Josephine to the rescue

What an odd and rather trying day! The oddness really lay in the weather: it looked and sounded as if it was a chilly day in late October, with the wind positively whistling at the open windows, but the wind was from the south and it was actually quite mild. My day also began rather earlier than I'd have liked: it was still dark when I woke, full of aches and pains and - to quote Eric Linklater's Poet's Pub - my belly was a battlefield and I thought of death. After a brief panic thinking I'd maybe caught this new variant of Covid, or that I was having another episode of some unknown allergy, my rational brain caught up and reminded me that you don't take codeine more than once without suffering when you stop ...

The result of this was that after I'd had some breakfast I went back to bed and didn't get up till I'd made up for some sleep and felt better. A strong coffee finished the treatment, and I washed pillowcases and various garments and hung them all out to risk life and limb (there were shirts and trousers, so the limbs were sort of there to be risked) on the washing line. I was slightly anxious for the items that were too numerous for the truly efficient pegs, but they all survived and were dry in no time.  A couple of phonecalls and that was that - the morning was over.

Lunch for me was a half-slice of the toast made from the loaf that's too tall and delicious and still soft to slice efficiently, along with two mugs of green tea. After that I decided I didn't really feel like a walk despite the mild temperature, and weeded the front steps and a border than we had cleared and - fatally - omitted to pack so full of plants that there's no room for the weeds, and which I'm too embarrassed about just to ignore. As I hate working in the front garden other than on a sunny spring morning, early enough for the sun still to shine on it, I was glad to finish. 

All this minor domestic activity does not, however I put it, lend itself to photoshoot moments, so I was driven once again to Josephine Bruce, the wonderfully scented rose, now in a large pot on my patio, When we arrived home on Friday we could see that the three new, second flush blooms were out but sort of unseen, on their thin, wobbly stems, so I cut them, still in bud, and brought them indoors. Now they're on the windowsill in a small oil bottle of cut glass that belonged to Himself's mother. Below them you can make out a small, quaint brass candle-snuffer given to me on my 50th birthday by a dear friend who died two years later. We use it all through the winter - hence the soot in the snuffer. 

Now I've just fallen asleep in the middle of typing this - I'd have been totally scunnered if I'd hit something and erased the post! Time to go ...