Deep blue sea

Oh my that was good! Out to Sprey point in the mizzly drizzly rain and then back along the beach as the tide was way out. Gratitude for storm high sand although the sea was calm so that the pipes and groynes and other obstacles along the way were easier to negotiate. And for getting back to town just as the real rain started to collect pills and other essentials/non essentials including a hot drink and toasted teacake in a steamy cafe til the weather eased again...and a new top in a sale in case I'm invited anywhere for New Year's Eve. Statistically this is most unlikely but it made a good excuse, ha ha! Much gratitude for free prescriptions for cancer patients, I've hammered that certificate in the last few years. And that when I couldn't face being cooped up in a cab to get home so I forced myself back along the darkening seafront and back up the hill on foot. Beautiful colours as you can see...everything was shades of grey earlier on but my camera said the battery was flat and it wouldn't let me show you....Later on, clearly finding the afternoon as rejuvenating as I did, they lurched back to life!

Actually, I'm as tired and aching now as if I'd been on a big hike but that was the idea after all - the point of the exercise you might say! There are bits of me that still haven't accepted that I'm ill and I have to let them out to play sometimes even though the old cranky sick parts grumble about it. Gratitude for getting home without running into Mrs upstairs and her partner in crime. It's all over the front page of the local paper today though no names are mentioned...

Much thanks too for Sky Arts putting on a few programmes lately about Cirque du Soleil. I would love to see them live but couldn't face all the travelling to and round and staying in a big city on my own any more and don't know anyone who would love to do it too enough to fork out the money for a ticket, or who loves me enough to accept one for free in return for escort services. Yeah, sometimes being on your own sucks, ha ha! And thanks to Tony for his message. Hope you and lovely Derbyshire are doing OK.

Enlightened

This is the dawning of the day of Aquarius (my birthday's in February, I can say stuff like that!). I only really see dawns in winter, in summer a) they happen in what my body tells me is the middle of the night and b) they happen out of sight of my bedroom window unless I lean out at a very dangerous angle. I've never lived anywhere where the shortening and lengthening of the days is demonstrated as clearly as checking the time on a clock...well without actually looking at a clock. It was the price and the sight of the sea that made me want to buy the place but I'd have forked out another grand or two for the combination of orientation and elevation with the lie of the land if someone had pointed it out to me. I hope it's an enlightened estate agent sells this place next time around!

I give thanks for all of the above and below! For sensing from the quality of light in my curtain closed room that it would be worth heaving myself semi upright to look outside. For then being so entranced that I actually moved around to find a camera and open the window as wide as it would go. I love the feel of the air at that time of day and the sounds of the birds and the world waking up. I give thanks that as a result I'm up and dressed and attending to business before the day's in double figures...and now I'd better attend to some more before the shock hits my system and I have to have a morning nap!

Clean sweep

Well I did get up eventually and do a few odds and ends...my usual Sunday friends of filler knife and knitting needles coming out to play. I give thanks that the blanket is beginning to look like a blanket with some bits missing rather than just some bits and that when Laura's ready to wallpaper again the last bit of wall to be covered will be ready for her!

I found some links for images of reverse graffiti because I wanted to express gratitude for it earlier and wasn't sure if you'd know what I meant...brilliant concept that baffles the authorities as to whether it's 'good' or 'bad'. Know what I think ha ha!

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/35-greatest-works-of-reverse-graffiti/1949

http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2010/10/reverse-graffiti-environmentally-friendly-urban-spray-art/

I give thanks for leeks and mushrooms in cream cheese and pesto sauce...one of the easiest things ever to make and also one of the most delicious!

And I give thanks also for the pretty sky tonight...clear pale blue with glowing streaks of pinky orange cloud to the west, to the east, to the north and south and overhead and everything in between. Not the brightest or most spectacular but possibly the most all encompassing 'sunset' I've ever seen!

I hope Debbie's OK...I miss your comments. And I hope Rachel and Karen who don't have regular internet access at the moment are missing mine!

Post of many colours

Forgot to put two more happy things in earlier. 4) is West Country ice cream. You saddos who live elsewhere have no idea what you're missing. I'd only been down here nine or ten years but I'd forgotten it wasn't the same everywhere until I went to visit my son in Sheffield a while back. We were in the city and it was mad hot and I wanted an ice cream and we kept going from shop to shop with me saying 'Where do you get real ones?' and neither Bob nor the shopkeepers having any idea what I meant! Then he came to visit me and found out. West country ice cream comes in pastel shades as it is made of cream and real fruit or toffee or whatever and it tastes divine!

And 5) is coloured clouds. Once in a while even when it's not sunset or the Red Arrows have recently flown past you get coloured clouds. I don't know why but you do! I could look it up in the Cloud Spotter's Guide because I know they were mentioned in there (to my great relief...so many people have looked at me askance when trying to decribe the phenomena). The little rainbow ones are the best, I've seen a couple of those in my time (with collaborative witnesses thank goodness!)but today there was a patch or pinky peach fading to greeny blue in the increasingly white washed sky. I tried to take a photo of it with my smart phone and even set it up on a wall to reduce camera shake but of course it didn't really show and as I got my finger in front of the lens and that did show I'm not going to put the picture on here. You'll just have to take my word for it. Coloured clouds are great!

There may be more happinesses to come yet today. There should be but I'm not going to tempt fate by telling you what I anticipate. I'm just going to have a shower with my fingers crossed and put on something fairly tidy but that I don't mind if I spill orange things on!