Monday 26 April 2010

The Sun Always Shines Ennui



You’ve checked the weather for the day ahead.
You always do.
Your friends think it’s a little idiosyncratic, but they always rely on you for suitcase-packing advice, just before the annual dearth of shit, drugs and mud (a.k.a. Festival-Time).
You watch ‘Weather For The Week Ahead’ on Countryfile religiously.
You always do.
It’s the only thing you do religiously on a Sunday, since rejecting 11 O’clock mass in your twenties.
It’s well documented that you don’t trust BT Yahoo, and this extends to anything other than the BBC Weather website, the ‘Weather For The Week Ahead’ and your natural ability to forecast changes in barometric pressure.
Arthritis can be a cruel yet precise master.
Your wife wakes you at 7am and tells you it’s going to be a ‘lovely day’.
You have already planned a better day, one that involves pyjamas, a typewriter and a jar of Poundstretcher coffee (that tastes a little bit like legal highs).
A ‘lovely day’ suggests the need to do something altogether different.
To water the garden, to do at least two clothes-washes, to resurrect the washing-line that was holding up both the defunct satellite dish and the wonky guttering, and to fix the wife’s bike; all before lunchtime, when the rabbits will require their bi-annual vaccinations, and the kitten will need tutoring on how to catch field-mice.
A better day involves rain.
You have planned a better day, safe in the knowledge that Countryfile said it would be damp & showery over the Broads.
This is despite what Chris Evans said this morning, and contrary to the FiveLive reports from all over Lower England, that the sun is shining, and it’s going to be a very lovely day.
The lady in the vets said it was an absolutely gorgeous today.
The man with the dog-eared cat agreed.
Victoria Derbyshire asked the nation for a response to the question “What will YOU be doing today, officially the first day of summer?”
You had planned to stay in and write, but the nation is conspiring against you.
You turn off the radio. The kitten and the rabbits are asleep.
The sunshine pours through your half-opened eyelids, and you decide to water the garden.
A superficial watering. The bits that really need it.
A one-can watering (It makes sense to be sure).
By 10-30am, you have emptied the washing-machine of a ‘mid-week essential’ load.
You toy with the idea of cleaning the cushion-covers & hand-towels, but opt for the bedsheets.
You know it’s going to rain.
You always do.
It was on ‘Weather For The Week Ahead’.
You make a coffee. It tastes a bit like rain. You feel smug.
The washing-machine spins as you jot down loose thoughts.
The ideas flow as the coffee is drained.
The kitten thinks that this might be the time to practice ninja.
And the rabbits sidle to a warm sheltered spot, twixt the billowing sheets and the watering-can.
You absorb the dappled sunlight like a soporific sponge.
And within what seems like seconds, it starts to piss cats & dogs.
And as you flick the switch to 'Heating Constant' amidst the fug and funk of fabric-conditioned warmth, you know (and you always do) that today has just got a little bit better………

1 comment:

  1. I am really, really enjoying having you back in blog town. This took me on a lovely journey and for a moment there I forgot I was sitting at my desk, watching people on the outside walk by.

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