Letter from home

My knee is healing in leaps and bounds (haha) but I still can’t walk safely on uneven ground, so Liz offered to take me somewhere in the car to sit on a bench and enjoy the view.

The fact that it was a morning with 40 mph winds might have put some people off but not us. I told her the only other person I could imagine sitting up there with me in that wind was my big sister Kath. Note the wind-whipped hair and the blanket wrapped around my legs for warmth.

Photo by Liz

Liz

Above Bamford

It was even tricky eating our sandwiches and drinking our coffee. I put my mug down for a second and the wind made it slide dangerously across the bench. The coffee itself looked like a stormy sea.

It was funny. And fun! But I felt like my gran when a young woman jogged up the steep hill wearing only a vest and shorts. “Don’t let her see the blanket!” I shouted to Liz.

I’ve been cycling on the Trail every morning it hasn’t rained this week, and getting further along it every time. It makes me so happy to be mobile again. My brother asked if I’d used the electric bike, but I never ride on the Trail on my electric bike. It would be infra dig. I told him I didn’t want people to think I need assistance on such a tiny gradient. Pete was amazed and amused. “Do you really care what other people think? You have a bad knee!”

“Yes, but I can’t wear a sign on my back saying that, can I?”

Yes, I’m hopelessly proud. I give you permission to mock. 

I’ve also been working on a painting which will be OK when it’s finished but I am currently rather bored with it, partly because of the subject and partly because I’ve had an idea for a much more exciting one that I want to start. Look at the sunlight lighting up these nasturtiums! Don’t they look beautiful? Look at the shadows, and the reflections…

Also I’ve been reading a fascinating collection of women’s writing from the second world war (which predictive text wants to give capitals to but I’m thinking - rebelliously - as a pacifist, that I will not yield.) The book is called Hearts Undefeated and is edited by Jenny Hartley.

When Chrissie first heard about my knee she came to visit to cheer me up, and very kindly brought a bag of books and a jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, Chrissie is one of those people who can’t bear to bend the spine on a book and barely opens it and is happy to peer in to read it, whereas I treat books as servants and bend them to my wishes. It is a measure of how good the book is that while treating it as Chrissie would, I have nearly finished it.

I am now reading a secondhand one I bought for myself, and oh how liberating it feels.

That’s been my week.