Maybe that's why

You know that feeling you get when you don't feel quite as well or fit as usual but you know there's nothing really wrong?  Or nothing you can explain, anyway?  Most things seem just too much bother to do and there is little or no pleasure to be had in anything except getting into bed at night?  You just feel sort of lethargic and oomph, as though you are a balloon only half inflated?  Well, that's how I've been feeling the last week or so.  It hasn't helped that over the same period I have been stiffening up with arthritis.  No real pain, but distinctly uncomfortable at times.  The other thing is that I have become horribly irritable and tetchy, which is quite unfair on other people.  I do try to hide the tetchiness but regret that I have not been entirely successful.

I had to see one of the practice nurses yesterday for a blood test and she put her finger on the reason.  "It's the lack of sun," she said.  And I think she might well have something there.  We haven't seen much sun for months, this having been what seems like the longest winter of my life.  So far it seems to have lasted pretty much for 10 months.  Let's hope we actually get a summer this year.

That said, temperatures have risen recently and more and more flowers are coming into bloom.  The first tulips are out, as is the forsythia, but there is as yet no blossom on the plum tree like there was when I took this picture at the bottom of the garden back in - good grief!  It was in 2006!