Beautiful Day

There is one thing more likely to erode than a chalk cliff face in Sussex. It is more flexible than the spine of a liturgical dancer (you know, the ones who fling ribbons around). It is often more displaced than a farm full of travellers ...

...the Vicar's day off. 

Today is my first ever Vicar's Day off, which to be sure is manifestly different to Curate's Days Off and only begins to aspire to becoming a Rector's Days Off. Today is that day, ladies and gentlemen, and it is a truly beautiful day. The picture that you see is of my to-be-tamed back yard, soon to be in the full adornment of autumn russets and burnished golds. The Sun she shines in motes of light that dance in the soft-swaying leaves, the planes they fly like planes, the birds they squawk (they are parakeets after all) and the light breeze sends the leaves in little eddies around my to-be-mown grass (as distinct from Paul Eddys - he is a very different animal, and a nice bloke too). Do you get the idea? Can you hear the sound of Dvorak's New World Symphony in the background? Good, me too. 

Well, The Twins Aculae are at school, the wife occupied with the things that Vicar's Wives do (don't ask, or I would have to tell you, then kill you) and the doors and windows have been cast wide to let the scene flood in. Today was the day I was going to do what I had promised myself for the last couple of weeks. So do it I did. I flopped on the settee, and watched You Tube clips on my new very large (very very large) TV. I will be tending the Glebe this afternoon, before you cast aspersions about my wasting a beautiful day. 

I didn't feel guilty about frittering a couple of hours knocking back coffee and surfing through Rock Metal clips on the Large Telly. I work hard, I do all (read 'most') of the cooking, I deserved it. I thought I might feel bad, and indeed I can name ten things that I could usefully do today, but they would be 'work' and I am trying to start as I mean to go on. Every once in a while, a lazy morning is OK. I appear not to have shuffled off my mortal coil, and there have been no calls from the Court of Arches asking me to atone for my sin. I haven't even brushed my hair - that is how slovenly I have been today. 

Well, this was only ever going to be a post about how beautiful today is. Sometimes it really does pay to talk about the weather because in about eight or nine metric seconds it will be Christmas Eve and a foot deep in snow, like every Christmas. Mark my words. 

I hope that having read this (and good luck to you, a Counselling Pack is in the post), that you will have as nice a day as I am having so far. What a beautiful world we inhabit. 

...and for your edification (Paul Eddyfication? Is a theme developing? Should I have gone out today to seek the unchurched testosterone carriers?), a wonderful fusion of two of my favourite songs. It is a remarkable thing ...