The Egg Man Wears a Fedora.

 

 

29 June Saturday

There have been no coach loads of tourists for months and months and months. There has not been one tour bus in the car park below Cahir Castle since the pandemic began. The five or six extra long places reserved for parking buses have not been used. Slowly, we have all begun to park in those places when we arrive on a Saturday for the Farmers Market. It is not a big thing. It just means the cars can spread out a little more than they already do. Today it seemed a very good thing to have the use of the bus area because there was not much room to park in the regular car spaces.  A few dozen geese had come up from the river and they were all sitting around on the asphalt. There was not much room for cars to park nor even much space to drive around the geese.

1 June Tuesday

Everything has been wet. It has been wet and it has been cold. The weather predictions of the Donegal Postman promised us that April and May would be warm and dry. Instead they were wet and cold. Everyone has been disgusted and disappointed. I have only been able to walk up the Mass Path because I am still wearing long trousers and sturdy long sleeved shirts. The vegetation has grown tall and thick. It is way over my head. The nettles are monstrous. I pretend that I am pleased that it is not too hot to walk up there, even while I am being slapped with wet leaves and branches.

2 June Wednesday

Breda and I met up at The Boulders and we walked for about an hour around and over Barranacullia. One hour was enough for me. It was my first time walking up in the mountains. We did not go high enough to see across and down to the sea on the south coast, but we heard the cuckoo.

3 June Thursday

Going to the hairdresser is usually great fun. Ollie always makes me laugh. He is a man with a giggle resting close under the skin. Today I went to have my hair cut. I had missed the brief slot when the hairdressers and barbers were open before Christmas. They were open and then abruptly more Covid restrictions were imposed and they were shut down again. I missed my chance. This was my first appointment since last September. Ollie was shocked to see how long my hair had grown. I was shocked to see him. He was behind a plexiglass screen when I arrived so there was no mask covering his face. I stared at him and I asked, “What has happened to you, Ollie? You look completely different!”  He said, “Yes–I ran! I rushed out of the country when there was a gap in the travel restrictions!” He said that he knew the flights to everywhere and anywhere were going to be halted any minute so he flew to Turkey on 5 January and he had his teeth crowned and Done and he had his nose broken and then Done, and he had his forehead botoxed. Done. All in five days. He flew back to Dublin looking as if he had been severely beaten. He said his face was bruised and horrible but he had to go into quarantine at home anyway so it did not matter how gruesome he looked. Now he has his new look and his gleaming teeth that I thought for sure were false teeth. He looks like a completely different person. His long hair has been cut very short. Even with his face mask in position when I could only see half of his face, he looked like someone else. There was no laughter. I remained in shock for the whole haircut. He informed me that the dental work alone had been worth the flight out. He said it would have cost him 33,000 euro in Ireland but it was only 5000 euro in Turkey and he assured me that the quality of the work was better. I really did not care how much it cost, but it seemed essential to him to report these prices to me. There was no talk of new recipes nor of sewing up waterproof capes for his ducks nor of what was growing in his garden. There Was No Laughter. Ollie now has a plan to return to Turkey to have his eye lids pulled up tight but he will wait for a while to earn the money for that, and anyway with the current restrictions, it is impossible to fly to Turkey or to anywhere else right now.

4 June Friday

I walked down through the fields at Molough. I did not recognize the crop but it was growing tall. It was nearly at my waist. There was a lot of rustling and crackling as the wind blew though the plants. It was noisy in a quiet way. Suddenly a young deer leapt across the track from one field right into the next. At the point of crossing she was only a few feet in front of me. I do not know if she knew I was near. Before I could register surprise, three more fawns came rushing out of the tall growth and all four disappeared across the field with high bounding and bouncing movements. Within seconds I could see nothing except an occasional head bobbing up out of the far high growth. It was a Four Fawn Morning and it was over almost before it started.

7 June Monday

We were sitting outside and keeping our distance from one another. It was not warm but it was not raining so we were happy to be out of doors and sharing a cup of tea. I held the jug of milk over his cup. Without words, I was offering to pour milk into his tea for him. I did not want to interrupt what he was saying. Francie interrupted his own stream of conversation and he said, “Yes, but don’t lean on it.” I guessed that this meant that he did not want too much milk. Just a little.

