"Clearing later ..."

I wonder if it's the same in other parts of the country. Almost every day our weather forecast suggests that we'll have cloud, "perhaps clearing later.' And lo, it is so - and so my extra photo was taken ten minutes ago, as I perched on our garden bench to get a shot of the brilliant moon beyond the crazy tendrils of my wisteria...

I'm actually an hour earlier than usual: it's my granddaughter's 14th birthday today, and for various incoherent reasons we're celebrating it tomorrow; we were always intending to drive over to Newhaven and take her out shopping and lunching and it's just gone on from there. An early start is indicated. I was pretty early today, down in Morrison's by ten past eight (just learned it's the subject of an American takeover bid ...). When I came to leave, I realised three other people, including a slow-moving couple, had decided to check out at the same time, all converging ahead of me at the only check-out that seemed to be functioning. I gesticulated eloquently at the check-out supervisor (a former pupil) and asked if this was it. (Quite mildly, I thought) "Come with me," she said, and led me to a vacant till. She checked me out and then returned to her post, saying she'd enjoyed the seat and the chat. There are indeed benefits from having taught in a one-school town.

The day seemed to go downhill after that. I was so fed up by the afternoon that I went off for a grimly functional walk, enlivened only by a chat with a friend over her garden wall. My route took me through our churchyard, where I had a wee Larkinesque moment pondering mortality among the old graves round the back of the church, where the brambles and the wild are gradually reclaiming the land. It would be a huge job to clear it, and we lack the requisite muscle among our flock, but the assortment of monuments in the photo above - a new-looking pink granite cross (not actually new at all), an iron-topped one beyond, and on the left the barely-visible iron rail and stone obelisk commemorating someone more splendid than the rest - all now being consumed by nature. Salutary, no?

There has been an absurd increase in the number of Covid cases in Fort William and Benderloch. I can't think why ...