Thursday and I wake late after yesterdays long day but exciting day. My partner brings me hot water and I go through my morning rituals before getting up for breakfast. I still have last nights opera in my head. In particular Carmen’s card aria as it is known in which she sees her own death, I thought it was one of the most powerful parts of the while opera, despite other parts being being more popular. Then another extraordinary days starts. I check my Podcast supplier (Podbean) and discover an old colleague and friend, to whom I still write, is on the latest podcast. Of course I watch it with interest and I am surprised when I get a mention. What was really lovely was to see my friend looking well but most of all being her usual thoughtful and insightful self. It is good to see and hear someone still holding the same basic values about how people should be offered the chance to change in an environment where there is an acknowledgement that we are no better or worse than each other. It was a special start to my out of bed day.

I had not long finished watching the Podcast when I received another out of the blue surprise. A large envelop arrived in the post addressed to me in a hand I did not recognise. When I opened it up I found not only a letter from a friend and old flat mate from late teens, early twenties, but some sketches of me that he had done while sharing a flat. I had shared a flat with two friends who were architecture students while I was a lab assistant at the local Polytechnic. This friend and I spent New Year in Paris together in the late sixties, I think it was the first time I flew. I was never aware that he ever sketched me. He was going through old portfolios and thought I might like them. Indeed I do, and here I am.

The idea that something like this has survived all these years is just lovely. All this time something of me has been in the world with out me knowing and it brought back so many memories of youthful living in a small upstairs flat above the landlords son and wife who would on occasions have seismic rows and throw dishes of food at at each other and up the walls. I guess they were just working out their cultural differences, he was Pakistani and she was Irish, clearly a potent mixture in this instance, but I cant help thinking that this contributed to our low rent at the time.

I clear the kitchen and make lunch before starting to draft the blog. It is time I caught up with my correspondence having been prompted by this mornings events. I end up writing a couple of poems, not good ones, and then fall asleep with a head ache. I wake up in time for tea and an evening of football disappointment and then night meds and bed, I have become spoonless in no time at all.