Cunning plan

 In my efforts to thwart this latest chest infection my plan was to go to bed later so that I was so tired I'd sleep through till morning. Having had such a poor sleep the previous night, I was confident it would work but it was not to be with a midnight turn in resulting in a coughing fit just ahead of 4am and a restless few hours of walking Juno under clear skies filled with crystal clear stars and a bit of American football, a good indication of just how desperate I was becoming.

I managed to drive Joseph to school and stopped at the village green to walk Juno properly, see above photo taken on the return toward the crossroads. I did go back to bed but mainly listened to the end of the audiobook Great Circle which has been a great listen. I know it was nominated for the Booker prize and it might seem a bit like jumping on an existing bandwagon but it really is a wonderful book with sympathetic characters and great representations of women and their changing fortunes which could also be rightly challenged as showing too little has changed still. Having to disguise oneself as a boy or man should not be necessary. There are numerous themes within the book including one that resonated particularly, personal agency, how much we are products of context and circumstances and how much we get to choose. Even within the choices there are so many compromises required, it seems getting by is almost the best we can hope for.

I took Juno to Verwood with me when I drove the motorhome down to change my library books and then to collect Joseph from school. The walk round Cranborne was suitably autumnal, the mewing of a buzzard overhead, groups of rooks in the fields and passing wood pigeons dominating the skies.