A full day yesterday, the last day of July, up at 4.30 after being plagued by dreams of a large seminar for teachers with no organisation on my part, and yet I was running it. Made me get onto tasks I needed to do. Wrote a submission for the Aged Care Royal Commission as it was the last day for this and I’d been putting it off and prepared for a SA Agricultural Shows Meeting that I am the delegate for from Yankalilla. Attended the meeting in the morning, made a short visit to my Mum in her aged care facility at Fulham Gardens and then back to Colonel Light Gardens for a memorial get together for a slightly older friend who’d passed away the previous week. Travelled home in rush hour and there’d been a bingle just after the end of the expressway that quadrupled the time it usually took for that section of the journey and it was almost dark by the time I got home, after an abortive attempt to get fuel at Myponga (the lights were on but nobody home, very unusual – probably in the loo, I reckon), so fuelled up at Yankalilla. Arrived home to find I had not told my wife I was going to the memorial service, another example of a conversation in my head that never made it to my mouth. Didn’t really get in the shit but she’s never impressed by my too frequent lack of communication. Tried to watch something on SBS on demand after a lovely chicken salad for tea (my wife is the best cook in the land) but couldn’t keep my eyes open so went to bed by 7.30 and didn’t get out of bed, apart from a couple of toilet trips and application of Voltaren to some troubled areas, until almost 8. It wasn’t a great night’s sleep, as long as it was, because of throbbing pain in my knee and hip, a recurrent reminder of old age. Not motivated to do much this morning but drink coffee, a bit of social media, spending time getting more of an understanding of WordPress, but that is progressing very slowly, and reading an amusing piece on ‘Oxygen Starvation’. Something smells nice from the kitchen but I don’t think it’s for immediate consumption, unfortunately. Barbara cooking away merrily while listening to a podcast. Maybe there’s some poetry waiting to be written, or a long walk in our beautiful environment followed by a shorter one with our little dog, Riley, and Barbara. It’s a sunny day out there, though a chilly breeze. I won’t waste it all inside.
Brian’s Reflections 