Still balancing ...

Another of these wonderful shiny mornings that felt like winter saw me trotting down to the Pilates class in my leggings and sweatshirt before I realised how hard I'd have to work to warm up again - but goodness, I shouldn't have worried. Stretches and strength work for an hour had me well oiled and knackered as I headed back up the hill to a coffee and some Italian practice. 

The rest of the day had various huvtaes loitering - I had to put some notes together for my bit tomorrow in introducing the songs we're performing; I had to decide what we were eating tonight and do something about it (necessitating a quick trot to the supermarket); run through my part in one of the pieces we're singing to make sure I'd got the key change on the penultimate page firmly established in my brain (I have);  sort out one of the packing cubes that I take everywhere if I'm away for a night at least with all the vital things for life (like Gaviscon?); eat something for lunch (the last bit of a loaf). Himself was practising. Eventually I could bear it no longer and we went out, heading south again and walking up the farm road at Ardyne. 

Once a sudden rush of cars had passed, we found ourselves in the silence of the fields, noticing that the ploughed field of last time was now flat and presumably sown. The woods were full of bluebells and wild garlic flowers; the light glinted off a new pool which had appeared in a field - which I dragged us down a dusty track to investigate: it looks like a watering-hole in the veldt or something. The collage shows something of the area: the ancient tree that surprises us every year with the new growth of survival; the watering-hole in the field; one of the first swallows on a wire, obligingly showing his chin and answering my question from yesterday. (The fourth photo is of the fat red azalea in our garden, which grows fatter every year despite my efforts to keep it in shape.)

We ended up by wandering along the back of the beach before we went home, and spent far longer than we'd meant to because we got into conversation with a couple of total strangers who nevertheless had led lives with several points of almost-contact, from living next door to one of our former colleagues to having attended the last school my father worked in to a shared interest in politics and people and family  ... and it was well after 6pm before we got home.

Last night at this point in the proceedings I realised I wasn't going to be able to publish my blip: the lines had gone grey round the "Publish" button and a notice flashed up on the dreaded brown banner across the top to the effect that "the coupon has expired." Happily I had the wit to copy the screed I'd written, so that after reloading the page I could paste it in and publish... Two questions: Has this happened to anyone out there? And what on earth is the coupon and why does it expire?

Time to publish now before any further disasters ...