Stressful pleasures

It's as well I took that photo of the clear sky over Bute yesterday, because today we were back to Mordor - dark cloud, incessant rain, wind making it feel colder than it was ... and me, trying to feel cheerful after not enough sleep (I heard 2 strike last night before I managed to overcome the caffeine). And the morning passed without my doing any of the Really Useful Things I'd had in mind; all I managed was to sweep the floor and try on a few pairs of trousers from the past to see if I could get rid of some. The answer is yes, probably - but having noted that flared jeans seem to be staging a comeback, I tried on the ones I had maybe 20 years ago and found that they still fit me, so they may put in an appearance some day.

The rest of the time I allowed myself to be seduced by a post in the R.S.Thomas Appreciation group on Facebook. Someone works with students in Romania and Italy and is putting together an essay on poetry in translation, and wondered about RST's attitude to writing poetry in Welsh, and I had great fun fishing out my books and sharing some quotations with him. (Despite learning and speaking Welsh in his adult life, Thomas could never write poetry in the language, though he would have loved to.) Why is it that when I'm no longer either a student or a teacher I feel guilt at study just for the fun of it? Is one's decrepitude really just for sweeping floors and shopping?

Oh - the other thing we're allowed to do is go for walks, of course. In the rain. That's where the photo came from - that fabulous tree with the red berries has hung onto them all through the autumn and winter and looks especially startling above the dark rushing waters of the Eachaig at Benmore. But we didn't linger - we had a rugby match to watch.

I have to confess now that one of the great pleasures of watching a match at Murrayfield is that unaccompanied second verse of Flower of Scotland - it makes my hair stand on end. And that's the way it stayed all through this nail-biting match, with the cathartic win coming right at the end - I was exhausted... 

#AsOne!