Changeable

If I'd not been so busy today I would have despaired. The weather was entirely depressing all the way through till about 5pm, when suddenly the grey began to break and we were treated to some amazing flame-coloured clouds before the sun set. But as I said, I was busy ...

Because all things being equal ( I feel we have to insert such caveats these days) one half of my family is coming tomorrow to stay for some of their mid-term holiday, and I realised as I scrabbled around for sheets and duvet covers that we've had no-one to stay since their last visit two whole years ago. I have to confess that my house showed this fact - we've had visits from my friend and from the other half of the family, but no-one to stay over, and it's things like the bathroom and the spare bedroom that had harboured my undone ironing for months ...

So today I cleaned the bath and every inch of its surrounds; I rummaged in the chest for the single duvet covers; I took some clothes that I found bagged in a corner and went out with them to the Oxfam shop; I made bread; I made our main meal in the afternoon. After the obligatory collapse over teatime, I went to choir practice, where I had sufficient fun to forget several aches and pains and where my voice surprised me by surviving quite a belt at the end of the rehearsal. And we laughed. Laughing is good.

Because I was delayed by the bread baking and because Himself took the car the short distance to the rehearsal because he took an amplifier along, I found myself walking alone and slightly late, carrying my stand in one hand and my music case in the other, under a soaring full moon, improbably bright in this miraculously clearing sky. I tucked my music case on a wall and took the main photo, looking back the way I'd come across the gardens. You can see the bright lights of Argyll Street down to the left, and the lights in the tall windows of the Burgh Hall. 

But I must draw your attention to my extra, which I took thinking it'd be the only photo of this day. It's the dessert we had today: baked figs with honey and lemon, and quite the most indulgent and gorgeous pudding I know. I served it warm rather than hot, with fig, date and grain yogurt, and was sorry when it was finished. 

My entries for the next week or so are likely to be curtailed - I will have people sleeping in my study (which used to be a bedroom) and may well have to blip on my phone. I hate blipping on my phone ...