Foggy

Today felt like winter. Not the depths of frozen-ness, but 6ºc more all less all day right up till now, at 9.40pm, with dense fog in the morning that slowly cleared from the south just in time for darkness to fall. And these dark mornings, I've noticed, I don't waken early and suffer existential angst as I do when the sun wakens me at some unearthly hour; instead I sleep like the dead and waken at 7am, which is much more reasonable. 

Only two outings today - to my painting class in the morning and to choir in the evening - so I walked to my teacher's house along the promenade so that I could enjoy the calm, fog-bound sea, the hazy suggestion of land on the other side, the formations of purposeful oystercatchers sweeping low over the water. That's where my two photos came from - the main one is the low tide when the fog was still lying all round us, the extra looking south past the pier to where the sky has cleared somewhere towards Ayr and the tide has swept in right up to the wall below me. 

Today I finished my second little Italian watercolour and started practising sketches for a possible shot at painting a portrait - I was hoping to try from life, but the fellow-student I wanted to practise on seems to have stopped coming. Perhaps he got wind of what I was proposing ...

Choir was better than we feared, with some good blend and excellent tuning as well as some of my favourite pieces, including our own Advent Song, but it's hard on morale when we never seem to have everyone present. This time the culprit is the cold that has robbed Himself of his voice and has smitten the first soprano, as well as the post-Covid cough that afflicts a second soprano and leaves her exhausted. It's tough. We have two more rehearsals ...

But all will feel more achievable after some toast and marmalade.