lazybeds

Today the golden light fell upon high triangles in the hills and made the russet banks of old bracken burn, while the wind still tugged and tugged. Last night it was strong enough to overturn our allotment shed which survived with little damage. As I opened the door sideways and gaped in on the contents which looked as if they had been spun at 2000rpm I thought it might be ok that way round and quite Wendy House. With Jim's help it was stood up again and anchored with a large slab inside on the floor. We are also one compost bin down - I guess it must have gone to Tullibody. Better news of my sick friend - now definitely mending. Feeling so feeble has focussed me more at home and home making and this led to decisions about a carpet and some laminate flooring at which I have always hiss booed but . . . .

Our only guisers were from the Avenue, two delightful kids, the younger one lisping all the way through Incy Wincy Spider. And tonight the cold and naked moon does not scare - it is scared itself, so conspicuous, so scarred, so vulnerable.

News of the serious illness of one of my best friends is a dark cloud. Nothing more to be said about that but to wait for time passing and better news. This changing of the clocks is faintly disturbing, perhaps especially for our generation so generally cut off from natural rhythms. This morning writing an opinion against the Iraq invasion for a school student who is doing a little thesis for RE.The process stirs up again that internal rage along with guilt that we did not do more to stop it in 2002/3. Dawn is lighting up a wall of mist outside. I love that blend of mystery and cosiness.

After helping my friends tidy up their temporary (three day) residence in a church in Glasgow which involved more mopping than I have ever done and overhearing some very bad language as an opened carton of soya milk spread itself over a newly packed food box, it was off to meet up with siblings and partners at Mugdock Country Park. A lovely spot in dripping spotty autumn shades marred by a hideous garden centre full of expensive tat and novelties. This spawned a conversation with Iain about herding and tourist assembly line funnels and how embarrassing it is to be part of one and what snobs we are to feel that.Good craic but I had to take myself to the car for refuge due to ongoing feebleness and my clock recently reset at different hours to others and just about to be made worse by the end of summertime.

Fifty yards away the burn is leaping and rushing past, sweeping away all the crisp packets and poly bags that have been hanging around since the last spate. It's surprising how short the duration of a spate is, how quickly the douce trickle is restored. The choice to live on the gravel bed at the entrance of the glen is a good one given the increasingly sodden nature of the fields just sixty feet lower. Meanwhile folk in Dingwall are still lugging the sandbags about and the news is full of dire warnings about our flooded future.

In these last few days the allotment has become a different place with mud the special feature and the beginnings of retreat into corm and bulb.