Day Thirty-five

DAY THIRTY-FIVE

The day dawns with a red sunrise but there's no rain on the way, so don't worry, you shepherds! It quickly becomes another crisp sunny morning.

I take some photos of my windowsill collection of soft toys – I've switched them around from time to time so I collect all the ones I've used and photograph them, leaving two bears in the window. I send the photos to my grandson and learn later that he's included them in his tally.

Remembering the cute little collection of tiny teddies on the dashboard of a car that's been parked on the street these past weeks, I take my phone and, slipping my debit card into my pocket with the coffee shop in mind, I walk down the zig-zag. The car has gone – to work maybe? - and the coffee shop has a complicated system via an app and QR code which my phone is not smart enough for. I hadn't even been worrying about coffee but now I feel depreived! Both missions have failed but a walk on a sunny day is never a waste and looking up from the street I can just glimpse my teddies in the window.

What probably is a waste is the time I spend deleting and re-installing things on my phone to try to get it a bit smarter. I can't accept that a four year old phone is obsolete.

Soon after 11 I get a call from a friend. For a year or more now I've met with her and her partner at a cafe by the river every Wednesday morning, so until we can do this again we've been phoning on instead. It's been a difficult time with one of the couple completing her masters thesis and the other unwell in a worrying but undiagnosable way. As a retired physician she knows a lot of possibilities to worry about so I'm glad to hear she's feeling a bit better, even a little frustrated with inaction. We joke that's a good sign – restlessness is often part of convalescence.

I decide to go for a run before a late lunch so I set off for the football field. There are a few builders at work on house renovations, no doubt destroying the peace the neighbours have grown to love but it's good to see some life back in the streets. And in the field there are men with a Lawn Rescue van returfing a patch that has grown thick with weeds. One calls good morning and I call back, 'Good work, that bit needs rescuing.'

At home I stay in my not too sweaty running gear while I eat some lunch and rest for a while. I've had my eye on a patch of garden where long fronds of grass are growing up through the irises and roses. It's only in the sun for an hour or two in the early afternoon so I tackle it, prising grass roots up between the iris rhizomes and getting scratched around the roses. It's an improvement but grass is tenacious, it'll be back.

After a shower I knit, play the piano, cook up apples and feijoas from the garden. Before long it's time to make some dinner and settle in to the evening's TV.