Warnings ...

I can't believe it's November already. I can't get over how quickly time slips past when the milestones are removed. Smaller markers take their place: instead of epic holidays, new people, we measure months by lesser things. For instance, I realise I'll not, under the new Scottish Covid restrictions, be able to visit my hairdresser: Greenock is in Band 3, Dunoon in Band 2. I realise this because when my hair got wet today my fringe drooped to my eyes and reminded me I shall need to get the scissors out again soon. 

News of other changes filtered through - I think I must be shying away from news these days, because I felt slow in realising that churches in England are to close again. As we sat in church this morning I realised how much I'll feel it if we're told the same, and how little I have in common with several of the usual suspects on Twitter when I read their diatribes equating attendance at church with going to the pub. Maybe in England it's different, but as I sat in my pew, the nearest person at the opposite end of the pew behind me, the chill air wafting above me to the high roof, I couldn't have felt safer - unless hypothermia becomes an issue ...

Enough. I sang plainsong today during communion, which one listener afterwards likened to aural incense - I liked that. And Mr PB fairly let rip on the organ for the final voluntary, for which he played a hymn for All Saints, full of pealing alleluias. When he'd finished, there was a moment's silence, and then a great burst of applause; it was as if everyone felt the same sudden sense of release. In the afternoon, the customary online service for the people who don't yet feel able to come to church took the form of an All Souls remembrance; it was memorably well done and made me glad we'd "attended" that as well.

In between I went for a solitary and physically strenuous walk round the back of town, ending up back at the West Bay front from where I headed up the hill to home in the rain that had threatened all the time I'd been out. I'm blipping the road just before I reached the church drive: I love the warning signs with the two very different admonitions, one that you've to go slowly because there might well be a red squirrel crossing the road and the other that if you're in a large vehicle you might want to think again because the old bridge has been there for a long time and there's a torrent underneath it. The path on the right leads into the lower reaches of the Bishop's Glen, with all the leaves that were on the trees only a few days ago now carpeting the ground.

And now we're onto another week of this pointless existence. Do I still feel safe going to the Pilates studio tomorrow? Will I try being even earlier at the supermarket on Friday? Will America and the world be shot of The Orange One this week? Will the Men in Grey Suits come for the PM?

Hmm.