Summer's lease hath all too short a date...

Bother. I'd got used to warmth and sunshine - I've been wearing shorts for the best part of a week! The grey chill of the morning - I had two windows open to the easterly airflow - had me sitting with the duvet pulled up as I drank my morning tea, combatting the customary existential doom with what has become a recent habit: listening to Patrick Stewart reading Shakespeare's Sonnets. He's been doing this (I follow him on Instagram) since lockdown began, with a break of a few weeks because he was writing his memoirs, I think - he's arrived at Sonnet 114 now. Recently I've taken to reading the relevant sonnet for myself (I only knew a few of them before this) - I watch the video first, then look up the book, read it for myself, listen again with the book in front of me. Two things strike me: the actor quite often reads without understanding what Shakespeare was saying, let alone what he meant; and it's hard to understand complex poetry aurally unless the reader has complete understanding and the ability to convey the meaning orally. I love Patrick Stewart as an actor, and I love his voice - but this is a new angle.

Apart from that beginning, it was a pretty dreary day. The rain came earlier than forecast, while I was doing my online-instructed Pilates, so I decided it was ok to make soup - spicy bottom-of-the-fridge soup with some lentils for good measure. (I can't bear to make soup in good weather.) However, a text from my bestie came just at the right time to redeem the afternoon, and we shared a wet walk along the western shore of Loch Eck. I've posted exactly this view before, but there are few bodies of water whose character change more depending on the weather. Even the yelling sheep of my last walk there had gone, presumably to pastures new (see what I did there?) I learned, by the way, that the yelling was probably brought about by the annual separation of lambs from ewes - they were feeling anxious and bereft.

The plans for a weekend with family are developing; I realise that quite apart from the social joys (spot that one!) I shall have an opportunity to put on some relatively decent clothes. And shoes - what shoes do I wear in the city at this time of year? I feel so starved of change that I almost can't handle it. 

I shall possess  my soul in patience.