Winter...?

Well, that was a change! I knew the temperature had dropped the moment I got out from under the duvet (there's no heating in the bedroom) and it didn't rise above 6C all day. After all that unseasonable mildness, I think we were feeling it far more than usual. I took the chance to wash everything in the linen basket and hang it out - I can 't say it dried much, but the dripping things dripped away (Oh Lord - I've forgotten them: they're still in the garden!) and I got most of the stuff away later, even ironing a couple of shirts and so on. 

After coffee we went out for a walk because the sun was going a bit, heading to Benmore Gardens for a change. We don't go there in winter afternoons if there's any chance of sun, because it has a hill behind it and the sun goes very early. That's where I saw this magnificent tree - Sorbus alnifolia - whose red colour comes from thousands of tiny red berries, more thousands of which lie all around it in a red pool on the grass. We climbed to the top of the hill, noting that said hill seems to be steeper every time we visit.

And that was me in for the rest of the day, though Himself went out to practise the organ in the chilly church and came home frozen at teatime. I took the chance to have a first run through the exercises prescribed for my back by yesterday's physio. I don't know if it was the exercises - for she had me doing them yesterday to check that I could - or simply the suddenly cold, damp weather, but I've had a new variant on the sciatica I'd managed to deal with now manifesting itself on the outside of my leg above the ankle. It's been jumping away merrily for several hours now, often for no good reason - real "ooya" moments. 

The news from Ukraine - and Poland - has been worrying all day; it's a relief that Nato reckons it was an air defence missile rather than a Russian one that hit that Polish village, though none the less tragic for its victims. And it must be awful, living under the kind of bombardment that hit Ukraine yesterday - as Yaroslava from Kyiv said "It's not ok." And I say that, and then soothe myself by watching Portrait Artist of the Year on Sky and feel both useless and hypocritical. 

At least I'm not watching I'm a Celebrity ...