It started with an appointment with a counsellor for Gill. Think therapist but not American Style.
After a number of weeks she’s being let go. Her diet is sensible and working and she’s going to a slimming club. Her moods are stable and she’s good with the meds. She even cracked a joke or two.
We picked up some Xmas gifts we’d ordered online and our Click-and-collect grocery shopping too.
After putting it all away, Gill fell asleep so I went for a walk: just over three miles and much of it on an old railway line, now a well tarred path.
Just found this. Its not me but it is where I walked today. The sculpture at two minutes which looks like Santa is actually of someone I know. He’s called David too and was an art teacher for years and is now President of the local art soc. I went to school with his son. The houses at 9 minutes are where we lived for a few months in between houses.
I used to walk all over the county, easily more than 20 miles to the next towns and back to do a bit of shopping.
The last twenty years have been more sedentary. Gill and I are different folk and walking was something I learned to forgo many years ago.
Today was an eye opener though. I started to loosen up and noticed how many people, walking dogs or with a friend, smiled and nodded as they passed.
I can remember walking long distance but I’d forgotten how calm it makes you feel.
I would pack a lunch and stop and sit on a stone wall and just look and listen.
There are housing estates I saw being built, schools long disappeared, even roads now absorbed into new estates or bypasses.
Of course in those days we didn’t have mobile phones and apps. I used MapMyWalk today which congratulated me at the end of every mile and gave me my pace times and even calories burned.
Not sure I needed to know all that but she has a pleasant voice.
After the kids arrived home, something on the scale of the Landing of Normandy Beaches judging by the mess they made, I set to playing with our new soup maker (bit of a cross between a large kettle and a blender.)
Minestrone a la Dave n Gill is definitely on the menu from now on. Yum.
Gill, having just come in from a trip to town has launched out again to get a temporary phone from a friend while hers goes back, so it’s just me and the bairns for another bedtime.
We’re getting good at it. Plenty of practice. Supper, PJs, inhaler, seizure drugs, growth hormone injection, incontinence pads, cuddles…….
