Moving (slowly) on ...

The lasting legacy of the past three days, I should have realised, is not the wise insights gained nor the hope of some help with the church tower. No. It's the sciatica that is the result of sitting far too much on a rather uncomfortable hard chair - and sitting carelessly, because of being interested in what was being said - and of compounding this with sitting for a two hour drive in a car with a different kind of seat from our car ...

I'm seeing the sports therapist tomorrow. 

I was right when I said last night that I didn't think I'd be out early for the shopping. In fact, when I did go, between 10 and 11am, I was greeted by not one but three of Morrison's staff with variations on "You're late today!". There weren't fewer crates blocking aisles, though there may have been slightly more stocked shelves with the two-hour difference. I came home desperate for coffee. Himself went off to practise in church for an hour - any longer is impossible in the cold - and I wrote up my impressions of the pre-Synod day for future presentations or reports. I also retrieved my back door key from the friend who had it while I was away - and played silly games with the washing when the rain suddenly came on and then went off again.

We had some bread and cheese for lunch before heading out for the exercise that is obviously critical for my well-being, walking up the hill between the fields at Ardyne with a cold wind in our faces, the busy sound of about a hundred Canada Geese in the field to our left, where they were behaving more like sheep. By the time we turned back, the ache in my back had spread to the right hand side as well, though it felt slightly better going downhill. I couldn't resist heading out along the beach road before we went home - that's when the photo above was taken - because the tide was so low and the wet sand was gleaming in the light of the low sun. I know - another sunset photo; I'm a sucker for sunsets. 

We had an insane diversion on the way home when I tried to find a house to which I'd been asked by a friend at Synod to deliver some stuff - I've lived here for 51 years without ever knowing the name (it's in Gaelic) of any of the small groups of houses down the road we drive south on; they tend to be named for the big house that used to stand in the grounds back in the Victorian past. So I've learned something, but the house, when I found it, was all locked up, blinds down, with one of these forbidding front doors that open straight onto the steps down to the garden, leaving no helpful porch in which to leave a parcel. Ah well. I tried.

A last thought: is Keir Starmer really going to pull it off with the Orange One? All that touchy-feely stuff? 

I give up. G'night ...