Holidays

Wednesday 9th September, 2020

I am in jubilant mood. I have started my holiday. It is the mind set that has changed although also my surrounds. Although there is the constant background noise and fuss and panic and gossip and false news and speculation and fear as well as the facts of the new spike in Covid infections I am still on holiday. I have not forgotten the distancing, the hand washing or the mask wearing but I am in a new frame of mind.

I packed badly and rapidly last night....a small suitcase which weighs too much for my ageing bones. The weight is the shoes and the books both of which are unnecessary but so much baggage in life is unnecessary! I slept well.

Up at 9am, two slices of soda bread for breakfast and off to Mass at 10am to find priest unwell. He is in pain and has an inability to take antibiotics. So I chatted to fellow parishioner and then off to library. It was shut...I had forgotten the new times of opening.

I decided to get my mobile telephone checked as I may need to use it. I do not know its number, nor how to use it for texting etc nor how to find out how much money it still has to be consumed. Anyway I went to the vodafone shop...barriers, gels, plastic screens etc. All was well but parking was difficult and I refused to pay £2.20 for a twenty minute slot.

Then to my friend's allotment, planting garlic, picking runner beans and tomatoes and blackberries. Lunch of just picked runner beans with cheddar cheese sprinkled there on....delicious. I was in buoyant vacation mood...all was just fabulous even if I was stymied by unopened library  and sick priest and parking costs.

Then to see my friend, my guru and talked of dogma, inter religious wars and conflicts and a general malaise of the Spirit in our world. I ate banana cake.

On to friends. They live five miles away. There by 4pm, a siesta and read some Rumer Godden. Finally a walk as the sun shone and set. We walked through the recently harvested and combined corn fields which surround their isolated house. It is free of light pollution, of sound pollution and is so silently still and gracious. Somehow it feels like a different world to my usual one. 

As I write so I hear the natural world. I am about to have a hot bath with unguents galore. Then dinner of Scottish smoked salmon, Scottish grouse and finally non Scottish chocolate mousse. This really is holiday mode.

Tomorrow I have been promised Scottish bacon, haggis, black pudding and sausages for breakfast plus a fried egg from the Scottish hen next door. I shall then be whisked off to catch the train to Edinburgh and beyond. It is a journey which will be a tedious eight hours with three changes and masks and distancing. Yet it will be another exciting part of my holiday and, my hostess has just told me, she will give me Scottish smoked salmon sandwiches and a cold Scottish grouse. I am so spoiled and can feel my muscles relaxing and my whole body and mind unwinding and distressing. 

I am so blessed.