A magical day in Moffat

Well, folks, it has been a magical spring day here in Moffat where Moffat Book Events come from. It was almost too hot to stay out for long, but I managed a circuit taking in the new restaurant Brodies, paid a bill at Manse Furnishing, collected the paper from Grieve's, bought an old fashioned scrubbing brush in Hyslop's, some milk and new season's Norfolk asparagus from the greengrocer next to the butcher (you only live once unless you are James Bond) and had excellently scrunchy fish and chips in the garden of the Moffat House Hotel. I am not in the pay of any of these excellent suppliers of meat, drink etc just glad to live in a place where the High St is still lined with real shops. Well, if not lined, then peppered. I am now looking out of my first floor window at a misty blue picture: the grove of tall, bare birch trees (my favourite sort whether clothed with leaves of green or gold, or - as now - leafless) on the old mill leat in the foreground, where dandelions and celandines have sprung up over night in the ditch; then the burn, and beyond the burn the green grass of the park, the scheme in the middle distance and then the line of the hills in the distance. Quite magical and showing no sign whatever of getting dark at gone 6 o'clock.