I longed to be on Arran, perhaps in Glen Sannox, and I remembered last year's epic walk up Glen Rosa and wondered when we'll be able to go there again.

Actually I felt very out of sorts with my surroundings today. Part of me thought fondly of the anonymity of the city of my childhood; part of my attention was taken up by the man next door who insists on burning rubbish in his garden in the middle of the day, regardless of people who are out in their gardens round about, or who have washing on the line. When he lit up today, and the smoke swirled round my garden, I was consumed by impotent rage. Not good, in the current situation.

But like the Pollyanna I aspire to be, I'll end with the good things from today. I had my online Pilates class for an hour, and didn't fall off one foot once. I felt good after all that stretching. I made a rather perfect-looking sourdough loaf for lunch. I had an idea that might turn into a poem. And I made a truly delicious dinner.

And one sad thing: I finished reading Margaret Attwood's The Testaments. I've been immersed in it in a way that reminded me of my childhood, and I feel bereft that it's done. I have some books on my Kindle, and I need to order a couple of actual books, but it won't be Gilead. If this newspaperless period has done nothing else, it's rediscovered the reader in me.

And this is good. I've missed her ...