Blotted out

I took this absurd photo half an hour ago. The frozen rain that first fell this morning just as I took out the bag of bird seed to top up the feeder, took it out in my Kat Slater dressing gown and furry boots, has become serious here at the coast and is now turning the road outside white. You can just make out the glimpses of white through the armour plating of ice on the window which in a moment of weakness I thought might pass as artistic.

I'm feeling discontented because I've not had enough exercise today - isn't that absurd? I spent the morning in the freezing church coaching some readers for next week's carol service - an activity I enjoyed hugely despite the cold. Two school children and one man who wasn't accustomed to reading, and all of them excellent students who took on board the need to speak clearly and strongly even with a microphone at the lectern. It's one of my bees in the bonnet, that people expect to turn the mikes up and then mumble and get away with it - but not these readers. 

And the rest of the day? I thawed out, I drank coffee, I talked on the phone, I put marzipan on my cake. Now I shall practise the end of that carol whose final chord throws me, and then it'll be dinnertime. 

Don't feel I've earned the dinner ...