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| Julie arrives as well-armed as Putin, crossing the Ukraine's eastern border. Just joking, folks |
Today’s Tuesday, the getting-up-early day. Julie’s day. Soon she’ll be bustling in with her Henry vacuum cleaner, her cleaning materials, and tales of “horrendous” traffic on the A465. For two hours the house will accommodate Hurricane Julie - a natural force for good - purging our dust and grime, putting bed linen into the wash, opening all the windows (“This house is far too hot.”), and, with our blessing, making herself a coffee.
In the non-pandemic days we used to exit when she arrived, making sure we didn’t get under the feet. Killing time with coffee and chat in Tesco’s café. We’ll be resuming that routine today, now the café is open again. Then, back to the newly cleaned house; off with my shoes so that I may walk over the still wetly shining kitchen floor, always Julie’s last task before she bustles away to clean elsewhere.
As I say, getting-up-early day. A pain during deep winter when all is dark and I must shave purely by touch in the en suite to allow VR a few extra minutes of bedtime. But now, thank God, dawn arrives earlier and I need no longer consult my illuminable wrist watch to check the time.
Our bedroom walls carry several hanging pictures – a Tate-Gallery print of a Turner masterpiece, and some prints I picked up in the USA and which evoke the architectural remnants of the Great Depression era. These decorations act as a substitute for the wrist watch.
Gradually, as dawn advances, light seeps into the bedroom. In the gloom I first detect the pictures as darkish blobs, then as recognisable rectangles, then – magic moment – the details begin to appear. All become recognisable. More civilised than the watch’s garish digits. Time to get up.
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| The bedside pictures that transform themselves at dawn. Photo taken at 17.00 hr, hence the reflection |
I love how you tell time in the spring dawn there. Yes, definitely more civilized than the garish digits on a watch or a clock.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: There's an oddity about all this. I've been watching those bedside pictures "tell the time" for more than twenty years, relishing the transformation. Only now have I suddenly felt the urge to write about it. I wonder if there have been occasions when - during those twenty years - I've faced my blog and said to myself "Nothing to write about today", not knowing such a claim was an untruth. That I hadn't written yet about that magical transformation.
DeleteNote: I've just added a photo of the pictures, not easily discerned because of late-afternoon sunshine. Their provenance is odd: they formed part of a commission included in the annual accounts of a Californian IT company, sent to the IT magazine in Philadelphia I was working on at the time. They represent various houses and/or other structures, either ruined or at least unoccupied. The artist was clearly a man of great talent. But it seemed such an un-American subject for an IT company to tackle.
Coming awake. Once upon a time I went to bed and then, miraculously another day dawned and I awoke, refreshed.
ReplyDeleteEven in old age and medical problems that can mean visits to the loo about 2/3 times a night, it is still light that eventually awakens me. My arthritis means that extended exercise is painful, yet that is what the doctor ordered (literally). Yesterday I toiled throught the day (with numerour coffee breaks) to attend to the large wood panelled gates behind which the caravan used to sit. The recent gales had broken away a corner if the brickwork to which had been attacned, by expansion bolts, one of the hinges. It is a heavy gate and was threatening to tear away the lower hinge too. Much brickwork drilling was involved to fit new expansion bolts and supporting plates were fabricated from steel, but by the end of, for me, a very strenuous day all was well again.
I deaded what my body would feel today, but I took a Naproxsyn (NSAID) tablet when I went to bed. One toilet visit at about 02.00 hours and the morning sun awoke me at 07.10 when it hit my bedroom window, rather like old times.
I feel loose and relaxed today in all my joints. no doubt the tablet helped, but the doc. was right about exercise.
Avus: Wouldn't have dreamt of tackling such an onerous project. Luckily the surgeon has provided me with an unassailable jusfication: never put the internal stitches at risk. Nuff said.
DeleteAnd here's a ghastly post-op detail. Afterwards I was attached to a drip to compensate for some anemia problems. To avoid having to tote the drip rig to the loo when Ol' Man Bladder came a calling, I was also linked to a piss bag via a cannula up my you-know-what. This arrangement had an unnerving side-effect: I could piss away without wetting the sheets but lacking any sensation that urine was leaving me. To some extent, remnants of this deprivation (normally a source of great relief) still remain.
Ah! I remember the catheter well from the days of my prostate op (I give thanks for it as I have had 25 years since then). The luxury of being able to lie in bed and piss away whenever I needed to - with no wet sheets
DeleteWhat a lovely peaceful post of the ritual and mundane. Here, too, the sun creeps across the blinds wedged between the house and garage on our eastern side, and I get up earlier. Open the blinds and watch the feeder for a few moments. Golly, no Turner or 30's photos on my walls, but what wonderful choices. nice to hear your 'voice' again. Sandi
ReplyDeleteSandi: Julie (our cleaner for about ten years) is certainly a ritual in our lives, but I might question "mundane". Before hiring her services we divided up the domestic chores and once a week did them ourselves, leading to a good deal of bad temper and a conviction that retirement hadn't meant subjecting ourself to such disagreeable and unimaginative labour. Now, the sound of bustling offers a delightful benison: it's not us doing the bustling.
ReplyDeleteI've added a photo of the chronometric pictures with some amplification. See my response to robin andrea.