How Will I Live?

Sunday 17th April

Day 361

This morning I make Kedgeree for a dear friend’s housewarming brunch. The rice is yellowy gold with turmeric, flecked green with parsley, studded with fat flakes of haddock, leeks and mushrooms, hard boiled egg quarters plopped on the surface.

We gather round her big wooden table in the quiet courtyard, 600 years old - the sun burning high in a blue sky and it feels like we are in another country - Italy, France, Switzerland - pink geraniums in pots, a mauve wisteria flowing over the red stone walls, with clinking glasses and plates of food, laughing and talking - warming her new home and our hearts.

Much, much later my husband and I wash up and put away the kedgeree saucepans and dishes from this morning. A familiar song is playing on the radio - the words are something like:

‘How will I live?

How will I live without you?

How will I breathe?

If you leave me now.....

I don’t how how to do that. Even imagine it. But I suppose it’s like budgeting - something I’m going to find out.

Tonight the apple tree is a glowing white fountain in the dark garden flinging its blossom on the grass with a generous and wild abandon.