Jardin sous la pluie...

We shouldn't have been here this weekend. We should have been in Edinburgh at a football tournament. But official guidelines were wielded with heavy-handed thoroughness and the boys weren't allowed even one spectator at some points, so here we were, stuck in Dunoon in the rain and pretty fed up. It meant that there was music in church, right enough - had Himself been away there would have been none, as the usual deputy was playing elsewhere, there being a shortage of organists in Dunoon right now. But it was too late for me to let the preacher I'd swapped with off ...

Before I go on, this is where I need to have a wee girn about restrictions. Not at amateur football, but in musical circles. I have great admiration for our FM, and for her advisor Jason Leitch, but I'm afraid they're not giving me the impression that they care about advancing the liberation of singing as Covid restrictions ease. We're still stuck wearing masks in church, where at the moment I'm the only person able to take mine off to sing from outwith the body of the congregation, and so far there has been not a cheep about letting amateur choirs meet again to rehearse. You'd think the resurgence of the popularity of choral singing was a myth. 

Rant over, for now. You will see from my photo that I didn't go looking for views today, didn't go for a walk. Instead I set about the collapsed foliage that was making our back garden path - the one we use all the time - utterly impossible. Since the rains came, the berberis has spiked us in the face while the rosa rugosa caught at our arms and the loosestrife (I've never written that before!) and astilbe wrapped itself wetly around our ankles. I filled a tub and a garden rubbish bag with cuttings, some of which were wildly jaggy. I got rather wet - I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and a disreputable pair of crocs - and slightly bloody, but I felt quite worthy. 

To crown it all, I was able to stay awake through every minute of Baptiste, of which I think I'm now getting the hang. And isn't that an absurdly constructed sentence?