I awoke, after a not totally restful night, to a glorious morning: sunshine, blue sky, little wind. Definitely a day for Belinda (those who are new to this should know that Belinda is my trusty bicycle and means of keeping slightly fitter than a couch potato!) So after a healthy breakfast (cereal and scrambled egg) I grabbed the shopping list... and then had a thought. Almost ready for posting was a parcel for my grandson (Dan, if you're reading this, then the cat is well and truly out of the bag!) So I addressed it, found the parcel tape and taped it up more securely than the mere sellotape it had had before, and put it in a bag for attaching to Belinda's carrier.
Off I set, with the morning sun at my back. I have a standard route for exercise combined with shopping: about the first mile is on road, then I get onto a bridleway which goes up quite a hill, steep indeed at the end, and then a bit more on road before more bridleways which decant me just up from Morrison's. I was delighted to get up the steepest bit still riding: sometimes I have to get off and walk, but today - admittedly in the lowest gear going - I kept riding. The short stretch of road to the next bridleway has a lovely view out towards the coast - you can just about see the North Sea at one point - and from the vantage point of a quite high saddle you can see even more! I felt at peace, and very content, as I turned off the road: I was keeping fit, doing a useful task - indeed two, posting the present and shopping - and the sun shone so I was riding 'in the light', a good Quaker term! I began to sing 'Oh what a beautiful morning' as I rode along, being only slightly embarrassed when I realised that a couple of dog walkers had been in earshot.
Arriving at the shopping centre, I locked up the bike and took the parcel to the post office: over £5 postage! But my grandson is worth it and I've no other way of getting it to him this side of May: I just hope he likes it. (He's very computer literate and has his own blog, so I'm not going to say what was in the parcel as he could well read this!!) Then to the shop, to get milk and a few other things I needed: and then back home, a slightly long way round to avoid riding behind a lorry with the most dreadful exhaust emissions possible. It was smoky enough riding away from it!
After my usual light lunch (soup and garlic bread and a yoghurt) I went back to the kitchen and began work on the next task: making the Christmas cake. I love doing this sort of thing: it was great to find all the ingredients, prepare the tin, make the mix and set it to bake. Then I went to have a nap.
Just as I was ready to get up, a friend rang me and suggested meeting for lunch tomorrow: so I have that pleasant event in prospect. I went and took the cake out of the oven, stuck in a skewer to check it was cooked (it was) and left it to cool in the tin as the recipe says. Then, finally, I went for my 'morning' bath, a relaxing soak in sensuous aromatherapy bubbles. I got out just in time to get dressed and catch the Metro into town, to meet my friend Julia for a meal prior to yet another visit to our wonderful concert hall, The Sage Gateshead. A pleasant, if over-generous, pasta al forno and a bus ride which should have been about ten minutes but took 25 due to a silly, round the houses route and heavy Christmas traffic, and we were there. The concert was a Classic FM one, in every sense: Elgar, Vaughan William's exquisite 'The lark ascending' played as well as I've ever heard it by Bradley Creswick (who should be hetter known than he is), and then after the interval a vivacious performance of the Mozart Clarinet concerto, making this 'old chestnut' sound like a new and fresh piece. The concert ended with the emotive 'Variations on a theme of Thomas Tallis', a piece I've loved since I was a teenager and once wanted to use as the background for an anti-war film shot entirely in cemeteries.
So all in all a good day: and the icing on the cake was yet to come. I thought I'd do a preliminary sketch for a new blog: I'm going on a long trip to Australia and New Zealand next year, and I want to blog every day so friends back home can see what I'm doing. So to start it off I thought I'd write a bit of background as to why I was going, starting with a wish to go to the opera in Sydney. I wanted to mention
the designer of the Opera 
House and couldn't remember his name, so I looked it up... and the site had an inviting link to 'buy tickets'. So after finishing the draft (far too long) of the blog entry, I went to see if booking had opened for March, and it had (unlike last time I went, a month ago). So I registered, looked up what was available (horribly expensive, one of the two seats I bought was over £100), threw caution to the winds and booked for my two favourite operas which happen to be the ones they're doing on the two dates I can go! One is La Traviata and the other is Tosca: and I have the seats booked and paid for, to collect on arrival. My lifetime ambition is one step closer! What a way to end a really good day.
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