Getting warmer

Whisper it not ... the weather's warming up a bit. It'd better be: I changed the winter duvet for the summer one today, almost a month later than I've seen me do this momentous thing. Maybe not have all the bedroom windows open tonight - just in case. Not that I was up bright and early with all this in mind; I had a dreadful night last night and didn't get up till 9am. I don't think it was the fault of the quiz; I settled down for a wee read before putting out the light and suddenly Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow turned not quirkily soothing but horribly terrifying and probably resulted in far too much adrenaline for a peaceful night. Be that as it may, I tossed and turned for ages, then drifted off and into a nightmare - a real, thrashing around, talking-in-my-sleep nightmare, such as I've not had in decades. 

The bit I remember had me in charge of a girl, perhaps aged 11, who needed protection. We were being followed by a man and a large dog; we arrived in my front garden; I pulled the gate shut. However, the dog opened the gate; dog and man came in; I was wrestling with the man while shouting - in that awful strangled talking-in-your-sleep shouting - to the girl to go into the house and lock the door. 

That's when I woke - Himself had heard me making noises. I was thrashing about a bit. It wasn't quite 4am, and the blackbird was already giving it laldy outside. 4am - I ask you. So I slept till 9am.

The morning was one long scamper - stripping the bed, washing it all, hanging it all out (king-sized sheets on whirligig call for quite a technique). I put on bread for lunch. I went out for prescriptions and flour. I did a little Italian. 

I fell asleep after lunch.

But we did get out, and because we'd left it so late the sun had come out after a grey, misty morning, so it was lovely and over 20ºC. We were both legless with being so tired, but we managed to get up the Glen Massan road and felt good. Partly that was the bluebells. They're even more blue than they were the last time I was there, and I make no apology for posting today's blip - bluebells among the stalks of last year's bracken. To go with the photo, you have to imagine birdsong - a particularly amazing chaffinch, with a distant cuckoo in accompaniment - and the scent, like honey in the warm air. 

Do that, and you're in my particular little bit of heaven.