I was out minutes after the swab and with my friend Colin in Liverpool within an hour where I soaked up my weight watchers extra points on a fab Lebanese lunch ( no pud)
It’s so nice to sit in a window of a nice cafe and talk and eat and talk more.
We gossiped like old ladies do in Central Park on a Sunday.
Towards the end of lunch Colin turned to me and said
“ Do you know what, I really fancy going to Venice for a few days do you want to come?”
I said yes before he could take another slurp of his foul mudammas
On the back of the feelings of springtime this morning
I had a mooch in the garden at dusk to look at the spring flowers
Which are just showing their faces to the sun.
Pink ribus, miniature daffodils and grape hyacinth are valiantly colouring patches of my borders
And I filled an old cut glass ink bottle with a bunch and listened to The Archers as the dogs turned slow circles in front of the fire and Albert sighed in the middle of them stretching his bad leg slowly towards the heat
I lowered Bluebells’ windows wide and drove down the A55 at a pace.
What covid I breathed out soon was blasted out of the car in an instant and soon I was feeling cold but exhilarated by the wind.
that’s cleared the old tubes I thought
I drove to Colwyn Bay and sat on the beach with my flask of coffee
This was 9 am this morning and I had already walked the dogs.
Women were wild swimming in the sea and I could here them laughing from where I sat.
It’s always nice to hear laughter no matter where it’s from
It’s been a long and fairly miserable winter all told
I’ve never experienced one so long, except in lockdown
And with spring here things seem to be on the up.
They feel better?
Don’t you think?
Two women passed me , they were talking about Paul O’Grady whose death was announced this morning
“ I loved him as Lily Savage” one said to another and I wondered if O’Grady knew just how affectionately he was thought of I thought.
I loved the story about him when he was comparing a drag show in the 1980s in London and the bar was raided by Policemen all wearing rubber gloves ( HIV protection) because it braking section 28 rules, Lily Savage called out to the punters that they were there to help with the washing up.
Thanks to O ‘Grady we now have drag Queens in our libraries reading stories to children.
With his Liverpudlian wit, amazing legs and fuck you attitude that never lost a little warmth, he endeared himself to the majority that met him.
It was skills practice in college tonight , so I played the counsellor (on line )which was interesting.We are a group of three and this evening had an opportunity to honestly share why we picked each other to “ do” therapy .
I like my fellow students and I guess that is why we were all there …for we like each other.
Donna is a fast talking , nervous Social worker who loves her cats, is theatrically and constantly irritated by her husband and who laughs without a filter.
Caroline is deep, a saleswoman who is good at what she does but who needs to change her career
And there’s me
Three different people who bonded over Carl Rogers, CBT and Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
Tonight we did skills practice and I talked about my weight and it was important and supportive and caring
We also talked about other things not for Going Gently to share, but I must say that we left tonight’s session each feeling we’ve made two new friends.
No long conversations. No long replies. No in depth recognition of the merits of off the wall films.
No discussions on everything important.
So be it.
I have covid again and I’m grounded from a much anticipated cinema trip.
Apart from feeling I’m swallowing ground glass when I sip my coffee I’m fine.
My back garden looks like the stink bombs front garden. I realised that yesterday. Now the “ stink bombs” were a family who lived in a rough looking council house near my primary school. The hedges were unkempt, and opened up wide enough in one side to allow the Ford cortina to park up to the living room windows. Scattered around would be a skip load of mostly broken plastic toys , a deflated paddling pool and beer cans.
Even as 8 year old children , we were snobby and judgemental.
Not nice eh? I only turned into Anne Shirley Cuthburt when I was a teen.
My garden has a look of the stink bombs and it’s all Roger’s doing
Empty milk cartons and plastic bottles, lie around next to bits of solar lanterns and pieces of paper lie sodden after being gleefully held aloft like a fluttering flag and thrown in the air like a shuttlecock.
An old lasagne container, parts of an old lead, a used coffee bag, the contents of a small houseplant pot.
He’s been skipping around with an empty coke bottle stolen from the recycling bag for the past half hour.
