A place of refuge?

Monday. The whole week stretching in front of me - and suddenly, at nearly midnight, I'm panicking about all the things that will have to happen before it's Monday again. I think this is new, this anxiety that somehow doesn't go so far as to galvanise me, say, over breakfast, or when I sit after lunch and allow myself to doze. It's not as if the various milestones are particularly onerous - some are things I look forward to - it's just that they are many and varied and I feel I've lost my mojo that in the past would take all that in my stride.

So what of today? My Pilates teacher texted at breakfast to say she wasn't up to taking class today, and included a video of a previous class. At least I managed to keep the timing for that, and did the class at the usual time. But over coffee I spent about an hour chatting online to my pal, and spent the remains of the morning in a fruitless search for a couple of big envelopes to put books in. Well past 1pm Himself was sounding a little plaintive about lunch, so we had some - and then I caught myself dozing off as mentioned above. I managed to rouse myself to negotiate one of these interminable mystery chases to speak to a real person in my online banking set-up, and as result to put some completed paperwork in an envelope - but didn't get the length of actually posting it. No, we went for a walk instead.

The weather had been wet and windy since yesterday, but when we stuck a nose out of the door we found that the rain had diminished to negligible. A short walk along the River Eachaig beckoned - I love a flooded river. I wasn't disappointed - great swirls of dark water, black in the deep bits, dark brown in the shallows, spreading out under the trees on the bank where golden gorse bobbed on the swollen river that had invaded its territory. I took loads of photos and videos, none of which I'm posting here because it's getting repetitious, my constant return to the same views.

Instead, I'm blipping four daffodils which I rescued from the wind yesterday, in what has become my icon corner of the sitting room. St Andrew looks gravely out from one side, the beautiful painting commissioned by me 18 months ago after seeing a larger version on the iconographer's Twitter feed; the Virgin and Child on the right is an icon I bought in Crete in the 1980s at the request of the then incumbent of our church, who wanted to hang it in the Lady Chapel. Now the chapel is no longer used as such - it's the narthex of the church and had, in more sociable times, been taken over as the coffee servery - and the icon was moved to a position where it was too easily damaged by a casual shoulder in the prayer corner. I rescued it, though I've been prevented by Covid from having it repaired, and here it will stay. Looking at them today, I pondered the thought that a Holy Week retreat makes busyness, and thoughts of busyness, irrelevant.

Tempting, but not possible. Not this year.