Plunging

Straight back into life today; I finished and submitted an academic article, which was a relief (What stress! Retrieving the password, putting the finishing touches into the style template, wondering if everything it said was true). There was marking to do and a massive list of administrative things which knocked me out just by looking at it.
There is a new song to put up on Youtube, but I only got about 3 hours sleep last night so it will have to wait until I look and sound like a human being rather than some sort of exotic roadkill that has been shocked back to life.
Half of me hates January, and the other half loves it. Being inside looking out at the midday gloom can feel quite snug, but the thought of that gloom lasting into the foreseeable future is a bit grim. I'm going to go to Edinburgh for a few days to stamp about on the frozen grey pavements thinking about McMum and McDad, who no longer live there because they have both passed away. Somehow I think their spirits are still around, drifting between there and Perthshire. It is almost ten years since McDad died; I still have his gardening hat, and the smell of woodsmoke from his shirt when I used to sit on his lap as a child on Sunday afternoons is as easy to recall as anything that happened yesterday. He was quiet a lot of the time, and it's nice to sit in the same room as a person like that: peaceful.