Low ebb ...

That title could just as well be applied to me tonight as to the photo for today - clearly too many visits to church are doing my lower back no good at all! I wish I'd thought to take a photo out of the window this morning at 7.30am - the sky was a lovely peach glow, telling me how much earlier sunrise is these days - but I was involved in a text conversation with the travelling #2 son as he prepared to fly home from Syndey in a humongous plane with an upper floor; he's still on it, with a further couple of hours to go before he lands. My sciatica gets worse just thinking about it ...

(You can tell I'm going to become a complete bore about this ...)

We gave a report on Synod in place of the sermon today; it was a good idea, as the conversation over coffee became quite animated on the topic of assisted dying and we learned more about what people we talk to every week really feel. At the other end of the scale we sang HBTY to an amazing woman who turned 94 * - I think - during the week and who looks and behaves like someone in her 70s. Oh - and we sang my hymn, one I wrote years ago on a summer stay in the College at the Cathedral of The Isles at Transfiguration- tide, which I still think of as belonging properly to 6th August rather than today, when it seems to be setting us up for the journey to Jerusalem and the Passion ...

But enough of this. I wrote the hymn to the tune Selma, which is from the Isle of Arran and is one of my faves that only ever appeared at Harvest (Fair waved the golden corn...)


Having eventually warmed up over first coffee and then the remains of yesterday's soup for lunch, I feel asleep reading the local paper (fascinating insights into the declining numbers of local primary schools' intake) and stirred myself only because I felt that sitting all afternoon would make me feel a lot worse. I put a loaf on for tomorrow's breakfast and made some cranberry sauce to go with the cold venison fillet I'd taken from the freezer for dinner - and then decided I really had to go out rather than fester indoors. 

(I know. No surprise there.)

Because it was quite far on into the afternoon by now, we decided a short walk by the sea was once again the only option, and though it was mainly grey it was calming and expansive. The photo shows how low the tide was, with the Ardyne Burn snaking its way through the mud banks in a bid to reach the open sea. In the foreground the beach is scattered with the debris - trees, vegetation - from the winter storms, and in the middle distance the Rothesay ferry is halfway to its destination from Wemyss Bay. 

Tomorrow I hope I'll manage Pilates and some remedial exercises accompanied by a laugh or two. And then I really need to get back to that sermon ...


*Apparently it was her 95th birthday