Almost at the solstice ...

Today's been horribly gloomy - not wet, not until we were about to go out in the afternoon, but unrelievedly grey. I can see from my family's photos and Lady Findhorn's blip for today that things were better in That Edinburgh ... bet that changes by the time we get across for Christmas!

After my heroic pre-breakfast shopping on Thursdays, I've grown accustomed to regarding Friday as a holiday. Himself gets up at the usual time and brings me tea: today I was so asleep when he put it down beside me that I didn't really know what was happening. I drank the tea, did some Italian on my phone, then put it all down and had another little nap ...

The rest of the day wandered past without my really achieving anything at all. I made a couple of phone calls, I made coffee at the appointed hour, I did more Italian because I had extra points to use up. I wished we were in Edinburgh for the grandchildren's carol service in the Cathedral, but we have our own service on Sunday and we're past jinking back and forth the way we might have in the past. I read the local paper with a growing sense of dislocation.

After lunch and a further read at last Sunday's paper, we went out. It was 3 o'clock when we stirred ourselves, and the rain had begun. However, it was 10ºC and there was no wind, and we took ourselves not to the coast and the perils of the open road without hi-viz tops but to the old road at Puck's Glen, the "Pensioners' Mile" of which I've blipped before. It grew dark as we returned; a man with an enormous Boxer dog was almost upon us before either party realised it, but he was holding it fast on a sturdy lead, explaining that it was such a friendly dog he was worried it'd knock someone over. Profuse thanks all round. 

My blip, I'm afraid, came because I thought this looked like one of the devastated places of our world today. We were actually passing this house, several years ago now, when its roof fell in, very dramatically for no apparent reason, and since then it's just sat there, gradually reduced to a memory. The rain was falling steadily, the water in the ditch was gurgling, and we felt there was no-one else out other than us and the man with the dog ...

Right now, dinner is being made down stairs (it's Friday!) and I have a wonderful glass of wine and have eaten a modest handful of cashews. Life is already feeling better, but there will be no "better" in the places I thought of this afternoon.