Day 361

One thing I hadn’t considered, when I started this whole process/venture at the 1st of January, and then Aggie on 13th February, was that the Christmas period would be taken up by family and other exceptional things (because my family are exceptional, and holidays are strange events). That’s why I’m typing this into my phone right now while the others make popcorn etc in preparation for catching up on more of the festive TV programming we have missed.

An interspersed thought here – what’s more the real world: watching TV with family, or sitting on my own writing fiction or poetry? I might try to answer that for myself at some other time.

Yesterday was a glorious winter’s day, the way snowless winter days should be; cloudless, cold, crisp, clear. We went for a family walk across the Heath, all six of us, in various ill-assorted outfits, in ill-assorted moods, and had various well-chosen adventures including meeting an elderly man with a huge grey Alsatian and a messenger bag in which he had a bag of dog treats and a separate bag of chocolates (the latter he was distributing to all and sundry because “the smiles on people’s faces make me happy”), and some of the children racing around with sticks that had fallen from the trees like when they were children, and some of us engaging in serious conversations arm-in-arm as if we were in a long shot for some TV drama. Exceptional family indeed.

And today it’s wet and wild and horrible out there, in that insipid English way that banishes most people indoors, and where tempers and temperatures inevitably become higher than normal. There is always a full circle in all we live.

For now, with some more Aggie chapters written in moments during which I have excused myself from family, and having totally removed all but the first chapter from this blog, I’ll sit with those still up and here, to watch Call The Midwife, and let other thoughts and tasks be for tomorrow, and count my lucky stars.