All at sea

Hah! Good title, huh? Nothing like a wee visual metaphor, especially when it's one of the few photos I took today ...

It's been quite busy, actually. I needed to make sourdough first thing and leave it to rise (I've just baked it, and found when I went to remove it from the oven that I'd left the roasting tin full of water sitting on top of the oven instead of inside it. Crust is like iron as a result - if it doesn't soften by lunchtime tomorrow we'll be losing teeth over it ...); I wanted to make soup from the bottom of the fridge, if you get me. So after breakfast it was full kitchen goddess mode till coffee time. Then Himself went off to practise the organ and I met up with my pal just outside my gate (she was in town working) and we bashed off into the suddenly changeable weather for a brisk walk round the town. We had things to discuss, things to sort out, things to turn from irritants into humour ... Anyway, it was great to get out, even though I was soaked by the end of it. 

The organ claimed Himself's attention again in the afternoon, but I had a long phone call from another church musician, the tenor of our quartet and then stuck the marzipan onto my Christmas cake. The marzipan is inferior to the usual stuff, which I have been accustomed to buy loose, as it were, carved off a big lump; it didn't fit the whole cake so it's a bit of a mess. I shall ice it impeccably another day. After that it was time to do some Italian, though I found myself actually falling asleep at the computer. I usually reserve that trick for Blip-writing, but I'm currently wide awake.

The evening news brought the not unexpected trimming of Christmas freedoms (probably A Good Thing) and the subsequent flurry of worried clerics on Facebook. According to the rather marvellous Travelling Tabby site Argyll and Bute have had no new Covid infections today, but we'll just retreat into post-Christmas stupor, I reckon, until it's over. I'd already had the definitive cancellation conversation with both my sons in Edinburgh, and renewed promises of the post-vaccination celebrations to come. I don't, by the way, agree with the people who are criticising the government for curtailing Christmas now - what seemed ok a couple of weeks ago no longer seems that way, and though Johnson's clearly been all at sea for years I'd say he's found a wee island of sense to perch on just for today.

Blipping the sea looking rather wonderful in a rising wind off the West Bay in Dunoon. You can make out the two white landmarks of the Gantocks light and the Cloch lighthouse, and the red and white hull of the Western Ferries ship in the distance. 

And now to sleep ... perchance to dream?