Gone!

Day 0 + 7  DD!

In spite of real fear that they might stay, our hated neighbours went through their usual rituals of closure for the house and they finally departed for another year this evening.

To celebrate I made a jug of the Cava and lemon sorbet mixture that we first had in Irene’s barbecue.  Its deliciousness is tempered by the “headache effect” that comes with it when consumed with too much eagerness.  And it is so good that not to gulp it down seems to unreasonably limit the fun of drinking it in the first place.

Having said that I, even I, didn’t manage a second glass.  Well, not all of a second glass anyway.  Toni sufficed with his usual sip and we felt that we had done our duty by the despised departed.  And, in a truly appropriate example of the pathetic fallacy the rain is lashing down – a ritual washing of the area to cleanse it of the late baleful presence!

One of the delights is that I am able to sit near an open window and not have the smoke from the countless fags of the neighbour blowing into it as she sits at the open window in her house willing the noxious stream towards us.  Or that may just be my paranoia speaking.  Though I don’t think so.

Anyway they are gone and the whole atmosphere will improve.  Unfortunately their departure also signals the departure of the summer - which is a time of sadness to put against the delight of the flight to the city of our unwelcome irritants.

My lunchtime swim was again taken in glorious isolation in water that was less than warm.  The music vibrating through my bones continues to delight – more, it has to be said from the grotesquely unlikely juxtapositions that come from using the “random” setting which plucks tracks from the full memory of the device and plonks them in an order that has to be heard to be believed, than from the individual quality of the tracks themselves.

It can sometimes be a little perilous as, once or twice, I have laughed at the sheer oddness of the music that I am listening to – and that is not the cleverest thing to do with your head under water!

I am now addicted to wearing my music in the pool and am considering buying a second device to make sure that my swimming is uninterrupted.  The life of these devices is limited and however much the individual manufacturers try and convince you, the watertight ability of anything which is also supposed to produce music is less perfect that they would have you believe.  Unfortunately the Finis Neptune is not cheap so buying a second one is not some sort of casual gesture.

Tomorrow revision continues with my burrowing more and more deeply into the function, meaning and significance of relics.