Today I decided that it was time to man-up and divest myself
of medical injunctions, and so I mowed the lawn. It was hard going because my
lawn has quite a slope and I’m still some way short of having my normal quota
of strength and energy, but at least I don’t feel ill tonight. That has to be a
good sign, right? Right.
And maybe it caused a bit of a stir in the village. ‘Mr
Beazley’s mowed his lawn,’ one observant resident might have remarked. ‘Really?
I didn’t know he was still alive.’ Mmm… I’m sure there isn’t a single local who
gives a tuppeny toss whether I’m still alive or not, probably because I don’t
give a tuppeny toss whether any of them are. The only person whose presence
here was ever of any concern to me doesn’t live here any more, and I sometimes
wonder why I bother. But I do. And it probably didn’t.
Tomorrow I might clean the car, which hasn’t been done by me
or anybody else since the pre-operative days back in March. (I’ve been lucky
with the weather.) Or maybe I’ll go the whole way in the matter of injunction
divestment and climb one of the many stiles the Shire offers to give access to
public footpaths.
It might be the one in Church Lane opposite the venerable
old copper beech tree, the one that holds fond memories of leaning on the gate
talking to the person who doesn’t live here any more, the one that leads to a
track through a wheat field and takes you to a scraggy little wood with a
hidden pool in the middle of it.
That’s the place where I would like to die if only I might
be afforded the knowledge of when I’m about to take the leap, but I doubt life
will be quite that accommodating. I expect I’ll die alone in a hospital bed
somewhere, feeling guilty at putting the nice nursing staff to such trouble. Life’s
always been a bit like that for me, so why change the habit just before going
to heaven (the one with frolicking wood nymphs and cheese scones and things.)
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