Meanwhile in the silence ...

I think I need to explain that title first, huh? I'm posting this photo of an exquisite white flower that I thought at first was a passion flower till I realised it didn't have the requisite pistils and stamens and so on - or are they still to come? Anyway, it was clinging delicately to the wire fence surrounding Benmore Gardens as we passed this afternoon on a walk along the west shore of Loch Eck where we met no-one and the silence was absolute until some very loud singing bird broke into song above us. As I say, I'm posting this and remembering that dense silence and my ears are ringing with the sound from video clips sent by both sons, clearly quite independently, from Murrayfield Stadium, where the switched-on and local of you will perhaps know Taylor Swift has just finished a mammoth performance to a mammoth audience which contained my offspring and at least one grandchild, the youngest, in Swift-appropriate makeup and a pink feather boa, dancing authentically in her place as she sang along. I'm watching and listening and feeling about a hundred years old ...

I was at church this morning; I was even able to sing a bit, though I didn't do any solo work; I read the lessons (such fun - "who told thou that thou wast naked?" only we don't use the AV any more and I only put it in that archaic form because I remember rehearsing No 1 son aged about 9 for his reading of it in the Nine Lessons and Carols) - all with no real sign of the lurgy which has beset me all week. Di came back for coffee, for the first time in weeks, and we had a good catch-up and though I felt tired it was fine...

But now, this evening, I've developed a graveyard cough and feel worse than ever. My buddy at choir says she had the same for three weeks. I'm going to have to go back on the hardline drugs tonight, people ...sweet dreams!