Recently – and a little longer than recently, I have been commenting on how I seem to have slipped into a strange and annoying state where my natural inertia and proclivity to procrastinate have stymied me. I’ve continued to write but with little enthusiasm, or much satisfaction. No reason, no cause, everything else in life is fine… but it’s been like wading through mud!!
Suddenly, unexpectedly, with no known reason, on May 6th something changed, something switched, and I was out of the mud and out of the muddle and I felt more energetic and alert. (Whenever I write ‘alert’ I want to tell the old joke about ‘the country needs lerts‘ but I’ll resist!) I’ve called this M-Day – ‘the switch’, not sure why – motivation, perhaps, or movement, or maybe magic! For a couple of days before M-day we had been making a bit of an effort, we’d walked to the boatyard and a bit further. Then we’d gone to Sand Bay, the next bay north along the coast from us, and walked along the sand dunes and back along the beach. This became M-day, ‘the switch‘.
M+1 was the day a wonderful young woman with the axe, the chopper,, the secateurs, the shears came to attack the jungle which is our garden. She worked like a demon, and her sister demon joined her later. So M+1 was ‘the muscle‘.
M+2 our gardeners had left a mountain of brambles, briars, elder and weeds which needed chopping up so they’d fit in the skip (which we’d already hired for the debris from builders fitting new soffits and fascias on the house.) It was a day of being prickled and scratched, muscles, hands and arms given a full work-out and backs stretched. We haven’t finished, but that’s ok, we did all we could and the stuff left is in neat piles, ready for attacking later. I call M+2 ‘the chores’.
Today we couldn’t face bramble mountain again, and the stuff in the skip needed to settle down so we’ll do that tomorrow. Instead, we returned to our mission to get fitter and improve our walking (husband more than me, he’s a bit of an armchair version of a couch potato.) In a couple of weeks we’re going on a little holiday which may involve sight-seeing so we need to be tourist-fit. I’ve called today M+3 ‘consolidation‘, where we (he) continue our new more active regime. We walked the long way round the village, properly looking at different houses, gardens and buildings that we usually zoom past without a second glance. We didn’t walk a vast distance, but each step counts (I hope!!) Our next longer walk will be into town – out of the village, past the golf course, along the sea front as far as somewhere we can find coffee. However, tonight we may very well refresh and reward ourselves with a couple of pints at The Ship and tomorrow we’ll be back to bramble mountain.
Lois Elsden 