I’ve been up since 3 am. Had tea and toast, finished my book, tried to get back to sleep but just have given myself more wrinkles by screwing my eyes shut tight. So, I’ve given up.

This last month has been all about opening and closing the curtains and shutters. The days disappear, and its dark, and suddenly there I go again, closing the curtains at about 4pm. It reminds me of those old movies where time passing is depicted by leaves of a calendar flying off into the wind. So, here, days pass and if the film was to be speeded up it would show me opening and closing, and light and dark whizzing by. So November has almost gone.

Walking home in the evenings other people around here are not as emphatic as me about keeping what they do in their sitting rooms private. Not that I do nude hovering (anymore… though it has been done in the past, as a sort of celebration that I could!) and it is a sort of contradiction really, considering I do write a blog which is not exactly something a really private person would do, but I hate the idea of living in a fish bowl and people looking in at me from outside. Shadows in the bushes aaaargh!

 I walk about these crescents and fine addresses of Edinburgh’s New town, and stare in at the dark red painted rooms, hung with art and large decorative mirrors, view birthday cards displayed at the window, Christmas trees in season, and sometimes recoil at the harsh bright colours that some people choose to paint their walls. People sit and stare at their television sets, seemingly unconcerned that passers-by can see in.

Well not so at this address. We are tightly curtained in at 4pm.

This last week has been a night mare. I fell victim to some campylobacter bug, no D or V but high fever and a tummy that blew up tight as a drum and I was in such pain. Anyway I opened my curtains, went back to bed and slept, then closed my curtains and huddled with the hot water bottle and TV then back to bed and slept. Seven days after being afflicted my tummy suddenly went soft and I was HUNGRY! Zoomed to the kitchen and made rice and apple puree and that was it, I was on the road to recovery. Oh the joys of being well! I gingerly went out and breathed the air, walked about and came back exhausted, closed the curtains and went to sleep!

Now…it seems I have slept enough as I am full of beans in the middle of the night. All this and John has been away, so I have been on my lonesome. It’s no fun, but at least we have Skype. I do miss him, and his caustic humour and his ability to laugh at the world (and me grrrr.) But it is therapeutic, I suppose it’s like the old adage, ‘if you frown at a mirror, it frowns back, but if you smile it returns the greeting!’ Oh it’s good to have ‘and adage’ to keep you going!

 I did see Bonnie on skype, she was playing the ukulele. Literally. She had it across her knees and she was plinking the strings and laughing at the sound. Clever girl!

I noticed the pot of pineapple sage is in flower, how beautiful. Who would have thought it could be so exotic.

And finally because I was ill I threw out some of my home made cereal, full of lovely nuts, cranberries, seeds and so on, and when I looked out later there was a scene that could have come straight from a forest created by Walt Disney. There were two squirrels, a robin and the tiniest mouse all munching together! What a grand afternoon tea!

Today I am off on my hols for a mini break to stay with my friend Sheila in Perth. I have washed my dressing gown and slippers specially!

Tally Ho! And off I go!