Better late ...

The grandfather clock in the hall has just struck one o'clock and here I am writing instead of sleeping like the sensible person I don't know that I've ever been ... My watch says the outside temperature is -2ºC and the street has that menacing dull shine that tells me that whatever grit was down from last night has now dispersed and the road is as treacherous as our front path was 6 hours ago. 

I simply couldn't get up this morning - hardly surprising, I suppose - and didn't get my Italian done because I was too sleepy to concentrate, so that I had to fit it in with a rush between elevenses and a zoom meeting at 11.30am. Did you know you can sign something important in a zoom call and have your witness at the other end? Then it was out to buy some A4 envelopes (I was sure I had some left over from long, long ago, but they've disappeared), back to put the mail together, and off along to the Post Office to post them. There were seven people ahead of me in the queue, and almost all of them were doing bank business.

It wasn't long after I got home that the travel agent phoned us to complete the process of winding up the aborted cruise next week (our ship is now on its way from Piraeus to Malta) and see what we wanted to do. After much to-ing and fro-ing - she really worked her socks off - we've booked instead another cruise at the beginning of September, stooging round the Adriatic for a week in a new ship. I shall look forward to that and try to find some little, perfectly formed trip in between now and then.

Frozen to the marrow from sitting in the study - we needed a computer handy to look things up while we consulted - we rashly downed a dram while I made a speedy meal, so by the time we were ready to have a rest before choir I for one was more ready for bed. However, we had our first choir practice of the new session; a former chorister with us returned to keep me company, and we sang some and discussed our future plans for concerts and rehearsal times. 

It was on our way out at 7.15pm that we discovered the new front path and steps had become an ice rink - the early snow had melted, not quite dried, and suddenly frozen hard on the smooth pale slabs. Luckily I was out first ... The roads were still all right then, but as I said at the start, look fearsome now. I took the photo at the door to the church hall where we rehearse, simply because I'm fixated on the moon these clear nights. I shall soon begin to howl ...