Little triumphs ...

Now that the sun rises far earlier than I do, we're into the season of closing the bedroom curtains - all but one of them, on the north-facing window of the bay - and so the bedroom is reasonably dim when I first sit up. It wasn't till I'd finished my tea and a first glance at social media and had decided it was time to be out of bed that I realised that the morning outside the window was actually blinding in its intensity. The photo shows what I first saw; I took a couple of close-ups of the strange ship with all but its hull hidden in cloud but this one was more dramatic. (Turned out that it was a cargo ship registered in Liberia carrying "Hazardous" material.)

Deep joy in the back garden ushered in by a man with a whirligig clothes line - several weeks after the first attempt by two of his colleagues who brought the wrong size of whirli but removed the broken one when they took it away again. I've been holding off all but totally necessary washing since, and it's been weeks. Today's chap was apologetic when he asked me to refrain from using it today, until the concrete had set. 

It felt a strangely aimless day, really, though I went pushing ahead with my Italian, pulling well ahead for this time of the week with my triple points. I made the odd housewifely gesture at places of dust and plain old mildew, though I drew the line at sweeping any floors today. I didn't get out for more than a seat in the garden, so not the full bhuna even though it was a lovely day. 

Dinner was at 3pm because we'd arranged for choir practice to begin an hour earlier than usual with the idea that we'd stay on if it became necessity. This is what we ended up doing - it's quite hard to keep track of how one of the songs is organised on the page. Before we went out I did some catching up on The Observer from Sunday - it's under new ownership, no longer under the aegis of The Guardian - and noting the increase in content, the better quality of the actual paper, the loss of some regular writers whose work I enjoyed. The layout is very different and I don't care for some of the more gimmicky logos and diagrams, which to me look cheap. I must be getting old ...

Choir practice, the last before the concert, was good but arduous - I really notice my age when we sing in such a concentrated fashion for longer than a concert actually lasts. That's the last practice till after the summer holidays (you'd think we were all still at school when I say that, but you get my drift) - we have a gig in early September. We came home and watched Sarah Smith talking about Trump's first 100 days and ate toast and marmalade. 

That's all you can do, really, when the world grows crazy - toast and marmalade.