Unexpected things

A few minutes before this we suddenly had every rain cliché there is. The heavens opened, the rain came down in sheets, in seconds I was soaked to the skin, the soggy greyness closed in around me. Etc. Then from nowhere, half the sky turned blue and the sun bounced off the grass, the leaves, the stones on the track, the barbed wire, everything. As I stopped to watch the world sparkle, a gust of wind shook the drops trapped in the leaves. The micro-shower reminded me of the Rain Room. How odd - when I checked I was amused to find that that was a year ago today.

Surprising things have lifted my spirits today. Before going out I found my watch, missing since Wednesday last week, under a chair. Inexplicable. I’d looked there, as everywhere else, a hundred times. I was pleased way beyond its value to find it.

After getting back (wet) I looked in the Guardian magazine to see what pictures had been chosen ahead of mine in this week’s competition. I rarely enter, but did send one in (on Wednesday last week, as it happens) for this week’s theme. Well. Speechless. None was ahead of mine. If you’ve got today’s Guardian I’ve just scuppered my blip pseudonym.

And all the rest of the day, as I’ve been working in the kitchen, I’ve been interrupted with kind and encouraging comments about my yesterday’s blip. Thank you. More appreciated than you can know.

Coda: This morning I phoned my son, who lives nearby, and he said he'd drop by later in the day on his way back from town. At 6.30pm I texted to ask whether he was still planning to call in. At 8 he replied. 'Ah, no, sorry, change of plan. I'm in Liverpool.' (Which, for anyone not from these isles, is not just turning right instead of left on the way home from the shops. It's 173 miles from Oxford.)