Going, going, gove, gov ...

If the Ten O'clock News goes on going on so late I shall be suffering soon from sleep deprivation, but it's certainly pretty riveting just now as Boris Johnson, who I've realised bears a startling resemblance to portraits of the Emperor Nero, barricades himself in Downing Street and in the job that increasing numbers of his own want him to quit. It's worthy of an Ianucci script - and maybe a reprise of Peter Capaldi's role in the thick of it all?

Outside in the normal world it looked as if summer had left us today, what with these great gusts of westerly wind worthy of Shelley's Autumn, and the fine rain that actually soaked you in no time at all. It all eased off somewhat in the evening, but wasn't at all inviting before that. I went to my Art Class, all on my own this morning because of the change of day, and found myself exhausted after two hours of one-to-one tuition on altering colours and making a vibrant black. I am, however, becoming more pleased with what's emerging, so I've put a progress report extra in just in case I mess it all up next week. (Yes, I know it's not a close-up; that's for another day.)

I sat late over lunch, listening to PMQs on my phone - Keir Starmer was really on form today, speaking for all of us, Labour voters or no, and Iain Blackford for once spoke in an absolutely silent House - so it was after 5pm before I decided that sitting around feeling irritable would help no-one. (The irritability came from the firm that look after almost all my money, who seem for the third year in a row unable to grasp the fact that all correspondence about it is to be directed to me and not to Himself. I rang them up and was very cross in a way that an email wouldn't quite have cut.) By this time there was a glimmer of hope that the sun might shine - and it did. We walked round the former reservoir in the Bishop's Glen and came home via the church (2.68 miles) before I made dinner. We were just in time for online Compline, possibly the most peaceful moment of the day. 

Blipping the burn as it runs from what used to be the Upper Reservoir but has been drained and allowed to revert to woodland and moor. I'm looking due East past the surviving dam towards the distant coast of The Other Side. 

And now it's midnight again ...