I turned 75 last year but I haven’t got to grips with it yet. What I mean is this: I am fairly fit, but I walked 10,000 steps yesterday on a fabulous sunshine walk
(Don’t you just love hilltop hawthorn trees - their flat wind-blown shapes and their spiky sturdiness?)
and when I got home I was too tired to do the vacuuming, even though there were visible and accusing wood chips on the stair carpet. Is that normal?
I mean…how much exercise and how much energy is a fit and healthy 75 year old supposed to have?
I sat on the sofa by the fire (it was cold here), did some admin and some painting, had lunch, more painting, talked to Lux over her Boulder breakfast on FaceTime, and then because Dave was out all day, decided to watch a film that I know Dave would hate. It was 4 o clock by this time, but I still felt faintly guilty about watching telly in the daytime. (Thank my wonderful mother for this.)
I watched Moonstruck which I think is a ridiculous film but I love it anyway. I especially love this bit of dialogue:
As I texted to Het, Nicholas Cage is not my type but after this injunction I’d get in his bed!
And here I am now, still sitting in my bed at five to eight in the morning
with no desire to get up. Is that OK? I mean…I am 75. But then I am gainfully occupied, talking to you. (Notice my justifying myself again?)
Second question…how much money would you spend on a 176 page novel by your favourite author? Here’s why I want to know…
I had decided to buy a new small cafetière and when I got to the checkout on Amazon they wouldn’t give me free postage so I thought - as I am bored stiff with the winter - ooh, maybe Anne Tyler has a new novel out, and she did. It’s out next week in hardback but it is very short and costs £12.99. If I bought it I’d get free postage for that and the cafetière. £12.99 is a lot to pay for a short novel but on the other hand if I bought a toastie and a coffee at Hassop Station it would cost about the same and I wouldn’t think twice about it. And I am soooooo bored with the winter, so why not treat myself?
This is a lot of wittering, but it raises the question of how much you would pay for things in various categories…
Enough wittering.
The other thing that has been occupying my downtime is watching lots of films about David Hockney on YouTube. Hockney is a hero of mine. One thing he said, which I will remember, is a Chinese saying…”you need three things for painting, eye, hand and heart. Two won’t do.”
I so agree. This is why I won’t do commissions. My heart would not be in a commission and I would not have sufficient motivation to complete it. My heart was certainly in the painting of our mug rack, which is now finished. As you can see, I chose pink for that top left mug. (See last post but one.)
Oh, and with reference to the mystery of the flashes of sunlight at the top, and the tumblers I missed off because they were too hard to paint, who knows what the sun is bouncing off before it reaches the wall? I had thought it was coming straight through the front room window and then through the stained glass window between that room and the kitchen, but now I am wondering if it was bouncing off the glass table in the front room before it came through the window. It’s a mystery, and it won’t be solved until December 30 this year, when the sun will be in the exact same position. I shall have to remember to check.