8 June Tuesday

The same man has been delivering eggs to the shop for years. He always wears a knee-length white laboratory coat unbuttoned over his trousers and his sweater. He wears this official looking white garment all year round, and on his head he wears a black fedora. I have never seen the man without the coat nor without the fedora. In these times of continuing infection, he now wears the coat and the fedora and a face mask.

9 June Wednesday

I walked the track through the fields at Molough again this morning. The crop has grown taller since last week. I was confused to see that some plants had been pulled out and thrown down on the ground in the middle of the track. When I reached the top, I saw the farmer and an elderly man and a young boy and a dog at one of the gates. The old man held onto the gate with one hand and he leaned on a walking stick with the other. The boy sat on the top bar of the gate. The farmer and his dog were inside the gate at the edge of the planted field. I stopped and asked what the crop was and I was told that it was gluten-free oats. I asked why some plants had been pulled up and tossed down on the track. The farmer said that those were the weeds and that they had to come out as they would contaminate the crop. They needed to be pulled out. He pulled up one of each plant and showed me the difference between the two. Once he pointed out the difference, it was easy to see that the plants were not the same. He had already been around the perimeter of one field pulling by hand. He said there were not many of the bad plants so it was not as big a job as it sounded. He had some men coming to help him tomorrow. Together they would comb the fields and it would take them only a day to clear the 100 acres of these occasional intruders. But for today he was on his own. The elderly man was too old to be any help and the boy was too young. The dog was only there because the farmer hoped the deer would take his scent and maybe stop trampling this crop of oats.

10 June Thursday

Derek told me that one of the postmen has been seriously unwell and that he had to go into the hospital. No one wants to go into the hospital unless there is absolutely no choice. Everyone is afraid of what they might catch while inside. They might get the Covid or they might get the MRSA. There is no one who wants to take a chance if they have any choice at all. If they are too ill to have a choice, everyone else worries for them. Derek said that this man is an extremely thin fellow. He held his index finger straight up in the air to demonstrate. He said the man was Just Like This. He said he was not a man who could lose any more weight. Everyone at the sorting office in town is concerned.

 

11 June Friday

The weather has finally warmed up. There are flies everywhere.  They are big, slow and annoying flies.  The doors and the windows are open so the flies come inside and they are a nuisance, especially in the kitchen. Every counter in every shop has displays of what I call Fly Paper and what everyone else calls Fly Catchers.  It is that horrible sticky twist of paper that if it works will end up with multiple dead insects stuck all over it. Fly Catchers and Fly Swatters. It is the season.

12 June Saturday

The man who sells organic chickens and organic sausages and bacon at the market now has an extra table beside the one that holds his little refrigerator. He uses the second table to sell the big sacks of potatoes and carrots and cabbages that Pat O’Brien used to sell every week. The things on the extra table are not organic. I am not sure if perhaps Pat O’Brien is providing him with these vegetables even though he is no longer at the market himself. I have never known the chicken man’s first name. His chickens are labelled as Butler’s Organic Chickens so I think of him as Mr. Butler. The woman in front of me pointed to the enormous sacks of spuds and asked him to carry one of them to her car for her. She said, “So you are the new Pat now!”   Mr Butler is a quiet soft-spoken man. He responded to the woman’s statement by saying, “I’ve always been a Pat.” So now I know that his name is Pat Butler.

13 June Sunday

It was at exactly the same spot in the boreen. I turned the corner and there was the fox. It was not the bright red fox that I see out in the field every day. This one was brown. He was bigger and he had a dark almost black tip on his tail. He saw me at the exact moment that I saw him. I was only a few steps away so he sprang up with all four feet off the ground and over the ditch. He was gone in a flash.

14 June Monday

We went down to the village for Margaret Hally’s funeral this morning. She had been living at the residential home in Cappoquin for a few years. The last time I spoke to Tommie he told me that since the care home restrictions had lifted, he was now driving up the mountain to see her once a week. I commented on the Cappoquin road. I remarked that it was bendy and steep and dangerous. I offered that maybe I could drive him up for the next visit. He was annoyed that I would suggest such a thing. He said he has known that road all his life. He said he knows every corner and every bump in it. I said that for a change it might be pleasant to look out the window instead of having to pay attention to wandering sheep tumbling down onto the road in front of oncoming motor cars or in front of his own car. He agreed that it would be a treat to look carefully at things as a passenger. Right after we spoke, he went into hospital. He has been there for several weeks. Today they brought him out from town in a special ambulance and in a wheelchair so that he could say his farewells to Margaret. He was hooked up to a small oxygen tank and he had a nurse at his side. We all stood in the bright sunshine on the street outside the church and then in the graveyard feeling sad for Tommie having to say goodbye to his wife of so many years in this diminished state.

