Sun Day

This morning I was looking out on a Brighton sun-day, after a properly muscular mug of coffee and a roll-up, thinking that this may after all be the best of all possible worlds and if freedom time cometh not soon then perhaps it is already here.  Catch me later in the day and there might be a different picture.  The weather could have changed, the coffee will have worn off and I would be thinking sensible, depressing thoughts about the roll-ups.  Seize the day and fritter it, is what I was thinking.  The day never allows much of itself to be seized in any case so  I need as much fun as can reasonably be packed into a couple of hours.  This means breakfast in one of those cafes where the croissants and bacon are crisp and they are generous with the coffee refills followed by a walk along the sea-front with an ice cream cone.  Fun usually always involves food of some kind.  Well I can report that a fabulous breakfast has been had, plus freshly squeezed OJ, and look - the view from the window post noon is still sunlit and I am, dear reader, on account of breakfast top-up, still caffeinated - just.  A walk along the sea-front was a step too far because, although these windows allow you to believe you're in the south of somewhere other than England in April, it is still cold out there, and windy.  I am still having a good time.  The great upside of chronic illness is that those windows of time when one doesn't feel wrecked are almost always good.  The world is charged with the grandeur of God (Gerard Manley Hopkins).  The world is charged with life - and also sometimes caffeine (Signs).

Good times used also to mean booze and hanging out with friends - my thirtieth birthday party was a champagne breakfast in my Bethnal Green flat.  BG is trendy these days, but it wasn't then, you could buy a flat cheaply and - oh halcyon days - pay the mortgage on it even if you didn't have a proper job.  This year I will be twice that age.  I no longer do booze apart from the occasional small glass of wine.  I do friends, but given certain restrictions one doesn't hang out in quite the same way, and a window of blue sky and sun, watching Brightonians cross the road to buy newspapers or milk at the corner shop, can feel as though one has been at a very pleasant social gathering.  One doesn't have the voices, true, but the voices in one's head are (mostly) very good company and often illuminating.  Joan of Arc might have said the same, before they burned her.  Time for a herb tea, I think.

how things are on sunday

I woke up at the ridiculously early hour of six o'clock, took some Noctura homoeopathic pills to try and get back to sleep, but it was no good, I was awake and zinging, feeling for one brief moment as though I might leap up, go for a run, clean the house and write up a storm. It's a powerful feeling, but I'm not fooled. At least it wasn't three in the morning, as it has been for the last fortnight or so. I got up, greeted the cat, fed her and unlocked the cat flap. I ate a kiwi fruit, had a bath, covered myself with Haushka rose oil, found Mr. Signs awake so discoursed upon matters arising and then fell back to sleep while he went into the village to get newspapers and milk. Was woken again at eleven by my niece who can use her mobile free of charge at weekends and likes to make use of this.


I cooked a sunday lunch for us - roast lamb and green vegetables, followed by plum crumble which we had with neighbours over the road because one of them had a birthday. Now Mr. Signs is vacuuming the house with the new lightweight Electrolux thing (I also washed up after the meal so don't be thinking I haven't done my bit ok?), I have just taken some pills to stop muscle pains from gathering (it's Sunday, I need the break) and am about to put up a couple of photos from my new Nikon digital camera. Here goes:

This is a typical Signs kitchen table scene, click to enlarge if you wish to appreciate the finer details. You will see the remains of some of the plum crumble in the bowl my neighbour was eating from. She has just gone next door to look at some paintings that Mr. Signs has been doing at his art classes. Next to the bowl is the book we gave to her husband for his birthday: Hammer and Tickle by Ben Lewis, which is a history of communism told through communist jokes - for example:

Q: What is the difference between life in the time of Jesus and life under Stalin?

A: Well, in those days one man suffered for us all, but today we all suffer for one man.

On the white kitchen towel you will see a collection of odd-looking (mainly black) things. The yellow bag in the background is full of them. They are salt liquorice - called Salmiakki in Finland, and they were sent in a parcel to me by a certain lovely person. The yellow bag was much fuller a few days ago than it is now because if you like this sort of thing you just want to keep on eating it.

And now. I am sure there are many useful things I could/should be doing. In fact one of the conversations we had today was all about the many useful things that needed to be done around here to make life at Signs Cottage even more far out than it already is. Like getting a skip and going through every single thing in the loft so as to make room for new stuff (house clutter) that will one day have to be thrown into a skip or given away. Something to think about for next year perhaps. And then of course there is The Writing. Always that. But from long experience I know that it's best to begin that in the morning and now it is almost dark outside, the sky a deep lilac blue, and I just want to go on doing nothing in particular; watching the birds fly south; thinking about the pot of mint tea I will make any moment now; feeling that all manner of things will be well.

(except that for some reason the second photo won't enlarge - I'm still learning about what to do)