Grey

The weather has broken after six weeks of sun and warmth, today started cool and is now positively cold with high winds darkening grey skies; rain is not far off, and I have the headache to prove it. Ah well.

I went downtown to do the rounds of my weekend stores and people, saying my goodbyes for the next month. I bought a proper trecking backpack, thermos bottle and high-tech socks today, plus some spare laces just in case. I feel a bit of a fraud investing in all this hiking technology as though I were going to go on a proper expedition, when in fact there is a good hotel waiting at the end of each day and a bus to carry the luggage, on which one may sit in comfort if the walking becomes a bore. I have given myself permission in advance to use the bus whenever I feel the desire to do so, or have no interest in walking.

This odd not-wanting-to-go-on-holiday mood that I wrote about yesterday has its own strange tides and currents. At this moment, I want nothing more than to go right now without waiting for Thursday; the thought of spending five more days here seems like a prison sentence. I have absolutely no desire to work at the architects' (though I will on Monday and Tuesday) and claim to be unable to find anything to do on the database (though another part of my mind knows that there is a four-page list of improvements and open bug reports).

I picked up my new/old iPod ("Trixie") from the shop yesterday, and loaded up a first batch of music (plus my addressbook and calendar, natch). I walked around town this morning to the sound of Glenn Gould playing Liszt's solo piano transcription of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, which was just wonderful (the experience and the music both). I had to restrain myself forcibly from laughing for joy and singing along to music that only I could hear. Thank you, Steve.

And, just because I'm in a musical mood, here's a song for Saturday from this CD. Thank you, Emma.