Today wasn’t the best day I’ve ever experienced.
After running through the usual Saturday morning chores, I had to go out to Bourton-on-the-Hill for a sectional rehearsal for our upcoming choir concert. This went surprisingly well, to be fair, but left me wishing quite profoundly that I had access to the ‘Vaughan Williams staircase’ at Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge, which the choir master of the time is alleged to have used as an escape route whenever Vaughan Williams walked in carrying a new piece of choral music he wanted the choir to perform. In the absence of an escape stair, I may have to start digging a tunnel.
By the time I came out of the rehearsal it was raining quite hard, but as I drove along the A44 there were Red Kites hunting above the road, so I turned down Conduit Hill towards Chipping Campden in the hope of being able to pull in and capture one on camera. There followed an entirely farcical performance in which I kangaroo-hopped down the hill from lay-by to lay-by, with the Kites circling above me whenever I was driving, and disappearing over the far horizon every time I stopped and got out of the car. I only called a halt to this extremely amusing game when it began actually sleeting, on a vicious, swirling wind.
My next port of call was Stratford, where I had some bits of shopping to do. Waitrose turned out to be the ‘in’ place for ‘in’ people to go on a vile Saturday afternoon, and in consequence was the Seventh Circle of Hell, and when I re-parked in Old Town in order to dash up to the butchers on Chapel Street, the wind was swirling so hard that I had to fight my coat through a couple of falls before finally winning on a submission – by which time I was dripping wet, and frozen to the core. After dumping my bags in the car I went into Holy Trinity churchyard and put out some bird food, and though I quickly realised that it was raining almost as hard under the yew trees as it was out in the open, I stuck it out long enough to see a number of small birds helping themselves to the high-calorie food which I hope will have helped them get through what promises to be a truly horrible night.
Back at home, R realised from my semi-coherent ranting that my day had not gone well, so he administered restorative coffee and chocolate-chip cookies, after which I retired to bed with a book until I felt properly warm again.
R: L2, C1, D16.
