it’s a delight to be at home and have time to enjoy the sunshine, to be out in the garden and notice things that might otherwise have gone unappreciated. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so aware of the blossom on trees beyond the usual apple and cherry blossom, or been so glad I made the effort to plant bulbs last Autumn, even though we didn’t think we’d be at home to enjoy them.

I usually cook most of our meals from scratch, but it’s so easy to have something pre-prepared or to go out for a pizza or fish and chips that I don’t always take the same trouble as I’ve had the time to do in the last few weeks. Home made soup for lunch then, possibly using up leftovers in the fridge, but more likely, planned and very much anticipated.

We have established our “opera afternoons” and are very much enjoying focusing on work in the studio in the morning before making a conscious decision to switch off each afternoon and watch the daily offering “live from the Met”. As we do, the “quarantine socks” are coming on apace - I took this photograph on Sunday and they’ve progressed quite considerably since then. I’m not sure I like the way the colours are pooling with this Knitted Wits Grand Teton sock yarn but that’s all part of the joy of knitting with hand dyed yarn I guess.

Most of the time, then, we are quite content with life as it is right now. However, today we woke to rain and our bear Bernd is looking at a rather different sky through the window this morning. These conditions provoke the thoughts that I try to avoid, like the fact that we’d planned to be sailing through the Suez Canal today, meeting friends for dinner and generally enjoying being on board our favourite ship.

Instead, I’m sitting at my worktable working on an art project that’s been lingering here a little longer than it should, my green fingernails evidence of the various things that have thwarted my efforts this morning: thankfully it took my hero no time at all to dismantle to U bend in the downstairs sink to retrieve the ball bearing I carelessy “lost”…. ! But as I sat colouring in squares, I was thankful that at the moment when I might have been thinking of the things we didn’t get to do, Radio 3’s Suzy Klein chose that very moment to play the finale of Sibelius 5th Symphony and took me off to somewhere completely different.

Magical.