Stuttering But Misfiring.

No blog posts for a while, so let’s ask what was good about the past couple of days.

 

Yesterday

1. The sun shone all day.

2. I spent around fifteen minutes talking to the Lady B’s Dear Mama. She was in her garden, gardening. I talked mostly about my health issues (which I usually do, and she did ask.) She talked mostly about here wisteria plant (which she had every right to do because I opened the conversation by complimenting it. I like wisteria.) She said she doesn’t like the colour. I disagreed, which is yet one more reason why I’m probably best suited to living alone. What’s more important, however, is this. Being smiled and waved at by the Lady B’s Dear Mama as she passes me on the lane in her big Audi is one of life’s few delights. Talking to her for fifteen minutes is even better. I like Dear Mama quite a lot, but I have to wrest myself from her presence without due delay just in case she should invite me for tea on the terrace. I'm far too much the peasant for that sort of thing, and to decline would be unthinkable.

 

Today

1. The sun shone all day.

2. I realised something. The hinterland around the town of Uttoxeter, being on the low lying plane through which the River Trent runs, is rather dull compared with where I live. The Shire, on the other hand, forms part of the eastern bounds of the lower Dove valley and is rather more attractive, being hillier and studded with more copses and woods. But the Trent valley does have one advantage over us: There are rather more hawthorn trees down there and they’re currently rampant with thick white blossom. Having been to Uttoxeter today, I can attest that the world was truly white with May. Glorious. Blow trumpet. Whatever.

And so now let’s consider what was bad about the past two days. Physical weakness so debilitating as to make even the lightest of physical tasks uncomfortable. Feeling of pressure around the heart, mostly just short of being describable as pain but unpleasant nonetheless. Light-headedness and lack of visual acuity. It came and went and came again. It disappeared the whole time I was talking to Dear Mama, so maybe it’s all psychosomatic. Or maybe it’s because I declined the beta blockers they wanted me to take because I think pills are for wimps. Or maybe it’s because I’ve never used the Glyceryl Trinitrate spray they gave me a year ago because it seems like giving in to an oppressor. How should I know?

But here’s my latest thought: I learned a few days ago that my hairdresser’s aged mother died recently. She was sitting on the toilet, apparently, and went in the blink of an eye. Now, I’m the first to congratulate those who pass quickly and painlessly in the blink of an eye because there are very many worse ways to go, but I wouldn’t want it to happen while sitting on the toilet. I’m quite sure my ghost would be so embarrassed that I wouldn’t be able to haunt anybody, and that would never do.