Compare and contrast

Remember these questions - "compare and contrast California with ... " where? Some other coastline, to demonstrate your thorough grasp of the Geography syllabus: of course you'd merely learned some useful lists of likes/unlikes and wove them into a beguiling answer ... or not. But that's how I felt this afternoon, when as if to show we really are home again we took our aching legs for a walk in a snell wind with a hint of drizzle in the air  along the Ardyne shore and I thought of the shoreline walk of last week and sighed for the blue of the sea and the glint of the sun ... So that's what the collage is doing. I didn't even have my phone with me (I never go out without it - shows you how tired I still am) and Himself had to take the grey one and airdrop it to me. 

I woke at 8am - we hadn't set any alarm: I had no intention of doing anything that required a set time today. I wasn't up till well after 9am, because I wrote last night's blip late, on my phone, before I stirred. I didn't have any eggs, or smoked salmon, or avocados - just cereal and a bit of toast - and then I did my Italian and it was time for coffee. I had a message from our friend who'd taken ill - a doctor had suggested a lurgy picked up in Madeira, manifested, apparently, by several people returning from the island. I'm inclined to wonder if they were all people no longer in their prime who had been languishing for hours in Madeira airport waiting for a flight ...

I did another big load of laundry (my new machine holds more than the last one) and draped them variously around the house to dry - I thought I'd finished, but Himself announced that his case wasn't empty yet and there would be trousers ... To be fair, he had gone to the recycling with two whole loads of bottles and jars, so maybe he wasn't thinking of laundry. I refilled the bird feeder and noted that the yellow crocuses are opening. I had a long phone call with my pal Di and another with my sister; we shared a call to our #1 son on the speaker. 

After our walk, I filled in a lengthy questionnaire from Jet2, making sure I mentioned the missing meals and the terrible seats on the plane (don't think I said much of them before, but today...) We'll see if anything comes of it. I cooked fish for dinner and thought of scabbard fish with banana. And we went to Compline online and felt our usual lives slipping back around us. 

It's late now and I need to sleep, but I must remember to mention the extraordinary book I've started reading. Remind me, someone, if I don't.