We’ve had a lot of peace. We’re spending a lot of evenings in the pool, where only twenty people are allowed at a time and only swimming in a clockwise loop. We’ve been taking sick days when we feel worn out. I’ve been reading a little more. Emma has planted the raised bed at the end of the garden with bulbs that are supposed to sleep over the winter and erupt in spring. She forgot to check they were the right way up, but faith and bad statistics tell us about half of them will grow okay.

Tom got back from Scotland describing a similar cleaned out and freshened feeling as we always get. He swam in the loch too. He wants to go back every year too. My Instagram feed is thick with acquaintances bumming around islands in Scotland I thought remote and foolishly my own.