Reined in

Today’s guest picture was sent to me by my brother Andrew. It was taken by his son Dan with a wide angle lens while they were out on a walk together yesterday.

It was a disappointing day today, with two plans biting the dust. My first plan was to go up and have coffee with Sandy, but he had had a very poor night and wasn’t up to receiving visitors.

I stayed at home and had coffee with Margaret and Mrs Tootlepedal instead. This was not a bad substitute, as the conversation was lively and the shortbread, a Christmas gift from Margaret, was excellent.

After coffee, I pedalled round to our corner shop and arrived just after it had closed. The shopkeeper was driving off as I arrived. This was another disappointment, but as the shopkeeper turned his car round, jumped out, and re-opened the shop just for me, it was not a disappointment that lasted.

Although it was a dampish sort of day, it wasn’t actually raining, so when I got home, I finished turning the compost from Bin C into Bin D, and did a little shredding too.

I had look for the birds and found the usual chaffinches and occasional goldfinch were back on the scene.

A pigeon strode across the lawn in search of fallen seed . . .

. . . and I got quite excited by a glimpse of a wren in the plum tree. There were other perching birds too.

My next plan was to go for a cycle ride or a walk after lunch. It was another windy day, and I had more or less decided to go for a walk when it started to rain. It rained so determinedly that I got discouraged and went for a bike ride to nowhere in the garage for an hour. I had my head down and my view can be seen in today’s header picture.

I like to while away the static bicycling time by listening to a jazz record request programme that lasts for an hour. In keeping with the dull day, it had some dull music today, the sort of jazz that is pleasant enough but leaves you wondering whether it is ever going to stop. It was so dull that after listening it for what seemed as though it must be nearly an hour, a check on the time showed me that I had only been pedalling for 35 minutes. I was so downhearted that only a fortunate burst of energy from the Louis Armstrong Hot Five got me through to the finish.

The single flower that I saw all day was in a pot on a shelf in the bathroom when I had my shower after cycling.

The flying bird of the day is a siskin which flew off before I could photograph it on the feeder.

Footnote: because it was such a miserable day, and I had no pictures to show my brother and sisters at our regular Zoom in the evening, I dived into the files and produced a set of cheerful pictures from last year. It was such a cheerful selection that I have taken the liberty of putting it in here without further comment. They have all appeared on the blog before. They go back in order from November to May.