My Own Name

23 April Sunday

I lost track of when the first swallow arrived this year. I have lost track of a lot of things. Breda knows exactly because she always keeps a record. She writes the date on her calendar and every year it seems to me that she sees the first swallow a few days earlier than she saw it the year before.  She is delighted with the first sighting and she tells everyone she meets that she has seen it, so in a way her sighting has become a signal for me to start looking for my first swallow.  Breda now tells me that she has heard her first cuckoo.  I will need to get up and into the mountains before I have a chance to hear one and since I am not yet able for the mountains, my first cuckoo will be heard much later than Breda’s first cuckoo.

26 April Monday

As of today, I have permission to stop wearing my blood clot socks.  I am sick to death of them.  They are difficult to put on and they are difficult to take off. This does not mean that I have reached a full recovery, but giving up wearing these socks every day up feels like a momentous thing.

28 April Wednesday

I remembered that putting out cooked eggshells for the birds is a good thing to do in the spring when they are laying their eggs. Since the birds need extra calcium, they take the shells and that provides the chicks with more of what they need to get strong.  The blue jays in New Hampshire used to eat paint off the sides of the house in order to get a calcium boost. I do not think we have blue jays here.  There are jays but I do not see the big blue jays I that recognize from home. I cooked up some empty eggshells and crumbled them, and I took them out to the bird’s dining area. After two days I could see that not one bird had been interested in the eggshells. They were all on the table and on the ground exactly where I had scattered them. There had not even been any wind to blow them away. Blue jays are native to New Hampshire. They are not native here.  I thought the local birds might be tempted by the cooked and crunchy shells but they have no interest. They do not even want to try them. It is better for me to continue with apple scraps.

2 May Sunday

Florrie told me that her husband took to baking bread during the lock-down. It was a fashion and everyone was making bread but she was completely surprised when her husband decided to start baking. First he made soda bread and then he progressed to sourdough. He is currently on a new phase of making pizza bases. He was happy to make bread and she loved that he made bread, but she said he would not make the dinner. Florrie’s husband had no interest in any other kind of cooking. Baking was a form of entertainment for him. He felt that cooking was her job and he was glad to leave it to her.

4 May Tuesday

The magpies are going crazy on the nut feeders.  They jump up from the ground and attack the feeder.  Sometimes there are two magpies beating and thrashing at the same time while the feeder swings wildly on its branch.  I do not think it is easy for them to get their big beaks into the little mesh openings but they continue to try.

5 May

I went and had my first vaccination today. The scheduled time was very specific. I was advised to arrive no earlier than five minutes before my assigned time, which is what I did.  The whole thing was well organized.  There was no wait at all, just a steady movement toward the vaccination booths. There was a quiver in the air. Everyone was eager to get their vaccination and we had all been warned by friends and family and neighbors  to drink lots of water before we arrived. People checked with one another in the queue to make sure that everyone else had drunk enough water. Some people carried bottles of water with them as if to illustrate that they were the most hydrated.  As I moved along the route, I was asked repeatedly to state Your Own Name. No one just asked my name.  It was always Your Own Name, as if I might be giving someone else’s name and always with the double form of possession.

When I reached the vaccinating booth, I was once again asked for Your Own Name, and the two women there squealed with delight at hearing My Own Name.  They wanted to know all about it and where it came from.  They knew it was not local. When the woman at the desk noticed that my date of birth was 14 February, she announced that my mother had missed a great opportunity as she could have named me Valentine. She said my mother Should have named me Valentine as there was nothing finer than to be named after a saint.  I did not explain to her that my mother would never in one million years have considered naming me after a saint.  I could not explain that that was not how my mother chose our names. When I left the booth after my jab the two women sang out “Good Bye! Good Bye! Dear Valentine!” as though My Own Name really was Valentine.

