Thursday and I wake up to an empty house as both my partner and eldest daughter have gone out to work. I have a mini wave of nostalgia for the old days when people went to work and day time television was a hallmark of the unfortunate and old. I have breakfast ad morning meds and wonder what I am going to do for the day, I had considered a swim and a trip to town to but I decide against it. Instead I clear the kitchen and the piles of ironing before settling down to a cup of coffee and a letter to read. It is a letter from a friend and ex colleague. The letter is both engaging and inspirational. My friend is bright and insightful and has a huge number of activities going on al of which engage her with her family, friends and community. At the moment the direct opposite of me. On the basis of her letter I decide to “do something” and go out.
I go to the village shop and buy a paper and go to the village café to get lunch. I see people hanging about outside and go into the café to order. It is quickly pointed out to me that the “people hanging about outside” is in fact a queue. I of course apologise and in British fashion join the “queue”. This is clearly a sign of my deteriorating mental health (or Rebecca Vardy Syndrome as its know now) if I cannot recognise a queue. I do the crossword while I wait in the queue and finish it before I get to order my sausage and bacon baguette and a coffee. I sit at one of the tables and do another puzzle while my food arrives. I eat, finish the puzzle and go home.
Inspired by the letter to do something I get myself changed and get out into the garden. There follows hours of severe pruning as my water deprived and sundried garden gets cut back and tidies up. Everything has flowered early and gone over early this year so there is a lot to cut back and clear up. The pots are all dead and need to be cleared. I beaver away filling the recycle bin and compressing it down. I am in full slash adn burn mode when my partner arrives home from work followed very shortly by the garden guy. We all chat for a while and then get on with the garden tasks. I leave the garden guy to it and return to watching the Commonwealth Games. We eat tea and then my partner goes to the office to have her singing lesson while I feed the hedgehog and clear the kitchen. I do more Games and start to draft the blog. I’m reading a present from a friend at the moment. Its in fact a reread, which occasionally happens when friends gift you books. My theory is that if friends are friends they are liable to have similar reading habits and therefore there will be reading cross overs. So it is in this case. The book in question is Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon. It is a touching book but predicted some issues related to human engineering. First published as a short story in 1959 and then as a novel in 1966 it was one of the books of my youth as I read it when it first came out. It obviously appealed to my dyslexic self as the format spoke to me.
Tomorrow is a day I need to train and read, read and train. I also have letters I need to write as a consequence of the one I received today. So for now its time to take my meds and hope for a reasonable nights sleep.
