Lying Awake

I very rarely stay in bed for more than a few seconds once I have woken up. This morning was different. I lay awake for a good five minutes. Last night the clocks went back. So at 0600 instead of it still being dark the sky was lightening (despite the fact that I was asleep and didn’t see it!) and by 0630 the sun was creeping over the rim of the kettle in which The Cottage is situated. I just lay and contemplated the last few days. I am one of the luckiest people in the world.

Misty Morning

It’s been a superbly warm day with the temperature reaching 35 on the deck of The Cottage. This morning the mist hung over the orchards in front of The Cottage but quickly dispersed as the heat of the sun took control.

The Perfect Morning?

I woke at 0614 (as I have said many times I regard that as a wonderful start to the day) and rose within 30 seconds. I had a long and busy day ahead. Busy is a relative term. Many would regard the day of leisure and pleasure that I was about to have as anything but ‘busy’. By 0850 I had completed my morning routine and was on the way to the Doc’s to see about my blood pressure.

Here in New Zealand the drugs used in heart treatment (perhaps other treatments too) are quite different from those I have been prescribed in the UK. My Doc here, who has worked in the UK, regards some of the drugs I am prescribed as antiquated and some are just no longer available in this Country having been overtaken by (I am told) more effective drugs. The drugs I’ve been prescribed in the UK are the same ones I was prescribed when I had my heart attack 8 years ago and have never altered presumably on the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t mend it’ principle.

Anyway the point of that is that I happened en passent to mention my nightmares as a possible cause of my morning high blood pressure. Apparently they are not. However nightmares are a common symptom of one of my heart drugs. So that has been changed. It will be interesting to see if the nightmares cease.

After the appointment I wandered into the Taradale high street and got my prescription and moseyed around the book shop and found a title I rather fancied. Now there was a time when I could not have resisted buying the book. However I have realised that when I do that more often than not I store the book and end up not reading it on the grounds that I can do so at any time if I wish. Silly or what?

I then drove down to Napier in the blazing sun – what a fabulous day for a gentle drive with the lid down. Got a few odds and ends and found that the book I’d been looking at was available in the Library. I’ve started it already over a cappuccino in the sun in a pavement café.

Home and put the washing on the line under a sky with only the wispiest of clouds visible through 360 degrees. It could be very hot today because there is only the smallest of breezes.

And it’s only 1030. The rest of the day is family time. It’s the last day of the summer holidays. The plan is to take the children for lunch with a friend who also has family to look after, visit the crazy golf, perhaps Laser Force (June and I can ‘escape’ for coffee) and then to the beach outside June’s house. I’ve got the family for dinner.

Yes. Life in New Zealand doesn’t get much better. Well, hmmm, perhaps when I’m on the croquet lawn …..

Is There Anyone Out There?

No this is not a posting on the wonderings about possible life on Mars. It is much closer to home. Seven hours ago I swtiched off Palin (my travelling Laptop for those who don’t yet know), did some odds and ends and went to bed. My head must have hit the pillow for that was where it was when I woke this morning. I don’t recall it though. The dreams were simply night ponies. I can live with that. The stallions seem to have roamed to another prairie for a while.

I’ve just been through my usual routine: wake, arise, switch on kettle then Palin, ablute, type in password, make green tea (with jasmine today), drink glass of hot water, settle in front of Palin and see what the world has been doing while I was in another place.

Today’s answer appeared to be ‘nothing’. For the first time I can remember there was not a single personal email and no blogs from the family nor friends nor ones that I follow daily had been altered.

I repeat: is there anyone out there?

Early one morning (Friday to be more specific)

It’s just after 0600 and I’m doing something I have very rarely done in my life: I’m sitting in bed having a cup of green tea with lemon. It is not, you understand, the having of the green tea with lemon which is unusual. That is frequently my beverage upon waking. No. Rather the sitting in bed drinking it. For me bed has only ever been for two things. Sitting up reading and drinking tea was not one of them.

I have just taken this picture of the view. The sun is well up and promises a wonderful, hot day. The last few days have been cold because, although the temperature on the deck window in the shade has clawed its way up to 20deg, the wind has been from the sea and has been very cold indeed. Cold enough for me to wear a sleeved Berghaus fleece on top of my windproof fleece lined body warmer. There have been moments when I wondered whether this was really the weather I’d come for.

I was going to start this posting off by saying that I was sitting here feeling somewhere between death and death warmed up surrounded, as I am, on the floor by at least one box of tissues used and discarded through a night of coughing and spluttering and generally feeling very sorry for myself. But, of course, when it comes down to it I realised that I may have a stinking cold, feel shivery, be coughing fit to bust and just want to curl up and hibernate until it’s all over but the reality is that there is nothing wrong with me. If there was I wouldn’t be sitting here with the Laptop on my knee writing this.

I am tucked up in a warm bed in a warm cottage in a warm climate in summer with the sun shining and the birds singing. I have food so I am not hungry. I have drink to quench my thirst (and if it’s lemonade I have enough to quench the thirst of all my friends too!). I have friends of immeasurable importance to me (even if I have come far away from most of them). I have a body that, once this cold goes, should serve me well for a little while yet. There are many who do not.

I hope one day my Friend and Brother posts one of his typical days on his Blog. Those who read it will stop complaining when they have a cold and not think, as I did when I woke this morning, that they felt like death warmed up.

Well I have indulged myself long enough. At 0900 the Pest Control Company is coming to spray the Cottage and Wendy and Martin’s house. This leaves a film on all the surfaces and nooks and crannies which kills all the flies and bugs which attempt to co-habit our dwellings (heaven knows what it does to us). Living in the middle of the countryside in a climate like this certainly means that you have plenty of them. So I have to rid the living spaces of anything that I might come into contact with such as bedding and food which might get sprayed. Then I’m off out for morning coffee. Then I have to be back to let the Sky TV man in to wire up Sky. We thought that a phone line was needed but they are adamant that it is not. We shall see.

No. I can’t have felt like death warmed up. There isn’t time for that.