All magenta pink and peach and bronze in Aunty P's garden.....
It's a beautiful evening - warm, bright and windy - still light at nearly 10pm. I love these long summer nights but imagine I have to keep working - because that's what you do in the hours of daylight - at least that's what you do in my family. Working being the relentless next job on a circular list that never ends.....working being ordinary domestic tasks like watering the garden, making supper, phoning the decorator, updating my accounts, making next week's arrangements....and
not sitting in the sunshine with a book on my lap, daydreaming, breathing in the peppery perfume of the freight of honeysuckle weighing down the fence.
While I push the lawn mower over the daisies in the grass the aroma of the neighbour's BBQ sails through the evening along with the sound of children's voices, music through open windows.... and I remember that other life we used to have - before the unwanted voices in the head, before the dying of a brain. We might have sat in this night garden with fresh mackerel fillets smoking on the BBQ and a bottle of cold white wine between us.....talking..... making big summer plans.
And then I remember how easy it is for me to romanticise the past....it's just as likely we'd have drunk too much...had an upset....gone to bed not speaking, not touching...hurting.
So tonight.... in this life.... we sit at the sunshine table, out of the wind, with hot mushroom pies, baby carrots, garlicky spinach and fried cherry tomatoes on our plates...... a bottle of sparkling water between us..... and we make small plans......just for tomorrow.
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