The season is slowly fading away to autumn, and I am coming home from our walks in the mornings with my mouth stained purple from picking blackberries, as if I were still six, not sixty one.
I have not been picking them to take home because frankly there is no point since we haven’t used all of last year’s yet. I was very tempted by some beautiful field mushrooms this morning, round and white and smelling wonderful, but I knew that I would be unlikely to get round to cooking them in anything, and so abandoned them, rather regretfully.
It is a very peculiar thought that if we really sell our house and move to France then I will not walk there any more. I am trying to be Mindful In The Moment and appreciate its magnificence in the knowledge that soon I might very possibly not be there, as if I were planning to die, not just to purchase a house in a warmer climate with a swimming pool. I always thought that mindfulness was supposed to make everything look brighter and sharper whilst you look at the leaves and berries and mud and things, but perhaps I am not understanding mindfulness properly, because it doesn’t seem to make any difference how mindful I am, it still looks just the same as it always looks.
It is a rubbish idea anyway. If I wanted everything to look sharper then I would just put my glasses on, at least as long as it wasn’t raining.
All the same, it is very nice to live somewhere which is breathtakingly beautiful. There were two robins having a fight about something this morning and all of the moss has properly recovered after the drought. The walls are splendidly green again. It is a good place to be walking.
As you might guess, we are still contemplating our exit, though, and much of today’s activity has been focussed with that end in mind.
I suppose really it has been much the same activity as usual, now I think about it, because it is Monday and hence Clean Sheets Day, and so everywhere was going to be dusted and hoovered anyway, but today I did it with a newly inspired enthusiasm, because the lady is going to come and value the house on Wednesday.
I don’t expect it will be worth any more just because it happens to be clean, but I am going to give it a go anyway.
Well, I am going to give it a bit of a wipe over and check in case Guffy has had any unfortunate accidents, which is always a possibility. Also I will make sure that the bit of carpet that the moths ate is thoroughly underneath the chair. Details like that.
I took poor misfortunate Guffy to the vet for her injection this afternoon. The steroid injections seem to be improving matters, and although she still has her Difficulty, it seems to be sufficiently controlled not to leave revolting watery splodges all over the place.
She can make it to the litter tray, mostly.
She is not in the least bit grateful to the vet about this.
She was horrified to be captured and hauled into the car. Guffy only ever goes to the vet, we never take her in the car on excursions to the shops or for picturesque strolls around the lake, and so she knew perfectly well what was happening.
She mewed, piteously, all the way there, and then buried her head in the crook of my arm, where it stayed, so that she could be invisible.
When I put her on the consulting table I had to keep my hand over her eyes, until the vet lifted her up to put her on the scales, when she closed her eyes and went completely limp, all four legs dangling as if she had just been fished out of a pond.
The vet sighed, and agreed that she is getting better, although qualified this by remarking that she will always be an undersized runt of a cat and probably won’t get very old, but we agreed that this was a considerable improvement on being dead, which was her other option.
She belted off into the house and hid under my desk when we got home, where she stayed for the rest of the afternoon.
Ah well.
The pictures are the Number Two Daughters at their wedding yesterday. They look very happy indeed.
I think they look splendid.
