Today I had a very rude awakening. Here is how it happened…
Opening my bleary eyes, I checked the timer on my Fitbit
- 7.20 a.m. No sound from Mr B downstairs which reassured me that I didn’t need to jump out of bed immediately, like Goldilocks when the Three Bears returned home to startle her from her slumbers in Baby Bear’s bed. Instead, I thought, I would
lie in bed and do what I like to call my “Beans in Bed” exercises.
I have continued with my shoulder strengthening exercises ever since the surgery
on my Problem Shoulder, long after the physiotherapists discharged me from their care. In this way, I reasoned, I could prevent my New and Improved Shoulder reverting to problem status. My favourite exercise involves lying in my back with knees bent, holding
a tin of baked beans in both hands and lifting it over my head as far as I can take it. Twenty-four times I do this, eight at a time with a few seconds in between each set of eight. Hence, the “Beans in Bed” exercise. Where shoulder exercises are
concerned, I do like those which do what they say on the (baked beans) tin.
I reached out one arm to grab the tin of baked beans from the bedside table, brought
it over my head - only to find myself drenched in water. I had mistakenly grabbed my night-time glass of water instead of my tin of baked beans and thrown its contents all over me. My pillows, sheet, duvet were all soaked. As was I. Like I say, it was a very
Rude Awakening.
When the Youngest of the Darling Daughters’ usual early morning message arrived enquiring how my day had begun, I obviously had to tell her
about my rude awakening. “I know that shouldn’t have made me laugh,” she responded, “but I’m afraid it did…” I have, you will be pleased to hear, forgiven her…
After that, the day could only get better - and fortunately it did. It was my second session at the library helping out with the Summer Reading Challenge and the Pulse bus drivers must have known that I had had a Rude Awakening
and needed a lift. In both senses of the word, you understand. On my outward journey, the bus drew up just two minutes after I arrived at the bus stop, transporting me to my destination in record time. When I left the library two hours later, I was disappointed
to see from the digital timetable that the next bus wasn’t due for another ten minutes - but no sooner had I pulled my mobile phone out of my bag to alert the Lovely Kay (who was keeping Mr B company while I was out) than the bus turned up unexpectedly.
I have decided to stop paying too much attention to (i) the weather forecast and (ii) the bus timetable. Both have surprised me in recent days simply by not being completely accurate. I’m not being critical, I hasten to say, being one who can’t
differentiate between a glass of water and a tin of baked beans. Besides, I have reason to be grateful for their inaccuracy in (i) forecasting and (ii) timing.
Home again and another sweet surprise. Remember the sad and sorry saga of my sunflowers? Five of them, you will recall, were cruelly felled by the storms which ravaged our coastline. Cut down in their prime, you might say. Tenderly I had picked them
up, filled a large, empty flower pot with water, and stood them in it, propping them up against the garden wall where they looked a Sorry Sight, a kind of giant version of the vases of dying flowers on my window sill which I can never quite bring myself to
throw away because they remind me of the person who gave them to me when they were blooming and beautiful.
Quite how I don’t know, but suddenly
all five are starting to flower. It is the triumph of hope over disaster and demonstrates the healing power of water.
Something which didn’t, for some inexplicable
reason, occur to me at 7.20 this morning…