Spacious

That's the word - spacious - that drifts into my mind as I look back over today, as if somehow, without too much trying, I managed to fit in the things that needed to be done and still have the flexibility to allow other things to happen, randomly. I don't know why successive lockdowns should have created this need to do things, to accomplish meals at set times - you'd have thought it'd be the reverse! Maybe it's all down to my obsession with not missing a day at the Italian lessons - I'm way past my first non-stop year now.

I woke after another ibuprofen-deepened sleep (I'll explain that in a minute) with the lineup of huvtaes already standing waiting: wash every towel in the house and get them out on the line, photograph and deposit a cheque, pick up prescriptions, get some cash for the next time I need actually to hand over money. And don 't do anything silly to my knee while I was at it ... nor to my toe. Ah. The toe.

Last night, just after finishing my blip, I was getting ready for a bath when I rammed my big toe into the bedroom carpet while impatiently shaking a trouser leg off my (bare) foot. Agonising. I swore like a trooper and ended up cleaning my teeth while holding the affected toe under the bath cold tap. I am clearly not fit to be allowed to move.

But today: Apart from the aforementioned huvtaes, I did some nice things, relaxed, normal things. I found myself sitting over a coffee in my friends' shop, looking at the various artwork and craft items for sale, looking out at the street and the people, chatting to my pal. Then I went home and we had lunch in the garden, after which I fell asleep on the bench with a bit of last Sunday's Observer falling from my hand. It was 4pm before I came to sufficiently to think of going anywhere, but nonetheless we went.

And this was another occasion of spaciousness. While walking along the Ardyne, on the little road behind the beach in my blip, where the wild mustard is alive with bees and the sky was this fascinating dappled pattern, I exchanged a word about the oyster-catchers with a man walking his dog. A few sentences later there was a pause, and then: "Are you McIntoshes?" Turns out this man was the husband of someone I used to be friendly with when we were all much younger; I remember she looked after my now 43 year old son while I was called for jury service and she attended our church and the same toddler group. She died far too young and horribly swiftly, of cancer. I didn't know her husband - I have a feeling he was often away, perhaps at sea. We were still reminiscing when a couple with a dog of their own approached and turned out to be other old friends whom we rarely see now that we're all retired, to say nothing of living through the Great Plague ...

By the time all the chat was over, the scenery on this mild, still afternoon admired, the two herons flying in parallel overhead admired, the fact that that we could hear cars driving off the ferry in Rothesay far across the water - by the time all that had passed and we'd walked back along the shore road to our car, it was already time for us to be sitting down to dinner. And we weren't. And we didn't care, because it was a perfect summer evening and we'd had good conversations with nice people and it all felt right.

Now it's midnight. I'm preaching in the morning, and I need my beauty sleep. But today was good.