Blackwater

Finally back in Orkney after a week on s b Pudge, once of the Dunkirk evacuation, sailing from Maldon to Aldeburgh and back, with visits up rivers, including to Orford, going ashore to pick samphire, anchoring off Osea Island, waiting for high water to get back to Maldon; and now I struggle with my old failures of discipline as I try to write this paper on spirituality and secular humanism. Well, I say my old failures of discipline, but I wonder whether composition follows a pattern that is not subject to my will and I just have to wait until the next thought or sentence comes. This is the least pleasant part of the process. When I have a draft and I am tinkering with it, life is so much easier, the process is absorbing and almost joyful, but just now it is day-labouring ....