It’s been a busy week which is just as well as I was itching for Saturday to arrive, and Irene. Having not seen my best friend in a whole year (and a bit), she was finally going to come and spend a week chez moi. So I purposely kept myself busy and filled the diary with everything that needed to be done so I could spend a week with Rene and whatever we decided to get up to. She couldn’t have chosen a better time to visit as neither Alice or I are able to do much in the running department, she has post-op stitches and I managed to do something to my knee whizzing up a hill the other day. Naturally, I didn’t take much notice of it and carried on bouncing around on it until the joint refused to comply any further. So rest and relaxation it is.
I am beginning to calm down a little after Callum’s ‘New Zealand’ bombshell, although I am still not comfortable with the back-packing idea. There is always the worry in the back of my mind that he will be stuck somewhere without his diabetic medication which is silly as he’s been taking care of himself since he was old enough to know where to stick an injection. He’s also on the list for a diabetic sort of pacemaker thing which he aims to get before he travels which will make his Mum happy. And, as my French teacher pointed out (classes going very well thank you for asking), NZ isn’t exactly the backwater of the world and with all this Covid stuff it’ll be a while before he will be able to wander freely anyway. I suppose we forget that when we were his age and decided to go somewhere, WhatsApp didn’t exist let alone mobile phones so our parents hadn’t a clue what we were doing except what was scrawled on the occasional postcard.
With the French classes going well, I armed myself with my new found confidence and went for a meeting with an investment accountant on Wednesday. I did get a little stressed whilst driving aimlessly around Castelnaudary (home of the Cassoulet just so you know) with a SatNav that kept telling me I had reached my location which blatantly wasn’t it and several rather rude lorry drivers. I got there eventually, it turned out I was only a hundred metres away, and after an hour or so I left feeling frightfully important with a file of possibilities. I still can’t understand financial jargon in any language but at least one of us knows what she’s doing.
I couldn’t help but feel a little emotional taking Alice to the vet on Friday for her sterilisation, it seems like only yesterday she was fussing over her new-born puppies, but there was only ever going to have one litter. The vets here don’t tend to go for the full hysterectomy unless there is a problem so I felt a little better knowing just the ovaries were being removed. I had plenty of time to think about it all as I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the clinic, the first one I have experienced since leaving the UK. As I sat there, doing the New York Times Spelling Bee and looking at the vast countryside around us, I began to notice the silence around me – no one was beeping their horn or shouting out of the window. I’m a long way from the city now I thought as we were eventually diverted around the overturned manure trailer in the middle of the dual carriageway.
Mumo has fixed my broken vase or should I say glued all the bits together and then carefully brushed over the cracks with gold paint. Somehow it looks even more beautiful with all its flaws on display. Thank you Mumo..
“It is necessary to relax your muscles when you can. Relaxing your brain is fatal” (Stirling Moss)
Widow plus woofs 