In the waiting room

These days are beginning to feel like a long sojourn in a waiting room. Not, I hope, a final waiting room (there's a poem about that) but one where you hope there will be some relief at the end of your wait, only other people seem to turn up and be taken before you and you're not actually sure what time you were expected to be here anyway ... Partly, of course, it's the hope of vaccination sooner rather than later, with people in different parts of the country cheering because they've been called - people younger than me. And yet we're not quite at the time I was expecting to be summoned. It's trying. Then there's the feeling that outside the sun is shining and the day is slipping past and we're stuck in this groundhog queue.

Enough. There were good things about today. Like the sunshine on the hills while we were out this afternoon - it was too late for the north-west pointing glen we were in, but you can just make out a patch of sunlight on the hillside towards the right of this photo. And the pink clouds as the sky darkened were extremely beautiful. And our diocese of Argyll and The Isles has a new bishop, after the first episcopal election where I've actually  known all of the candidates, which is an odd feeling. And it was, incidentally, the first episcopal election carried out over Zoom.

And finally, a laugh. Such things are rare these days, but this gave me a real belly-laugh. My shopping angel popped into the shop to get me some bits and pieces that will mean I won't need to do the big shop till later this coming week. And when she put the bag in the porch and stood back, and I looked to see if she'd got everything, there was something joyfully crazy about it. As she said, just nipping out to buy a bottle of vodka, some orange juice, a bag of carrots (organic) and the wee paper just about sums up the situation.

And our subsequent collapse into hysteria just shows the state to which we've been reduced...