Survival!

My “untouchability” was again emphasised today by the complete lack of comebacks from my non-attendance at one of the interminable meetings held last night in school.  I have resolutely held to my determination to shun these pointless examples of witless viciousness as part of my personal crumbling towards final retirement.  So far so good.  Though I did feel a jolt of shadenfreude when I heard that the meeting closed one whole hour earlier than planned.  But then sense intervened and told me that any meeting that closed an hour earlier than planned had to be of inordinate length to make that something to talk about!  Well out of it, I think!

I am still feeling the lingering after-shock of the physical damage that indulgence wrecked on my fragile body over the weekend.  Indeed Toni has a stomach upset and has yet to rise from his bed.  I put that down to after-shock too, though Toni did nothing like as much as I did in the five and a half hours of eating that the wedding entailed!  Or indeed drinking!

The OU course has got off to a good start with work in the books and on the Forum taking up a good deal of time.  I am learning more so far and I am well out of my comfort zone so this is all to the good.  At present I am learning about the ways in which anthropology has been redefined since the nineteenth century and am having to confront new ideas – which is what it is all about.  There is more a sense of discovery on this course than the other one which is both exciting and also disconcerting!  However, armed only with a disposable fountain pen and fluorescent yellow marker I battle my way to knowledge!

The single item, which has made me happy in the last week or so, is something for which I have been searching for some time.  A chance glance at a likely hiding place for it on our way to the centre of Cardiff last week (was it only last week that I was there!  Impossible!) And I was raring to go.

The shop that I eventually patronized is one that has had a number of incarnations.  One of the “sheds” on Rumney “Common” (the only grass grows in cracks in the concrete) has now reinvented itself as a sort of outward-bound superstore (complete with discount card for which you have to pay) with all sorts of things that you never knew existed.

Rather than traipse my way through I asked the first assistant I saw for directions and was shooed off to a particular section of the store.  I diligently hunted and saw nothing.  Well, not nothing, I actually saw lots of interesting things, but not the one that I wanted.  My return to the assistant gleaned more specific locational information and there it and they were.  I bought two.

So now, each morning and each night as I take my rattling collection of pills I am able to wash them down with the contents of my collapsible cup!  Made in ringed stainless steel with a rather smooth and elegant cover to use when travelling, I am now happy.  No longer have I to cup my hands, no longer worry about using a fragile glass in the bathroom nor yet have to suffer the vulgarity of a plastic one – I am fully collapsible!  It is amazing how much sheer pleasure you can get for the price of a few coffees!  It is a pity that my remaining tastes and desires cannot be satisfied so easily and cheaply!

Back home, and Toni is still in bed feeling very sorry for himself.  He has now decided that the abondigas and Magnum ice cream were the culprits in his upset.  Though, it also has to be said that I too partook of both delicacies with no adverse side effects.  Ah well, horses for courses and colons for comestibles, as they say in this part of Castelldefels.

The weather has gone steadily downhill since an indifferent morning.  And the general joy of life has been substantially increased by the noisy fact that the adjacent swimming pool is being restructured with pneumatic drills and noise, noise, noise. 

And now it’s raining. 

O Joy!