Out of the blue ...

No - nothing surprising happened today: I simply couldn't resist that title to go with my photo. Sorry ...

I'm finding it so hard to know where we are just now - how many weeks since ... was that yesterday?...is it Sunday? At least this is my month for giving birth, though not right now, you'll be glad to hear. Both my sons were born in February, and I shall never forget propping my bump against the work top as I iced a birthday cake for the about-to-be-four-year-old. In fact, it's 43 years since I was taken into the local hospital to have the baby that was almost a fortnight overdue; I had to sit around for a day extra waiting for the other GP to come in and start things off ...

Enough of that. I'm sure all this reminiscing is tied to encroaching old age - I remember my grandmother telling me all about when she lived in Pretoria at a time when her memory for 1910 was better than it was for the previous week. Today was recognisably Sunday because we went to online church. It was one of these days when the tech sides of things gets a bit out of hand, which is always distracting, though the sermon on Lenten observance which involved giving up plastic bottles was timely and good. 

We went out - of course - in the afternoon, heading up Glen Massan for a good puff up the hill. There were catkins on the trees and a wonderfully green smell from the fields and hedgerows, as the water pounded down the gorge beside us. My photo gives a sense of the wonderful alone-ness of these walks; it shows Mr PB coming down into the upper glen from the top of the gorge. 

Our local secondary school is beginning a phased return tomorrow: senior pupils doing practical subjects are to attend class in the relevant department for a day at a time, with self-testing for infection twice weekly. It's really hard to know what to think about easing lockdown - how confident in the vaccine, how confident in our rulers. In fact, it's really hard to think ...

I've just been locking the front door, and as usual had a peep outside to see what the world was like before bedtime. In the silence of a lockdown evening, there is a bird singing. I know this is bad for the birds, and a result of modern low-energy street lighting, but there was something lovely about that song in the dark.

Let's all go on singing our song in the dark...