Shipshape

I give thanks for the solace of quietness, time to really think about things, to absorb and assimilate, and that the neighbours have been quite quiet too...though I also give thanks for the wind fluting a tune from the neck of a bottle on the way to recycling!

I'm give thanks for watching a tanker creep through the shallows to the port here last night on a shipping site - well a little moving shipshape, anyhow. Not the same as standing on the seafront or quay but it would have been draughty and dark doing that! In a similar way today I followed a plane taking off from the nearby airport and then saw it for real climbing to full height through a gap in the cloud outside my window. Particular thanks too for the swirls of Saturday gliders riding the thermals too south of Gloucester and north of Exeter - seen on a flight radar rather than a footpath but knowing what it's like to do the latter helped make the former more fun.

I give thanks for the Cambridge Buddhist Society's quote today from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who wrote so intelligently and eloquently on grief and loss and dying...''Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose''. I'm grateful the last few years has taught me so much about so many things, including finding joys where they might not seem to be...and when it's a damn fine idea not to phone a friend!

I give thanks for getting some bits of post Christmas this and that done - finding where new things belong and generally restoring a little more order about the place. I give thanks for leftovers for tea, and that amongst the grim figures from yesterday was a blissfully good one - a potassium level low enough to treat myself to some chocolate for supper and maybe a jacket potato for tomorrow.