Another grey day

Today’s picture comes from my sister Susan who found these skaters enjoying themselves on the temporary rink at Somerset House.

I was a good patient today and did nothing to exert myself in any way.  As a result I did feel better by the end of the day but the least amount of exercise is still making me cough so although I am going in the right direction, I am not out of the woods yet.

An already gloomy day was made a bit more gloomy as Mrs Tootlepedal went off to the funeral of one of her fellow church choir members who died very suddenly and unexpectedly early this week.  She had actually attended church last weekend and although she was a bit poorly then, no one had foreseen what was to happen.  She was a member of our new choir too and it has been a great shock and sadness to everyone.

Meanwhile, the meteorological powers are having a little laugh at my expense as my enforced idleness should have given me the opportunity to take a million bird feeder pictures with nothing to do but stare out of the window all day but the light was been so continuously poor that I only took four in total today and that was purely out of force of habit.

We are in a run of  south westerly winds caused by a marching column of depressions coming up from the Atlantic and that is always a bad direction for us, although the south west of England seems to be catching the heaviest rain at the moment  rather than us.  I take this to mean that the jet stream is a bit further south than usual but it is hard to find out.

The new peanut feeder hasn’t exactly had them flocking in.

A rather depressed looking bunch of birds.

Mrs Tootlepedal returned from the church and went into the garden to pick a couple of really good looking leeks, the first of the season.  With one of these, she made a leek and potato soup for my lunch which was very tasty.  The leeks are probably going to turn out to be the most successful of our garden produce in this very damp year.

It is not one of those giant show leeks. Mrs Tootlepedal has added a pencil for size comparison.

In the evening, Sandy and I paid a very brief visit to the Archive Centre and then he came in to enjoy a small bottle of French lager while we did a bit of mutual moaning about having colds.  Mrs Tootlepedal had gone out to watch a film called Salmon Fishing in the Yemen which she enjoyed a lot in a gentle sort of way.

I spent a bit of time having a good soak in a hot bath this afternoon and this gave me an opportunity to weigh up the pros and cons of my present medical regime.  I complain about my creaky joints a lot in this blog but the fact is that I can leap in and out of a bath with something approaching alacrity these days which I haven’t been able to do with confidence for ages and in general my joints work a treat if I treat them with respect.  I realise looking back that this hasn’t been the case for about four years now so I give the medicine full credit for the improvement and the compulsory blood tests are a small price to pay.  I shall try to complain about creaky joints less in future and count my blessings a bit more.  I will probably fail though judging by my past performance.

I just caught a rather ghostly greenfinch in flight in the gloaming.