6 May Thursday

John the electrician returned early this morning.  He finished the job of re-wiring the book barn that he had started yesterday. He finished the job that Peter Ryan began when he drove down on a digger and dug out a trench to lay a cable from the tool barn to the book barn. He finished the job that needed to be done after the mice chewed some wires and the book barn caught on fire. We were lucky to catch the fire in its early smoke-filled stages and we were lucky that the fire did not start in the middle of the night.  It was mostly the paper shelves that suffered damage and we were fortunate that no books were destroyed.  The fire forced us to do a major clear-out of paper and samples and all kinds of collected stuff.  The fire made us do a lot of work that we would not have done.  I am still not fully strong so my level of participation in the work has been slow and small. Every day the doors were thrown open to air out the place but we had to establish elaborate methods to let the air in to circulate but not to let the swooping and diving birds come in. Plenty of birds did get in but most of them flew out again. Now the smell of burnt plastic fittings and smoke are gone and the new wiring is complete. We trust the rodents have been defeated.

8 May Saturday

I returned to the Farmers Market today for the first time since mid-March.  It was nice to be welcomed back.  It was lovely to have been missed.  Pat O’ Brien had his final day selling vegetables last week. Three weeks ago he announced that he thought he had just enough potatoes to last him three weeks and when the big sacks of potatoes were gone that would be the last day for him. And so he is gone. He was the one who organized the market and got it all started eighteen years ago. It is a shock to note his absence.  The stalls have all been moved around to accommodate the gap. I neither have nor need a photograph of Pat but I have an old picture of his money box with small potatoes placed in position to hold down the paper euros on a windy day.

10 May Monday

Some things are opening up today. We can now go anywhere in the entire country. We are no longer confined to a twenty kilometer radius within our county. Hairdressers are open, but most non-essential shops are not.

11 May Tuesday

The baker told me it is called Gur although some people call it Gudge.  In Cork, it is known as Donkey’s Gudge. What it is is a cake made of all the leftover cakes and biscuits that did not get sold or eaten. It is never the same twice because the leftovers are never the same.  The baker in Grangemockler told me that he adds jam and raisins to his Gur and it has a thin top and bottom made of pastry. Those are the his only constants. He swears that leftover Christmas cake makes the finest Gur. I bought a piece of the Gur he had on offer today and I brought it home. It was not delicious, but it was filling.

13 May Thursday

Two sparrow hawks hover on the side of the book barn.  They sit on the roof or cling onto some stones. They spend many hours waiting and watching. They are watching for the starlings who are nesting in under the roof.  The starlings are careful when they go in and out.  It is a dangerous situation.

14 May Friday

No bag is ever used only once.  I comment on this frequently.  It is not so much about recycling as it is just something that is always done, and has always been done. Sugar bags are re-used to carry jars of homemade jam.  Sugar was poured out of the bag to make the jam and later the same bag is used to transport the jam in case the sides of the jar are a little bit sticky. The bag for Flahavan’s oats appears consistently, often, and in many guises.  The bags are too sturdy and well made to use only once. People carry their sandwiches to school or to work in these strong paper bags.  Today I loaded one up with empty glass jars to give to Anne for her marmalade making. I know that she will re-use both the jars and the bag.

15 May Saturday

There are flowers in the edges of the track and along every road and every path.  Buttercups, and Tufted Vetch, and Stitchwort and Speedwell, and more Vetch. Primroses. Wild garlic. Loads and loads of Vetch, and Lady’s Smock, and Herb Robert. I love the names and I love that that Cow Parsley is now blooming and sheltering all of the small blossoms. They are not hidden but they are a little harder to see.

17 May Monday

More of the country has opened up but there are many warnings along with the openings. Shops and museums and libraries are now open. We can go places but we are sort of being told to not go anywhere. Or not to go to many places and not to go anywhere with many other people.  Restaurants and bars remain closed. The weather is so changeable that it kind of goes with the mixed messages we are receiving. The weather is not very encouraging for going out to all of the places where we now have permission to go. We have driving lashing rain followed by sun and blue sky and then there is rain again. It is not easy to be outside for more than a few minutes without a big sweeping gusting change. Even though we are landlocked, it is obvious that we are living on an island.

19 May Wednesday

I met Mickey the Boxer getting down off his tractor.  He had loaded up a single bale of hay to take down the road for his cows. He used his cane to get himself down out of the small tractor and and he used it to push himself back up into the driver’s seat.  Collecting one bale from Tom Cooney’s shed and taking it home again was a job that had taken him the entire morning.  When I met him, we talked together for a few minutes about the weather and the hay and the unseasonably cold nights and the frosty mornings and then he was ready to head home for his dinner.

