I usually wake up now a days at about 5am, not, as in the past, leaping out of bed in a hurry to get into the car to beat the traffic into London, those days are long gone and today it’s rather a question of laying in bed and opening my iPad to see what’s been happening overnight and crucially, from that news assemble my thoughts for todays blog.
Blogging has become increasingly important as the physical me slowly sizes up, the mind at least remains cognitive and combative seeking out my own interpretation of what’s right and what’s wrong according to my own precepts.
In the days before my ankle became arthritic and painful walking to the shop was a pleasure, it removed me from the cacophony of other peoples business portrayed on the television and concentrated my mind in a brief flirtation with the subtle goings on around me. Our suburb after experiencing living in Johannesburg has always been a non threatening place to saunter through. Its people receptive to a cheery “good morning” with one of their own, the traffic sufficiently far away not to be threatening, the terrain interesting enough and not challenging, the geography now made up of more houses as yet another farm has been bought and built over into little regimented boxes, each a microcosm of the next, each merging affordability with class.
The purpose of the walk is a trip to the shop to buy groceries, it’s not that we consume much and I even had to buy another chest freezer to keep the shopping from going bad. The real reason is to get out from the four walls and meet people, other shoppers, the ever attentive supermarket staff, the guy cutting his hedge and also those imaginary people who I never actually meet but form an opinion on as I see them in the park or on the pavement. They are the chaff which lubricate the mind after hours of Netflix, they are the non cinematic reality who make my world go round.
It’s a far cry from Rome, Paris, Sydney or trekking in the Andes or the Hindu Kush. The glamour of an unknown address where for a week or so you could struggle to make yourself understood, the un violated beaches and crystal clear water, the quaint and the conform, living side by side, with only the inevitable mayhem at the airport as a hurdle to negotiate.
I’v been there and done that so it’s no biggie not to be able to comfortably get from A to B but it is annoying and I have considered buying an electric scooter, one which I can fold up and carry between the main forms of transport.
My enjoyment of driving, jumping in a car to roam further is still embedded in me and with my trusty steed, the Volvo 940 classic (1998 and running as sweet as can be, she’s actually weathered better than me) I can drive in reliable comfort to Swansea or Northumberland in style and take the scooter out of the boot for the last 200 metres.
The weather has never bothered me and I am always a little frustrated by people who are always consulting the forecast before moving outside. I feel it’s such a fickle process in this country like playing chess, the plan was to capture his knight but suddenly you yourself were captured, so it is with the weather. I suppose years of cycling in Yorkshire hardened me to inclement conditions, it had to be pouring down not to set off under a cloudy sky.
Done that got the medal so a trip to Sainsbury’s, perhaps on my scooter (if I can be persuaded to part with the cash), some things never change and is thrilling enough for me
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