Remember when ...

Can it be so long ago that people on the radio - or even the telly - talked about such things as "a spell of fine weather" as opposed to calling even a few days of hot sun "a heatwave"? Be that as it may, today was the day the spell broke (see what I did there?) after a night when I was actually wakened by the noise of absurd quantities of rain falling all at once so that it sounded as if it would shortly break through the roof. It didn't, and I soon slept again, but woke to a much cooler, greyer day than we've been having.

We managed to pick a dry spell in which to get ourselves up the hill and into church, where three delightful visitors accosted me on their way out after coffee at the end of the service to tell me how much they'd enjoyed the music and the singing, and what a good place the church felt. That last is my experience too, but it's good to know that people can sense it after only one visit, despite the taped-off pews below the shoogly plaster on the wall where a memorial is and the weird patterns on the lower painted bit of the walls where the wet soaks right through ...

Di came for coffee and chat, we both fell asleep after lunch, it was late when we scraped ourselves together, but we both needed a walk and agreed we'd just stick to the town and not drive anywhere. That's when I took the above photo - of the plant whose name I don't know but which threatens from time to time to take over the whole of the front garden and which has suddenly burst into flower in the most exuberant fashion. I do not recall its ever having grown vertically behind the willow spirea that I do my best to contain (or even eradicate) every year when I remember in time. This was clearly not such a year. I blame the church for distracting me ...

Dinner was the very last of the venison fillet that I'd put in the freezer - I'll not have it again until we're entertaining or celebrating, so it remains a special treat. We had a text-fest with #2 son, who's entertaining us tomorrow; we noted that Catriona had made it safely home from Corfu; we doted on a wonderful photo of Alan surrounded by the boys he's been coaching in Rwanda - their smiles are even broader than his.

And then I went into a doom about the world. Are we all sleepwalking to this uncertain future in my immediate circle? Have we all been here too often before? I think I first felt this way about Cuba and I can't bear it that yet again rulers are chest-thumping and the latest missile attacks divert attention from the wars already happening and the suffering of the innocent. 

It's like juggling, really.