Rural pursuits...

Well, the photo shows one at least - I don't know quite what the tractor in the fields above Ardyne was doing, but the birds were all very keen and by the time the tractor reached the far side of the field all you could see was the line of birds exactly where the furrow was, so I imagine it had been sowing something. I thought it was rather picturesque. I love this walk between the farms, which is where our afternoon walk took us - it's incredibly peaceful and there are fewer cars than closer to the coast.

This, of course, was quite far on in the day. My day began with the breathless thrill of hitting the phone at just the right moment when the doctor's surgery opened its line, so that the "surgery closed" message gave way to the one about calls being recorded. Today I was brilliantly successful, landing on my 5th call with the receptionist - no dreadful music - and a choice of appointment times. I chose 9am and was just ready in time as I was still in bed when I made the call at 8.30am. I came away with much sympathy and a prescription for antibiotics which, oddly, have to be taken on an empty stomach and cannot be accompanied by paracetamol. I'm three down already ... and right now my eye looks suddenly worse than ever, with a red shiny blob beside the corner. It hurts too. 

Moan over (for now). I went home for breakfast, coffee, Italian, some work on poems for a talk, a washing which miraculously didn't get rained on and was dry when I took it in at 6pm. I didn't fall asleep after lunch, so it wasn't too late when we went for our walk. And I didn't have time to read ...

So. This book I'm enjoying. It's called James, written last year by Percival Everett, of whom to my shame I had never heard. It's the first person narrative of Jim, the black slave who appears in Huckelberry Finn, and is written in a masterful first person narrative that opens windows onto master/slave relationships in America of the slave era. It's also a rattling good story. The cover is sprinkled with rave reviews, and I now see why. Definitely the best book I've read in a while. 

I'm off to bed now, with the book, rattling with pills in obedience to FrKenny and my GP. My French family are just home, so for a while we're all in Scotland until the wanderings start again...