The Mend

For any readers of this blog who received notification last week entitled RAINFALL RADAR, you have probably realized by now that this is a pre-Covid posting and it is a mistake. 

Apologies to all. It is human error mixed up with technology error. 

A small moment of Time Travel….

I was the first patient scheduled for surgery on a Monday morning. The surgeon visited me in my room before the operation. We both signed a paper document. He told me that he had seen a red squirrel on the weekend. He said it was the first one he had seen in the seven years since he has been back in Ireland. We both felt that this sighting of a red squirrel was an auspicious start for the week.
I have lived here for several decades, but I have never seen a red squirrel. I only see the pesky grey ones that were mistakenly imported as a wedding gift for someone many many years ago.

My wrists are thin and my hands are bony. Veins stand proud on the back of my hand. Rings, bracelets and nail varnish have always seemed to me to be a bad idea. I try not to call attention to my hands. I was lying flat on my bed in the hallway outside the operating theatre when the anaesthetist arrived. He was from somewhere on the Indian sub-continent. He introduced himself to me before he lifted my hands gently, first one and then the other. He said he had never seen such wonderfully large and visible veins. I said Yes. My hands are not beautiful. He held my two hands in his two hands and he replied, Ah no. They are beautiful to me!!

—-

My first food was toast. First I was served one half a slice of white toast. The next day, I was given two half slices of toast. Underneath the toast rack lay a single slice of soda bread. Not toasted.

I set off to take a small walk down the corridor. I held onto the white rail against the wall. At the first door there was a woman standing a few feet inside.

She asked: How do I look?

It was 8.30 in the morning. The woman was all dressed in pink. Her nightdress showed pink underneath her dressing gown. The dressing gown was white and fleecy with pink swirls all over it. With her bright white over the knee anti-blood clot socks and fluffy pink slippers her outfit was completely coordinated. Her wispy white/blond hair was cut about shoulder length with a flyaway fringe. Her eyebrows were drawn on or maybe they were painted on with some dark brown product. The ends of these wide eyebrows were squared off with sharp corners. They were about the width of a magic marker. The rest of her face was heavily made up. The painted face and the fluffy pinkness failed to make her look youthful. The woman looked like a cupcake but not a fresh cupcake. Everything about her was a little mashed. She looked like she was missing some air.
She announced to me that she had had a hysterectomy. Her surgeon was doing his morning rounds now. She was waiting for him. Her surgeon was not the same man as my surgeon. Hers was a different surgeon than my surgeon. We had had the same operation but she informed me that her man was The Best. She inferred that my doctor and my entire procedure was no doubt sub-standard.
She asked again if she looked alright. I could not tell her that she looked okay for a mushy cupcake. She wanted to look nice for her surgeon. She wanted to please him.
I turned and I crept slowly back into my room.

————

The glass in my three windows is covered with some kind of a film. None of the other rooms have this coating on the glass. The film is translucent so it allows in a white light but it cannot be seen through. The film stuck onto the windows is cracked and distressed. The light is diffused. Soft and sort of feathered. The outside looks sharp and colorful through the narrow slots that are open.

When asked about it, one nurse suggested that the coating might be there to stop the intensity of the sun. Another suggested that perhaps the covered glass made the room appropriate for the respectful privacy due a nun or a priest.

 

It is quiet inside and it is quiet outside.  Except for the birds.

I hear birdsong through the open side windows.

—————

First names are an important part of life in this country. Everyone is on first name basis immediately and it important that a name, once known, is used frequently in the course of a conversation. Many people manage to use the name of the person they are talking to in every single sentence. The regular use of Christian names combined with the fact that there are a few names that are used again and again and again means that there are a lot of women named Mary. Mary is a popular name here among the nurses. I can hear them at all hours calling to one another up and down the corridor. Mary shouts up to Mary and Mary shouts back to Mary. One Mary says Are you there, Mary?  Shall I wait for you, Mary? and Mary calls back in a cheerful voice I am coming Mary. I will be with you shortly, Mary. The patients are Mary and the nurses are Mary.


A woman comes around sometime during mid-morning and mid-afternoon and again before bedtime. She is offering coffee, tea or a glass of milk. I made the mistake of ordering coffee.  It is best to stick with tea.

