Spring?

Apparently this is the first day of the meteorological Spring, which is rather joyous to contemplate. And yes, there were moments in the sunny back garden when it felt almost spring-like, though not later in the day, when dusk was falling, when Himself and I could be spotted trying to collect all the odoriferous offerings left by a neighbour's cat on our grass which I suspect happened while we were away, or at least became an established habit. I've scattered some very jaggy rosa rugosa prunings as a deterrent ...

Back to the morning. I made bread, did some Italian, had coffee, made green welly soup - and then became engrossed in further ideas for next Sunday's sermon. I have to confess that the current news has fed my need to be relevant, and for sage advice I'm grateful to a theologian friend who's always there online when I need him. Suddenly it was almost 1pm, the bread was ready, the soup was simmering, and we had an hour to consume it and get out ...

To church. Not to sing, nor to a service, but to a poetry and prose performance by one of our relatively recent parishioners in aid of the Loo Project. As I told him at the end, he's really good at this kind of thing - a musician who's also an actor with years of experience and a wide-ranging repertoire of offerings ranging from Under Milk Wood to The Owl and the Pussycat, with Para Handy thrown in for good measure and a wonderful range of accents. Don't judge the performance by the sleepy expression on the face of Hoy the collie - he and another parish hound were really quite attentive, as the light streamed in through the stained glass and the tea sat waiting in the narthex. 

We just had time to fit in a walk after that, down at Toward Point for the last of the light - we both needed to warm up, because the under-seat heating had gone off in the second half of the performance. (Our church's green credentials are achieved by making us freeze half the time.) And then it was home to clean up the garden in the gloaming...

In other news, my sciatica is hellish this evening after sitting on a hard pew in the cold, so I'm still on the codeine. This can't go on ... can it?

My continued commiserations to all my friends in the USA. See Vance?