A miserable cold wet foggy day. God sneezed on Brighton. We went to yoga in the morning.
Just behind Lou’s flat there is a beautiful tiny little studio. She teaches there on Sundays. We went because there was a kundalini and gong class. Lots of hot breathing and then you get to lie under a blanket for twenty minutes while somebody smashes you out of your mind with a big noisy round thing.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no gong today. It’s shared ownership, and she has it.”
Life is full of disappointments.
We did the hot breathing. Then the stretchy arm stuff. These are the technical terms. It takes decades to learn them. No gongybangy though, so instead we breathed through a nostril.
It was lovely. It helped. I didn’t have the gong so I didn’t really know what I was missing. I was perfectly happy without. I felt warmer and more relaxed as we ambled back out into the foul drizzle. Good for me to focus on breathing after all the coughing. Good to be in a room full of people and know I’m not contagious. Lou started calling people she knows, knowing that somebody will turn out to have a spare gong just … lying around. They are useful things to have. And you can’t make back your investment if you buy them new.
Despite the weather, post yoga we drove to Stanmer Park where we trudged through damp pathways and leaf mulch. There’s still lots of winter happening out there at Stanmer. The way was slippery. The cold was pushing in. The sky was darkening and it wasn’t even late afternoon. The colours were breathtaking still when you could see them through the fog. Death and life. No leaves on the trees now.
Driving home the car was cold. Wet on the windows. “We should book a holiday,” somebody said.
In just over a fortnight we will be off to a volcano in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between Lisbon and NYC, there to sip pineapple juice in hot springs on the edge of the caldera for a whole damn week. Good old internet flash sales. £7.99 flights? Oh go on then. I guess they have to drop the price in case everything gets shut down again. It won’t. After Carol and Covid and the cold, it’s time for a proper bloody damn holiday. Oh yes.
AlBarclay 