Getting Things Done

I realise I have a tendency in the summer - or at least in summer weather - to regard the whole of life as summer holidays, the kind of time when you expect to dedicate all your efforts to having a good time, relaxing or strenuous, but all entirely for pleasure and diversion. No wonder my house gets like a tip. And as the good weather returned to our neck of the woods today, I could well have spent the day pottering around or planning some entertaining outing.

So it was with a glow of inner worthiness that I found myself in the just-about-to-be-sunlit back garden during breakfast time (yes, I tend to spin it out: I love breakfast time) hanging out the first of a couple of washes and breathing in the incredible scent of my garden just now. The old bush of white roses (do you call one with multiple roses in the first flush a floribunda? It seems appropriate) is huge after a fairly rigorous pruning, tending to hang over the few steps down from the drive-in, and smells amazing. The border is crammed with rosa rugosa because that's what it does, and it too has a wonderful scent, as does the philadelphus, which will soon be dropping its flowers, and there's a single cluster of the old pink roses against the wall which I never do anything about but flourishes nonetheless. At that time in the morning the Dunoon rush hour, such as it is, has passed, so there was little sound of cars, and all I could hear was the hum of a thousand bees doing their thing among all this scented loveliness. It was a moment I wanted to preserve, one of these moments when you remember to say "this is good". Perhaps writing of it now is preserving it, in a way.

Breakfast over and cleared away (that porridge jug is always a bit of a thing) I organised myself sufficiently to go down to Argyll Street with a bag of clothes needing altered - two dresses that are dowdily just below the knee, which doesn't suit me at all, and a pair of trousers of which the seat could accommodate two bottoms (meant to be comfortable in hot weather, but there are limits ...) The shop was closed for much of the past year, so it was great to see her open for business, this young Latvian woman whose teeth clearly don't ache when she has to sew anything. (Mine do.)

I pored over some recipe books to plan my first dinner for friends since the week before the first lockdown, bought some preserved lemons as I don't have time to make them, and realised it's high time I did some ordinary shopping as all we had for lunch was an egg ... Which we ate in the garden. Mr PB went off for a physiotherapy appointment and I fell asleep in the sun with the Sunday paper. 

Later, we drifted up the road to church and recorded two hymns and an anthem for the online service on Sunday. It was 18.5 degrees in the church, which was close to miraculous, and I was in good voice, also miraculous. 

Meanwhile the Passport Seekers were in Glasgow having their interview and submitting their application for Anna's replacement passport. They were told a week; fingers crossed it takes less time. I fear they may be climbing the walls - especially as Edinburgh appears to be having much less good weather than we are.

Blipping the view from my breakfast table as the sun begins to edge round into the back garden.