Just a bit wild

When I was a child, and the grim news was of Mau Mau attacks and nuclear tests, we had a family name for days of rain and wind such as today: we called them "real Arran stinkers". They were the days we associated with our two-month Arran holidays (I know - I was privileged, rain or no rain) because in Glasgow for the rest of the year weather was somehow less noticeable. Now, of course, I know that the weather in Dunoon is, if anything, worse. The news is pretty grim also.

The local school pupils returned today - to online lessons, but nevertheless lessons. That meant that Pilates classes started too, online. Avid readers of my maundering may recall that in the first lockdown I did my Pilates in my study, narrowly missing the bookshelves with my head and a desk with my feet. Today, I couldn't face that - the study is even less tidy than it was - and with some hopes of getting the Facebook video to speak to the TV I set my mat on the floor in front of said TV and pressed the appropriate buttons. To cut a long story short, I got the picture but no sound; I suspect our Bose sound system requires another step which I didn't feel up to taking. So I switched it all off and peered at my iPhone instead as I stretched, breathed and balanced. At least I didn't hit anything.

Later in the day, as the triumphant messages from the Walking for Wellbeing participants began to ping in with their tallies of so many miles in the rain, I dragged Mr PB out to Glen Massan, there to pound up the road beside the burn and back down again. The rain came and went, the wind blew madly but not always on us because of the turns of the gorge, and the water roared all around us. Little torrents thundered importantly down improvised waterways on the hillside, into the ditch, under the road, escaping through new gougings in the muddy verge created to avert the floods of last year. The Massan Burn roared incessantly, creating the effect of walking alongside a 6-lane motorway; I noticed that in places the banks were becoming increasingly eroded and that several large trees and rhododendron bushes were now hanging into the water rather than hiding it from the road. My blip was taken from a spot on the verge from which I'm sure I didn't see so much of the river the last time I stood there ...

Despite the wet, I felt pleased with myself - the aching hips from all the road walking felt better than they've felt in weeks, though I don't know whether that was all the stretching in the morning or the steepness of the gradient making for a change of motion. And after I'd draped wet trousers from the loft ladder (I know) and my coat on the back of a chair in the warm, I discovered that I've moved back up a level in Italian and am now in a position to begin learning the Imperfect tense. (Lord knows what you do if you don't already know when to use such things - maybe just stop?)

Today's interesting opinion from Downing Street is that there's no real demand for vaccines to be administered during the night. Judging from the outpourings on Twitter, they've got that wrong. Too. Deary me.