Picnic Pondering

Wednesday August 18th

Day 119

My father keeps his eyes on the pebbles at his feet. His sticks slip between the round smoothness of them. It’s a slow walk to the shore where the river meets the sea in swirling currents.

‘It doesn’t matter if I fall,’ he says, ‘you and your brother can hoick me up again.’

I remind him that the last time he fell - backwards into the soft springy grass on Dartmoor - that we were all laughing so hard my sister and I had to enlist the help of a passerby.

We reach the car just as the sun disappears behind steely black clouds and the wind gets fierce. We picnic on cheese and leek pastries and bite into whole tomatoes, small crunchy courgettes and celery sticks, and squash pale avocado flesh onto oatcakes. Our cups of hot soup steam up the windscreen.

While we munch on blueberries my father says he has been pondering on the purpose of his life. We talk about the importance of thinking about things, weighing them up. I notice how I pack my days tightly with no space for reflecting. I wonder if this writing counts as pondering.