Day 335

O asked the other day if we had a chessboard/chess set. We have several, but probably still buried in all the boxes that we haven’t yet unpacked from the move from the old village to here, so I bought another one. It’s like books – you can never have too many books, and nor can you ever have too many chess sets. It arrived yesterday, and O and M have played two games already (M’s stepfather taught them all to play), and I’ve played two games against O as well. The score between father and son is 1-1, which seems appropriate right now. I have taken a sheet of my yellow paper and headlined it with O vs Dad Series so we can keep an eternal record of what I hope will be an epic struggle. Not like the struggle with my father against whom I ever only won 3 games in his 82 years on this planet. But that’s a different story, and, as they say, to paraphrase, a whole different board game.

I went to my NHS biomechanics appointment earlier (M gave me a lift) where they finally looked at this injury in my right foot that got out of hand (no pun intended) while we were in Agios Nikolaos. The x-ray shows no structural damage, which is good. Manipulation of the foot shws that it’s still a little damaged where a certain ligament (3 complicated words I can’t remember) connect to the metatarsal. It turns out that I must obviously have changed gait when I changed trainers, and that buying cheap trainers was a false economy. It also doesn’t help, as I explained to the biomechanics guy (a very chatty enthusiastic and skilful man called T), that I tried to change the way I walked so that I didn’t remind myself of Charlie Chaplin all the time. Although, thinking about it, my feet aren’t actually that splayed. And, as T explained to me, it’s natural to have slightly splayed feet. I said to M this evening that my biggest problem has always been that all my favourite football players have been pigeon-toed, and that I’ve never stopped trying to imitate them. So, when all the moving and shifting and intense support of the kids has stopped (hopefully after this weekend) I shall go to find some decent trainers. The pain has reced almost totally since I reverted to my  very old trainers and less old walking boots, and started walking the way my body intended me to walk.

Two more chapters of Aggie this evening; 1,500 words in about 45 minutes, so happy with that. And again, the characters pulled some surprises out of the bag that I wasn’t expecting, which has made the denouement even more exciting for me. I wonder what I will think when I read it all from beginning to end and start editing it. We shall see. Perhaps editing isn’t such a bore when you write in small bits every day rather than in huge chunks in a very short space of time. Perhaps that’s why Dickens serialised his stuff.

I walked in the gloaming this evening. Walking past one part of the heath, a wide open space of grass between high trees came into view, the evening mist rising from it like steam, with the moon above. A wonderful picture.