A quiet day today. I took the time to tidy up around the house, and then read lots. I’ve been burning Palo Santo and candles and incense in vast quantities. I do like smelly burny things. I always have a quantity of them. Frankincense, Tibetan stuff, sage, ylang-ylang. I pick it up almost reflexively when I travel, going into little shops where they hand make it, sometimes charging way too much. In Saudi I ended up with some oud that smells like wet camel. Thick cloying smoke. I still burn it on purpose occasionally because sometimes I feel I need that musky pungent reek. Not this evening though. Today I’ve been quite pointedly grounding. I’ve been eating homely food home made, bubbling up black coffee. This evening I opened one of the French wine bottles and had half of it before pumping it sealed. It’ll keep for weeks like that. My vacuum pump – it’s a revelation! Now I can open wine and not finish it without it going to waste. Yeah sometimes I finish it anyway, but the option of only having half a bottle is … pretty appealing. I’m off tomorrow to be Store Manager Panda somewhere near Croydon!
Not today though. I’m still a bit sick with a summer cold. Leaky and coughy, but not escalating into full horrorshow. Just my body checking into itself and recalibrating. I’ll probably have some Actifed in a bit to ensure a deep and still sleep.
Outside my window the road rattles on but my little slice of London is quiet for Thursday night. My cleaning lady came for a few hours today and put on lovely clean sheets. That’s a luxury that I’m happy with myself for making room for. She’s finding it harder and harder to get work these days, and has been helping make sense of this flat for years. I like her, so I budget for her even when I’m away for months. Mostly when I’m away she stops my plants from dying and I help her pay her rent. She’s pushing seventy now, not that you’d know it to look at her. I first met her when she put an issue of Watchtower into my letterbox and I invited her and her friend up to talk to me about being a Jehovah’s Witness. I was curious. Now I’m not so curious, and she leaves that alone. She doesn’t rearrange my multifaith altar, she cleans up the ash from all my incense crap while vocally disapproving, she listens to endless seminars in tagalog while bagging up my sometimes rather excessive collection of empty bottles. She is a positive reset force here. A luxury, sure. We all deserve nice things from time to time. Now I’ve got clean sheets. I might not have taken the time.
AlBarclay 