Pilates, the paper and flying ants

I realised at some point in the late afternoon that today had felt strangely normal, as if there wasn't plague abroad in the land and exam results panic setting in and my exasperation with media hype words ("fiasco", "debacle", "ruined lives") wasn't growing by the minute ... And that being the case, I thought I'd better look at the ingredients of normality and try to replicate in times of need ...

My Pilates teacher was back from her break. It's only been a week off, but that means it's two weeks since I did any proper stretching, and goodness, did I feel the need. I know it's good for older people to continue to build muscle - or at least to arrest its decline - but I always feel I benefit most from the stretching and the balance parts of the class. Be that as it may, by the end of the hour I was extremely hot and totally exhausted, in a good way. I had an online chat with my pal over coffee, a WhatsApp one with my granddaughter, and pottered on my computer till lunch.

Here I need to say that I read the Observer from cover to cover over lunch: I'm so delighted to have a paper newspaper to read again after months of neither of us wanting to go to the shop for it. I think when I'm online I limit the range of what I read, as if there was a time limit that I don't feel with an actual paper.

Later, we went to Benmore Gardens again and climbed to the Andean Refuge (blipped), where we found an iPhone sitting on the bench inside the shelter. I'd picked it up, turned it over, and was just wondering what best to do when it rang - only because it was on silent and didn't vibrate it was sheer chance that I saw the screen light up and answered it. This was the owner, on a friend's phone, and ten minutes later her partner arrived, panting, to rescue the phone. We had a chat - he was a Greek Glaswegian, interested in how we found living in Dunoon and in the fact that we loved Crete. I loved that when I asked him where he came from, he said "Glasgow" - despite his accent, he clearly identified as wanny us, and it was only later that he felt the need to explain that he'd come from somewhere else. While we chatted, I became aware that I was being covered in flying ants which were ... rolling down the roof of the shelter and landing on me. They may have been in pairs, or just finished mating, or whatever - but it was a tad horrid. We moved off, smartish.

Lower down, the gardens were full of wonderful scents in the still air. We met no more people, and even the birds were quiet. Perhaps there is indeed a storm coming. But just for now, I'm content that I had this strangely normal day.