Acclimatising?

It's still far too cold. It felt this morning, as I dressed at 8am to go supermarket shopping, as if I was just emerging from the grip of winter - looking out the fleece jersey I've not been wearing for weeks, putting on my barbour instead of a thin cagoule, marching briskly across the draughty car-park to the shop that felt just as chilly inside as out until I got clear of the refrigerator area. The shop was wonderfully empty - hardly any shoppers, just the shelf-loaders wrestling with their ungainly trolleys and girning about the management while never ceasing in their labour of stacking and lifting. I spent more money than I have in ages - I think I've not been shopping properly actually because I've been doing it at random times, with Himself as company, and wasn't giving it my undivided attention. There was time, as I spent an unconscionable sum of money via my watch, for a three-way chat about bursitis - the sufferer, on one till, the horrified girl who'd never heard of it on my till, and me (I've had it. Excruciating.) We parted with great hilarity. (Talks to anyone, that wummin ...)


I don't know what happened to my sense of purpose after that. I had a list of tasks I wanted to carry out, but instead I let my breakfast trickle on while I read my phone and caught up on long messages with friends. I had coffee; I did my Italian; I finished a sudoku. We had some lunch. It rained, it stopped raining. Was the sky growing lighter? Oh no - it's raining again. That sort of thing. But the usual need had its way and off we went, heading south to the possibly lighter sky only to be caught in a deluge. But we passed on to an area of dry streets just south of Innellan and felt justified.

We ended up walking briskly up the hill past the farms at Ardyne. I insisted in keeping up a brisk pace, just because I wanted not to feel old. I was cheered by this fabulous hawthorn tree in the photo, just sitting there in a patch of woodland beside a field where sometimes there are sheep. All around us were fields of beasts - sheep, black cattle, all with their toddlers - and birdsong punctuated by the odd bovine bellow. A fat cloud, grey with rain, passed to our left but didn't bother us. Despite the odd strangely fierce gust of wind it was actually very soothing, very peaceful. We were glad we'd come.

Once home, I delayed starting dinner preparation by firing up the computer, taking a look at a return visit to the nice hotel in Madeira as we'd been discussing the anomaly of the weather records which seem to suggest January is slightly warmer there than February. I noticed suddenly that our hotel had only 4 rooms left ... shouted down the stairs to Himself to check that he'd be ok with this ... and booked a holiday at the very end of January. I even got a sizeable chunk of discount with two vouchers we were handed on our plane home from Italy, and another with an offer that had come through the post and which I'd not chucked out...

Dinner was late, but I don't care.