Six hour drives that cover the length and breadth of the country (and which involve many motorways and roadworks and hold-ups and congestion) are not my ideal way to spend time at the weekend's.

Especially when there is so much to do before Thursday.

But when a person wants to see her best friend's new baby, and the best friend happens to live on the other side of the country, there really is no alternative.

So yesterday I drove all the way to Lincoln and it was annoying and frustrating and not a little dull, but when I got there, I got to meet the most zen and contented baby I have ever met in my life. She is utterly lovely. She smells of babies and is sleepy and beautiful and not at all crumpled and she has huge almond eyes and she talks in her sleep already, little mewing noises, commenting on the world.

And her Mum looks so well and has clearly taken to Motherhood like I knew she would, straight in there with the perfect care and looks of total absorbtion and adoration.

So I spent a day with them, gazing at the baby and discussing her and cuddling her and rocking her and generally loving her just for being teeny. (And isn't it funny how someone so tiny can garner so much attention and interest, just by sleeping?)

And then I had to drive back. A horrible drive, which centred around listing in my head all the things I have to do and which there isn't enough time for, and which I haven't got enough money for, or enough boxes, or enough strength for, or enough patience. (And by the way, look, stupid girl. What the hell are you doing writing this ANYWAY when you should be doing other things? Stoppit, stoppit now...)

And anyway, the journey is long and horrible and tedious, but this evening it was made delightful by the beautiful Turner Skies everywhere I looked.

Beautiful clouds so full of rain that they were bursting great, gushing torrents of it onto the earth.

Spectacular clouds creating beams of God light which shined vived pink and virulent orange onto everything in their true and straight path.

Sullen and scowling, sulky clouds, coloured dark, dark grey which cast angry shadows over everything below them.

If I had painted this evening's skies I would have been laughed out of the room.

If I had painted them exactly as they looked; all messy watercolour and jagged cloud edges and as if someone had taken a huge brush and blobbed colour everywhere and made obsessive circular movements over and over, and given the clouds corners and generally messed up the sky like a three year old God might...well if I had done that people would have said I couldn't paint.

That my skies were not realistic.

But this sky was real.

It was real and beautiful and weird and messy and dreadfully created and so utterly wonderful to look at that I nearly crashed my car several times on the way home because I was so busy gulping down the colours and the shapes that I failed to notice the (regular) build up of traffic in front of me.

And to top it all I was playing The Red Hot Chilli Peppers 'By the Way' album really, really loudly, and at the most beautiful sky moment, the most inspirational, 'I-really-wish-I-could-stop-my-car-to-stare-but-I-can't-because-I'm-in-the-fast-lane-of-the-M5-doing-100mph,' moment the song on my stereo just happened to be, 'Can't Stop'.

...Can't stop the spirits when they need you
This life is more than just a read through.

And you couldn't get anything clearer, any more of a 'PAY ATTENTION, THIS IS IMPORTANT, YOU DEFINITELY NEED TO KNOW THIS' message than that?

Now could you?