ME, ME, ME...

Tuesday, 2nd June, 2020

A strange day. My basic routine during this lock down has changed from pre pandemic days but a new one has been established. It gives one a feeling of security and control to have a specific timetable and routine to each day. Usually I start the day with streaming a service on my iPad. Then I look to emails and to the news. After this I sort out my catheter and ablutions and am ready to face the day, still in pyjamas, with mugs of tea at 10am. Breakfast after tea and chat at 11am. On it goes.... Today I was up by 7am. I had to take the car I use, it belongs to a friend who lent it to me 6 years ago and has not reclaimed it, to the local garage. Ten days before I had tried to start it so as to charge the battery.....it has the most confusing system of locking, unlocking, starting etc! Anyway it did start but on moving made the most horrendous noise as if the whole under chassis had fallen off with  the exhaust. Any extra unexpected problem these days takes me out of my comfort zone and I panic. 

To cut a long story short I booked it in for today and asked the garage mechanics also to MOT it. By 8am it was delivered ( again after a pandemonium of attempted starts and curses) and in accordance with legal social distancing I talked with the owner of the garage. I was to return at 12.30pm. 

I walked along the Tay coastline searching for elder flowers in bloom as I make cordial at this time of year. I saw much but I have forgotten my secateurs and the blooms were on branches too high and in fields with aggressive looking Angus bulls and cows. I will go back later and meanwhile get lemons, sugar and citric acid delivered. 

On return to the garage I was informed of the problems and of the requirements needed to pass the MOT etc... I am to take the car back a week on Thursday. I did speak of the difficulty in starting the car, a difficulty that the mechanic did not have! Typical, I thought. I also asked re the cost....more horrors outside my comfort zone. 

Back at home I planted some runner beans and the soil proved stony, dry and hard to till and prepare. I was left in a sweat and again with an inner turmoil. Why is everything so frustrating? It is not, of course, it is simply my tension at changed routine, out of the ordinary happenings and loss of control and things not going my way.

A strange day indeed but a very valuable one. I have calmed and thought on it. Silly to panic, silly to worry re routine etc as really of no significance at all but just a dent to my comfort zone. The most valuable lesson has been learning...learning from the garage owner of the true anxieties and worries he and his business face, of his having to furlough most of his mechanics, men whose families and themselves rely on the business, having to comply with legal requirements re the virus and wondering if he will survive. 

My major lesson is that I have little to be concerned about whereas so many have so much more. How utterly self centred and narcissistic I have been and how pessimistic. I am ashamed of myself.

Me, me , me and my comfort zone: how petty.