Stooging around

One of my main horrors about this period of plague is the realisation that it's all too easy for life just to slip past with nothing particular to mark out the days. Not, of course, that I want the drama that some poor souls have to endure - I guess you'd never forget the day you were diagnosed with Covid_19, for example - but I have found myself trying to mark out individual days in some way, whether it's by achieving something different at home or by going for some new walk, finding a new route. At my age, days are too precious to become merely "where we live", as Philip Larkin said in answer to his own question "what are days for?"

Today was in danger of being just that - a day that was just there, to be got through. Partly it was because I became so engrossed in my book (Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light) that time flew past in a way I associate with my youth, before we had a television, when reading was What I Did. At four in the afternoon I tore myself away, knowing that I'd feel awful later if I'd had no fresh air and exercise, and we went for yet another fairly ordinary walk down the road to the south. We did, however, hear the most wonderful blackbird singing in a tree ...

This photo, however, comes from later, when I was upstairs before dinner. The ship gleaming almost white in the distance is HMS Pembroke, and my Shipfinder showed that she, like me, was stooging around in circles off the Tail o' the Bank. (I wasn't off the Tail, but you get my meaning). But the day achieved shape just after that, when we out of the blue had almost an hour on FaceTime with #2 son and his wife and a bottle of wine. (Well, they had the wine; ours was downstairs waiting for us). We talked about everything from how schools were going to reopen to the progress of our granddaughter (going well, I'm happy to say) and we laughed and talked nonsense as well. Dinner was late, as usual, and now bed is going to be late too - but the day gained meaning and momentum from that call.

In other news, three tins of Marvel powdered milk - original and best? - arrived from Amazon. My shopping cohorts haven't been able to find any for weeks, and I've run out and will need some for the next loaf I make. To this we are reduced ...