The long wet spring was easy. Life is simple if you are just sitting around watching box sets, and moaning about the weather. Then bang, the sun is out and you get launched into overdrive.
There are two ticking clocks, midsummer is only weeks away, and variants are circling, so now is the time to seize the day.
How do you Seize Days?
Don’t think about it too much. A quick look inside my head is bad enough. It is all fuss. Get Everything Done, book a camping trip, organise friends to gather, even if they don’t want to, do work, go on walks, notice that the garden is a jungle because No Mow May went nuts, weed paths, pot out unwanted seedlings grown by accident, get angry with slugs who nicked the other seedlings, spot another flowerbed sinking into chaos, compound the whole lot by deciding to do the tax return immediately, in case it is suddenly January.
Yes stop all that.
Especially the path weeding. This is what you get if you leave paths alone.
Do one of these things instead.
Cold Water Sea Swimming Therapy
If you are unsettled, a cool dip on a sunny day with a friend might be the answer.
Here we are in noisy, freezing waves and biting cold wind, but it was a good idea. It is impossible to feel bothered in cold water. You are too busy screaming in agony. We both declared that we Felt Great afterwards. But then one of us realised she had hypothermia, which makes you feel sick. So we set off for home.
Except I didn’t. I had dropped a small, important part of my bike on the beach, and had to stay and find it. Then I discovered the next way to seize a day.
Looking for Lost Things in Haystacks with Strangers Therapy
If you wander backwards and forwards across a patch of sand looking for a small black thing that looks like any one of 100 stones that are already there, you will make friends. A family from Salford came along to help and we talked about what it is like being on holiday in Devon and how their winter was in Salford and everything in between. It was more relaxing than crying in pain in cold water. We did not find the bike part.
I returned a few hours later with a borrowed metal detector. The value of the lost part was eclipsed by the joy of finding two bottle tops, a slice of lead and a pound coin. Each discovery was cheered on by more new friends including a family from Birmingham and some nice young men with a boat.
As dusk fell, the wind dropped and the sea settled like a sheet of glass. With just 8 of us left on the beach all was peaceful and right with the world. Just me, my new friends, the soft lapping of gentle ripples and the beep of the metal detector, failing to find the lost part. But the lost part didn’t matter anymore.
And then another day-seizing opportunity turned up.
Catching Invader Killer Rodent Therapy
And so to bed. The cat is waiting by a chest of drawers. “Hello,” she says “I need to stay here tonight because I brought a small mouse up for you and now I have gone and lost it. If you don’t let me stay it will get into bed with you at 3 am.”
I moved the chest, a tiny dark shape shot out and under another cupboard. The other cat came in. “Hello,” says the other cat “this looks like a problem and you need two on this job. Let me stay here too and there will be no bother, we can work as a team.”
If you know there is a mouse in the bedroom, the best way to get to sleep is with a cat on either side of it, watching things.
By morning the mouse had moved to the landing. “Hello,” said the cats “we forgot what we were doing and it escaped, but we have found it now, and we will kill it when it comes out.” They didn’t even ask for breakfast.
An hour later I realised that the cats did not know what they were doing so I built this mouse trap.
The mouse shot into the box as soon as I went in with the stick. Result!
I snatched up the box and realised that the mouse was actually a baby rat. Trapped mice are humble, and sit quietly, but rats wave long tails and try and jump into your mouth. It was an exciting journey to the garden and two minutes later the rat was running wild and free.
So a few day-seizing tips to be going on with. Take any chance to avoid planning ahead, get in the water, find money in the sand, talk to strangers or catch a rat.
But always remember to make sure that chickens have enough water.
My chickens are drinking water like there’s no tomorrow. When I fill up their trough in the morning it’s the highlight of their day, although they each have a different approach. One drinks the water as it comes out of the bottle, another one drinks the drops that drip off the bars of their run and the other drinks it out of the trough. She’s the one that’s easily led by the other two.
Great story- finely drawn observations of an ordinary day made up of small adventures.
Love it xx
genius