Oh dear, somehow I just can’t get myself back into any kind of sensible routine. I am just skittering and dittering. I start the day, as often as not, with some kind of plan but it takes but the flap of a butterfly wing to derail me.
I have taking to rising and donning my running kit straight away, so that when it’s my turn in the gym I have no excuses. And yet the excuses present themselves nonetheless…. Some kindly neighbour will call with the enticement of Early Supper or Party Shed Pimms and, come Exercise o’ Clock, instead of clambering onto the treadmill I’m clambering out of the bath and into a mist of my new perfume. I can do this. I know I can. I managed 5K a day in June with the spectre of a black tie dinner hanging over me after all. I simply need a new incentive. Luckily, Keith has promised a proper holiday for my birthday (abroad and everything!). I don’t think I have worn a swimming costume in anger since 2017 so I feel quietly confident that the trying on process will deliver all the motivation I need. If I steel myself for the ordeal tonight, that will give me a fortnight…..and plenty of time to order a large, floaty cover-up..
Last week I declared too wet for most of my long list of gardening jobs, but somehow I couldn’t get down to any serious indoors efforts either. We have garden produce galore all desperate to be bottled, jellied and chutnied and a looming shortage of innovative artisanal soaps. I have a stool festooned with half sewed items and a sweater of uncertain size with a back, one and a half arms and a creative void where the front should be. On my laptop three books in search of (variously) two middles and one ending (I seem to be good at beginnings…) lurk threateningly. Well, when the rain actually came I flunked all of these. Down and down and further down the list I scrolled, looking for something inconsequential. In the end I sorted out this year’s saved seeds, arranged and hand tied the dried flowers I’ve had festooned over the garret for weeks and finally swept up.
This week, lo and behold, the garret was pristine and ready for action, the floor didn’t even crunch when I went to open a window…….but now it was just too sunny. I wandered around the garden thinking about things I might do. I did, to be fair, eventually manage two days of running around rehoming poorly peonies with a degree of commitment but then today petered out. Keith threw an impromptu lunch at the newly reopened Victoria Hotel in Norham into the mix. After a highly commendable egg, ham and tomato pie and a large pinot noir, I found that I really was fit for little more than lying on a lounger on the gin terrace listening to a trashy audiobook and, as a sop to constructive activity, thinking about small composters.
Two you tube videos about the joys of making your own cunning balcony composter later, I meandered out and picked some calendula, rosemary and sage for drying, thus guaranteeing a skivatious job bagging up dried herbs next time the spectre of getting on with anything more arduous rears its head. After the holiday I really shall spring into action. Most definitely I shall. Really. Just watch this space…
