They were waiting as promised. I liked the way they'd identified me on the envelope (see pic).
UNBUDGING First it was more birds in general. Now the birds seem to realise there are fewer pedestrians and less traffic, and strut the pavements and the roads unfettered. One blackbird in particular only gives way grudgingly.
FLOWERY I hate all forms of gardening, but daughter Occasional Speeder hates gardening even more than I do. She lives 45 minutes away and in an act of unparalleled filial generosity she shopped for bedding plants, drove over with hubbie Darren, and planted them in our garden. On her knees, and groaning, she addressed me, hoping I recognised the supreme significance of this gesture. I did, and sent her off with a bottle of champagne and two bottles of Angry Orchard, a superb US cider.
MULTISYLLABIC As an aid to preparing my voice for my Skyped singing lesson, I do a pre-warm-up after sucking a Strepsil lozenge. This factoid is as banal as they come other than Strepsil's active constituents: 2,4-Dichlorobenzyl alcohol, Amylmetacresol and Levomenthol. As Hamlet says: "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue..."
EXCESS I may eventually be re-christened The Hay Wain (See Constable)
You seem very busy during this time of shelter in place. Daily visits to the filling station, noticing the unbudging birds, watching your daughter plant flowers in your garden. All of that and preparing for your Skype singing. I hope you get some rest soon.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: This is going to be the boringest re-comment I've ever done. Not a shred of wit and you may faint with ennui long before the last word. But it has to be done.
ReplyDeleteOur major grocery ordering is done weekly online; the guys leave trays of items on the threshold and retreat up the driveway.
Our neigbours run a small care home and must regularly visit the supermarket/pharmacy where entrances and exits are strictly controlled. They email us their departure times and we let them know about any unforeseen needs. They leave the stuff on our threshold and I pay them by bank transfer.
We're allowed a short exercise walk each day. The filling station is less than a mile away. The check-out is surrounded by a transparent screen, there's a one-in/one-out procedure, I pay for the newspaper with a pre-paid voucher and so change doesn't change hands. I observe bird behaviour during the walk but the fact is I could (and do) note the birds from my living room window.
The horticulture session was a one off. Some garden centres are open so my daughter and hubbie (who work from home) were able to buy a small selection of plants. Alone I'd taken out the old plants from the beds in a horrid communion with nature which will only happen once this year. From indoors I watched them do the planting (the only damn pleasant bit of the day) and they were away in about half an hour.
I take singing very seriously. It is in fact my raison d'etre and without it I would be dead of misery four years ago. Singing can be exhilarating, it is demanding (the songs get tougher and tougher; they are all written by familiar-name masterpiece-composers), V has become a friend over the years and uses Skype to teach school subjects to kids as far away as Holland. Singing is as much a physical activity as an intellectual one and it has taught me a lot about music in general. There are times, when I'm practising in the empty kitchen - it has a fabulous acoustic - when I cannot believe the sounds I hear are coming from within me. Singing is an affirmation of life at a time when body-decay is saying the reverse. If you'd like a tiny hint of what it means to me, click on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZIVxu_MpwA
This is opera, the musical big-time for me. Not only can I sing this wonderful aria, I was required to stumble through it on my first lesson back in January 2016. Hey, it's by bloody Mozart.
I am 50,000 words into my fifth novel which - like the other four - is about a woman fighting her way through a world dominated by men. I have two - modersately serious - pieces of iambic pentameter verse on the go which I will eventually post - to the sounds of silence.
The main fact I suppose is I could die tomorrow and not feel cheated. The last bit of my life is proving to be a hell of a lot better than the first bit.
I enjoyed your comment to Robin as much as I enjoyed your post. I wish we all wrote more about our days and how we fill them.
ReplyDeleteI noticed you referred to the gas station as "the filling station." I was reminded that was how my family referred to it when I was young. I asked my husband, and that was how his family referred to it, too. We are both from industrial northern Indiana. It is such a descriptive term, the filling being the act. I am wondering now, at what point did we start thinking of a place to fill up one's car with gasoline as the gas station?
Colette: This re-comment started off with just that aim: listing my stay-at-home day. I thought - mistakenly - robin was twitting me for breaking Plague protection rules and I became quite emotional at the thought of curtailing my Skype singing lessons. I realised this wasn't the case but decided to let the stuff stand.
ReplyDelete"Gas" never took off as an abbreviation in the UK because "gasoline" never took on. Our word was "petrol"; way back we used to refer to petrol stations. When I was in the US I found it hard adopt to that particular meaning; what sort of fuel then powered our oven which you, in any case, called a cooker?