A mixed day

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary. She popped out to check the time on her local clock tower as the sun went down. She tells me that the clock was showing the wrong time.

We had a very mixed day here. The weather was variable to say the least, at times sunny . . .

. . . but with rain never far away . . .

. . . and all the time it was windy and cold, a reminder that in spite of some mild weather recently, we are still well in the winter months. It was raining when we went to church so we chickened out and drove there in the car.

It didn’t come as a total surprise for us to find that the minister had changed his mind about the hymns, and in the end, only one hymn from his list actually made it into the the service. A new list has now appeared for the next three weeks.

We consoled ourselves with tasty biscuits with our coffee when we got home. In spite of the rain, sleet and wind, the occasional sunny spells had encouraged a good crowd of birds at the feeder. Taking pictures was tricky as the light varied wildly. The photo editor is a great help and produced this . . .

. . . when what the camera was seeing in the rain was this . . .

Things did brighten up from time to time though.

. . . and I enjoyed watching the birds coming and going.

Among the usual suspects, I caught a glimpse of a brambling, but it got upset by a dispute between residents and flew off before I could get a good picture.

A bright note was supplied by a visiting robin . . .

. . . which made sure that I got its best side by offering me both.

Every time that the sun came out, I did think about going for a walk between choirs, but it usually started to rain again before I had done anything about it.

A stroll round the garden to look at snowdrops after lunch. . .

. . . quickly disabused me of the idea that a walk might have been fun. I looked at more snowdrops . . .

. . . and went back in to get warm again.

It had rained hard when we drove down to the Co-op to do some shopping after church, but luckily, the weather dried up for my drive to Carlisle in the afternoon.

A choir member who had been at the practice last week, with a negative flow test and a temperature check, had come down with Covid during the week. I took a test before I went this week, and it wasn’t surprising to find the attendance was a little bit lower than it has been. We were all well distanced and wearing masks and no-one else from the choir had been affected, so we felt quite secure.

Ellen, our conductor, was in good form, and we had an excellent hour and a half of singing, including continuing work on two new songs.

The good afternoon continued when I found that daylight was still on the go as I drove home. I don’t like driving in the dark these days, so this was a relief.

After some pan fried sea bass for my evening meal, we found a number of interesting things to watch on the television. A rather mixed day of weather and singing ended very well.

The flying bird of the day is an unusual view of a chaffinch.