7th December 2012 Friday
I like this quote by Iris Murcoch in ‘The Sea, The Sea’
The secret to a happy life is continuous small treats.
like refuelling at a pit stop with gulps of stardust...
which means I’d have to slow down long enough to even notice I was gasping and I’d have to change my mind-set that is fixed on when this is over then I’ll......
The thing is, is that when something is over there is always the next thing waiting in the wings to sweep into centre stage - like Christmas - and for me all its attendant guilt-inducing I’m never enough thoughts......squeezing out treat thoughts...
Another pussy cat, youger and bolder, crapped on our pussy cat’s grave this morning seamlessly colonising his vacant territory. So I cover the bare soil with a wide fan of arching fern fronds...a fragile boundary fence.
It takes me all morning to wash up last night’s wine glasses and make two birthday cards.
Then I remember a wonderful unexpected gift from a dear friend last night, waiting for me in the fridge - a delicious cheesy, garlicky nutty scone the size of a cob loaf, ready to put in the oven and bake. It feels like all my unallocated small treats rolled up into one lovely fragrant lunch.
I drive to a meeting with two women I haven’t met before whose husbands are at different stages in their journeys with dementia. I wait for half an hour at our agreed rendevous - the coffee shop of a garden centre. Then discover there are two garden centres with the same name....I give up and go home refuelling at Sainsbury’s instead, using my money off voucher so it only costs me £37 to half fill up my tank instead of £41.
Tonight while I peel a bright orange squash to roast for supper my husband reads the TV guide out loud to me, stumbling over each word. This is what it says,
An Island Parish - The chair of the carnival committe encourages people to take part in the annual scarecrow committee.
Afterwards he says, I have no idea what that means.
Carnival and scarecrow floor him. I explain, but he says he only vaguely understands.
Luckily neither of us want to see the programme anyway. I realise I can’t really and truely imagine what it must be like to not know what words mean - unless I think of reading in a foreign language. What must it be like to be living in his world where the people he knows and loves are the same but we have all started to speak in Russian?
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