Lovely Day

Monday 12th April, 2021

An absolutely glorious day. A mild frost but a perfectly blue sky which lasted all the day. I decided to take my favourite walk by the Coastal Fife path to Tayport. Although I had on a thermal vest and two pullovers I was not overly hot but I did take off my woollen bobble hat. My gloves were necessary as I get cold at all extremities of my body...it must be the poor circulation of an ageing man.

Rilke in the Letters to a Young poet wrote : "And your doubts can become a good quality if you school them. They must grow to be knowledgeable, they must learn to be critical.... Request arguments, act with attentiveness and consistency and they instead of being demolishers will be among your best workers". So one needs to be critical. What do cold extremities mean? How do I counteract them? How do I live every day with them and use them?

I watered the remaining herbs as there had been no rain over night. I fear many of the plants are dead including the geraniums which have lasted three winters so far.

The walk was good. Three bags of litter in all. A fabulous day resulting in seeing the Tay being like a mirror reflecting the blue sky. The sands on the beaches were exactly a yellow sand colour and sparkling. The birds looked well plumed and perfectly their washed colours. The new leaves on the trees were iridescent greens. I breathed deeply and enjoy it all and sat for an hour overlooking the Firth of Tay and across to Broughty Ferry Castle, the spit and then south to Tentsmuir forest.

A few encounters. First with a deaf man who muttered something about my litter bag. We had a shouting match and agreed with each other that the consequences of unthinking littering could well be the death of the planet. Was that far fetched? I do not know. Then as I caught the bus back so two elderly ladies. In my smugness I thought I was younger than they. We talked, again initiated by the litter bag, and I discovered that they had walked over twelve miles that morning getting up at 6am to catch the dawn and the early flights of birds. They had been across the bay to St Andrews and back through Tentsmuir having started from Dundee by bus to Newport and then up over the hills. They did not look at all shattered and I realised how unfit I was in comparison.

I noted the three hairdressers in Tayport were open and looked as if space persons had descended to do the cutting, colouring, Preminger etc, face masks, gloves, demilitarised zones of Perspex etc. Then I thought of the queues for shops reported in the early news. Is this the normal we all seek?

Well, the sun is setting in an array of colour and beauty. How glorious.

I think on my doubts, on my faults and fears and ponder how to use them to build a better world and so that it may be said, as it is of The Duke of Edinburgh, he led a good life. What a perfect accolade. As the sermoniser at Mass yesterday said of the doubts St Thomas had ' he converted them in to a force for good '.