Saturday Morning

It was cold this morning, you know cold cold. As opposed to just a slight winter chill in the air. I found myself wrapping a blanket around myself as I sat and ate my breakfast and tried desperately to find something interesting on Facebook. 

So, I lit a fire. Bruno and I are now sitting with our backs to it, feeling the warmth. It is crackling behind us. 

Buddy has left the house for his kennel, as the crackling fire scares him. He used to lie right in front of it for years, but, I think, one night a large cinder shot out and hit him, scaring him out of his bulldog suit. I think that’s what happened, but Bud is getting more scared of more things as he gets older.

See, it’s not just people. We get more scared as we get older, because we are aware that awful things do happen. Well, that’s my take on it. We learn that the world is an amazing place, but we also learn that there are terrible things that happen. Dogs are no different, and I think bulldogs are smart, but, of course, I may be a little biased.

Ah, the fire is nice, though. The warmth is radiating out against my back and warming me so beautifully.

Sam’s getting busy as he thinks that’s what Saturday mornings are for, time to do chores. I don’t share that belief.

Now, let’s make another coffee and open the Guardian and see what tale of misery it has to tell me today.

Then the voice in my head said, you should go and do an hour’s exercise. Shut up, was my first reaction…

Thursday, before I left for the vet, I had a piss. After I had taken a leak, I wondered if I’d put deodorant on, so I shuffled sideways to the mirror, without fastening my jeans again, not really sure why. So, in front of the mirror with my pants now down around my knees, I lifted my shirt and slid the deodorant up to my armpit. I gazed in the mirror and I looked like one of those plump, alabaster Botticelli women all round and fat, the kind for which Italians went mad however many hundred years ago. I was taken aback. Actually, froze in the mirror image momentarily.

And, the last thing I had read before I headed upstairs was about Martha Raye, (Oh, I was wasting time on Youtube, she was doing a Judy Garland impersonation, you know how it goes) who in her last years suffered from poor circulation and in her last year she had both her legs amputated. Admittedly she was much older than me at 73*, but I don’t want to get to her stage when I am her age… and maybe when I’m 73 we’ll have those “doo doo” medical tricorders from Star Trek that will cure us of whatever ails us, who knows… but just in case we don’t…

Hence the start of exercise yesterday.

The sun is out, said the voice in my head, go and exercise, it is still early, in an hour you will still have the rest of the day.

* at 73, I hope to be still travelling the world, seeing and learning things