————
I take small slow walks out of doors. I look at everything coming up. Slowly. Slowly. The walks are slow. The coming into flower is slow. The grape hyacinth. Flowering red currant. I do not really like the flowering currant but for a few weeks every spring it is a pleasure to see it.

Looking across to Anthony’s  field. It is steep.  The cows are there and they look like they might fall off the side of the hill and tumble down.

The hospital bed was delivered by a young man about to become a father for the first time.  He delivered the bed to us earlier than we had requested because he did not want to travel too far from home. He did not want to miss the baby’s arrival.  He was excited, so we felt excited for him.  We had ordered the hospital bed because our own beds are built so high off the floor.  The top surface of each platform is 36 inches off the floor. The mattress on top makes it higher.  It is normal for me to climb up and down with the help of a stool but after surgery I feared the climb might be difficult.  The hospital bed is now in the big room. I spend the day and the night seeing this room in a new way. The things on the wall opposite look like completely new things.  I lay here in a lazy daze of staring without seeing but seeing it all.

I can see the glass door of the cupboard. Reflected in the glass, I watch the cows walking by up in Joe’s field. That field is about three meters above the ground level outside the house.

Three pheasants under the birch trees at the bottom of the meadow.

I take nuts out to the birds. Slowly. I decant a small amount from the big bucket and I carry them out in a bowl. I thought I would walk around for the recommended 10 minutes but after feeding the birds I came back into the house and fell into the bed.

Derek the Postman told me Napping is the important bit.

There is a teasel bent on its stem down near to the ground.  It catches on my dressing gown each time I walk to the bird table.  Each time it happens I think that I will return with the secauters and I will cut it down but of course I never remember and leaning down to cut the thick stem is probably not a good idea anyway.

 

I rang Tommie from my bed.  It had been a while since we have spoken.  He told me that he has had his second jab,  and that he felt ill for three days after it. He said he slept a lot and that he was off his grub.  We agreed that this is not like him.  He interrupted the call and told me that someone was at the door.  He told me to wait.  He went away and I waited but he never came back to the telpehone.  I had no chance to tell him I had been in hospital.

The last time I saw him I took him some apple cake on a plate.  John Mangan arrived at the same time.  John was carrying his bag of messages from the shop.  We three talked with Tommie standing in the doorway holding his plate of cake.  He said he would just go and put the cake in the kitchen.  He went inside and he never came back.  John and I talked for a while.  We wondered if maybe Tommie had sat down to eat the cake.  It was cold so I decided to leave.  John said that he would wait a little longer and if Tommie did not return soon he would shout out. He promised that he would not leave until Tommie’s front door was firmly closed.

The sun pouring in through the skylight is knocking me out, but since I am already lying down it is fine to just go back to sleep.

We live in a valley. Everything is up or down in every direction. I started by making Figure Eights around the yard.  Now I have progressed to following the perimeters around buildings and bushes. I attempt to find all of the edges I can walk with out any climbing. I like coming up behind the sauna in a way that I usually would not view it.

 

The daffodils that have been folded down lie with their faces in the grass. They might have been bent by a passing fox or a badger or a cat.  It might just be the weight of the blossom itself that topples the flowers. I pluck the bent ones and bring them indoors.

Pat assures me that I am Heading for The Mend.

I have lost track of days and I have lost track of weeks.  On the 12th of April we had a national opening, of sorts. The schools are all open again. And we are now allowed to go 20 kilometers from home for exercise– an extension of the 5 kilometers sanctioned up until now. Nothing more is open. All shops remain closed.  Life remains on hold. It is more than 100 days since this version of lockdown began just after after Christmas.  I continue to live in my own little lockdown within the lockdown.

I am learning the lines of my perimeter walks. There is a great deal to pay attention to and to notice every time I go around. I pride myself on observing all of the small signs of spring.  Everyday there are new poops from the fox. Why does she choose to relieve herself here in our yard when she has all of the surrounding fields to choose from? It must be some kind of territorial marking.  I see which branches have buds. I see forgetmenots and dandelions and whitethorn added to the visible blooms. A few apple blossoms. The promise of wild garlic flowers bursting out in another few days.  But I completely missed the completely flat tyre on the car even though I walked by it at least eight times.

This walking by foot feels like one long journey not a lot of small walks for the purpose of building up my strength.  I walk around and around following my own trail through the grass. It feels like one long walk.

As I walk I remember the frequently quoted Antonio Machado line: Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking. I walk and walk and walk. The grass records my path.

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