journal of a writing man

The daffodils are coming again.  Brave little spears, yellow-tipped, very soon to flower now.  Very few shoppers go through the supermarket checkout without a couple of little bundles of buds; they may be bar-coded like everything else but each one is a promise of joy and hope.

And this is the last day of February.  We’re promised a two or three day sunny break but storms are lashing the other side of the country and I suspect that we’ll see March doing its lion act very shortly.

And there are lambs in the fields.

If it were not for this blessed general election gathering its breath I’d be looking forward to April.  I’ve little love for the Labour government but I’m full of fear when I see the Tories prattling empty promises from behind their air-brushed masks.  Sometimes it feels like we Brits prosper instead of our politicians, not because of them.

And in the little house under the pines?  Graham is happily zinging away at his new ceiling, fixing pine planking and trim all neat and tidy, and singing merrily along with Muse albums.  Dolly is zizzing away happily on one or other of the beds upstairs–she does love being able to choose which bed she’ll sleep on today–and all is well with her.  I am singing my own quiet song, too, revelling in the sudden freedom from pain.  And all is well with me, too.  And happy.

Recovery day.  It’s really not very far, or very taxing, but the drive along the motorway to Cardiff and back seems always to leave me feeling drained.  So, as if it was anything at all unusual, I have spent the day with my feet up ‘listening to the radio’ with Dolly.

“Oh.  You mean you’re going to have a mid-day nap before lunch and your afternoon nap?”

“Could be,”  I said, wrapping up all warm in a fleece and pulling my woollen hat down over my ears.  “You got a problem with that?”

I woke in good time to do lunch, and before I got over-tanked with sleep so as to spoil my afternoon siesta.

You could say I’ve got this retirement thing nicely wrapped up.

Needless to say, if more interesting things had been available, and the weather not quite so dull and listless, I’d have shaken sleep from my shoulders and joined in with the rest of the planet.  These days I seem able to sleep the way I dreamed of doing when I was a working man.  Particularly a man who did shift work.

The number of times I’ve lain on the bed in a darkened room, trying my hardest to sleep so’s I’d be rested and capable of working a late evening or a night shift!

Now I don’t have to try.  I don’t even have to darken the room.  All I need is closed eyes and a snuggled-up cat.  And there I go, zizzing away once more.

Yes, you’re allowed to be a little envious.  How does Shelley put it?  Oh, yes:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Can’t say fairer than that!

Up and about early today, to IKEA for lighting and other stuff, mainly for Graham’s current project.  It’s not much of a drive, along the motorway and into the back end of Cardiff.  One day we’ll make the trip into the city itself, for the moment we weave our way through the big tin retail sheds you’ll find somewhere on the edge of every big town.  And some not so big towns, too.

Breakfast was good, so good that I had two.  Even Graham opted for a ‘breakfast extra’.

It would be easy to say that IKEA is a barometer of recession, but it’d be just a bit on the over-simple side.  Sure, they’ve cut the level of lighting down, and the heating, and there were nowhere near so many customers as we’re used to, but the buying was serious stuff and I suspect that IKEA is doing pretty well, considering.  As is most of the British economy.  And speaking personally, I’m rather pleased by the reduced heating.

The roads aren’t quite so crowded, either, not even at ‘rush hour’.

For me, the change is a good one.  I’m not so handy at crowds as I used to be.  But even so, you can’t help but wonder where all those people have gone, what they’re doing.

Howsomever.  We got all the stuff on our list, which is another strange sign of recession.  You almost never exit IKEA with all the stuff you had on your list.  We’d had our doubts about the lighting for the landing ceiling but in the event they were stacked high, and on special offer.

And then, home.  I’d sort of planned to tank the car up on the way out of the Cardiff retail park, calling in at ASDA/Wal-Mart to get petrol at a good price.  As it panned out, I found the level of fuel in the tank was sufficient to get us home, with careful driving.  It would have been fine if I’d had the nerve to carry it through but I chickened out when the gauge went down to the last display ‘bar’ so we called in at a fuel station just inside the Neath boundary.  The fuel was priced at 10p a litre more than I’d have had to pay at ASDA so I bought just £10 worth.  Even at that, it restored the tank to a slightly higher level than when we set out on our trip so not a lot was lost overall.

Dolly was delighted to see us, perhaps having decided that we’d not be back until late afternoon.  As it was, we were in good time for a simple lunch of bread and soup and a really satisfactory afternoon nap.

The ‘experts’ have changed their collective mind once more, deciding that an afternoon nap is good for brain power after all.

Sheesh!

I shall continue in my own sweet way, taking my retirement perks as I feel  inclined.  I’m worth it.