You do not often hear an old pro like my optometrist
exclaim with pleasure, because the injections into my right eye have delayed visual decline and my specs only need altering (after nearly 5 years including ageing and cataract) by a point or two. That and her hail as she crossed the reception to meet me after two years (“My favourite client !”) made for an early birthday card.
Somebody wished me a week’s birthday rather than a day and that wish came true. And just as most Christmases, when there is a card that I look at wonder “now, who …?” so yellow roses and white freesia were delivered by eflorist, with no message. Believe me, I am a good looker and I know where to look.
But it took my son’s intervention to stop me banging my head against the brick wall of the company’s inaccessibility. “Nobody” quoth he “ever had a positive customer experience
with those guys. You got the flowers ? End of.” So somebody who was listening sent me something I can’t thank them for.
I cooked nearly to standard for Pam the Painter the day before – but I know what is wrong and it’s not a mistake I will make again. Ginny was coming to supper but her mother fell and is even now recovering in hospital, thank heaven.
A birthday is the one day of the year you can do anything you like – so I did. Nothing.
See Gertrude Stein “Nothing is meaningless if one likes to do it.” I pootled about and drank coffee at 6.00 am. I exclaimed with pleasure over who rang and what was sent. I went up the road for the paper. I cherished every moment and walked more slowly, balanced properly.
I saw bees hunting blossom and a pair of great tits who danced in and out of the shrubs and trees, unimaginably graceful. And outside the supermarket to which I went for the pleasure of it (shopping
always makes me feel better, the first “big” thing I was ever trusted with as a child, just the basics, nothing elaborate) there was a tiny girl in a white waterproof with marigolds all over it, the design in keeping with her size. I exclaimed “Oh, how pretty …” The eyes contemplated me. I put my hand her mother’s arm and asked her please to tell her daughter how lovely she looked. She replied in the accent I am beginning to recognise and I know enough to say “Bella !” with a big smile which was answered. Sometime later, they walked past me and the little girl waved and called “Ciao !”
ITV’s Goodnight Mr.Tom
may be 30 years old but it is head and shoulders above most things about children in wartime. Everything works – actors, script, camera, settings. And I rewatched too the first ever episode of the House of Elliot for that same integrity and wonderful wardrobe.
Then this morning, encouraged by a second day with wind rather than rain, at least to start with, I did a small washing and put it out on the line to dry
– it smells better, even in London. The young woman in the flat above is leaving in less than happy circumstances and she knocked to say goodbye, so I wished her well and went on to meet a woman of my own age, who lives just round the corner, with whom I had a proper conversation in the convenience store. She is a Scot, a former veterinary nurse, enormously angered by the new anti hate legislation in Scotland and we had read the same article about it so we thought we might have tea … I’ll put a note through her door this afternoon and see.
Yes, I read the paper. Once a day. Yes, I watched the news, once a day. Yes, I tend to see the unholy arithmetic of war, displacement, destruction, famine and natural disturbance as an end of western civilisation as we know it, history that is always easier to read about than live through but in thanks for all the good things in my life, I shall go on looking for them, small and idiosyncratic though they may be. A smile still uses fewer muscles than a frown and it’s a whole lot cheaper than Botox.
Annalog 