On Monday, I made the silly mistake of allowing myself to drift back in time and chew over old events and memories. Not the nice ones that make you think, ‘Awwww, that was lovely!’ but the ones that have left scars or have scabbed over. And we all know there’s nothing more satisfying than picking at a scab when we are feeling sorry for ourselves, right? Psychological self-harm I think it’s called, and it is wholly unnecessary and a bit insane.
Anyway, I allowed myself to wallow but only for a couple of hours before I told myself that looking over the past is completely pointless and all it does is make one fret, which is also pointless. Can’t change what’s happened - move on. Look forward, live in the now. That’s the key to peace, calm and happiness. Therefore, I meditated, wrote in my diary, went to bed. Slept. Had a weird dream about a boat.
Tuesday was a different kettle of lobster because a) I had a day out with my daughter - spot of shopping, spot of lunch, lots of chat - and b)The Great British Sewing Bee was on hand for fun television viewing, and a cheery dollop of one of my heroes - Esme Young - is always soul-lifting.
And yesterday was a busy day with lots of studying, reading, walking and other mind-focusing activities. The past? I laugh in the face of the past! Mwahahahahahaha!
This morning, Nell and I were up the garden at 6.30 and, as often happens, I spotted gardening jobs that needed doing and cracked on with them. There’s not been a huge amount of gardening going on because of the Return of Rain so I wanted to tackle a few bits before the ‘heavy rain’ forecast by the Met Office for 9 a.m onwards appeared. The rain did NOT appear, so I got more done than anticipated.
And even though we did lots of gardening (some of it quite heavy-duty) Nell was staring at me at 11 a.m as if to say, ‘Are we going for our walk, or WHAT??’ So off we trotted because I didn’t want the ginger noblet giving me the reproachful side eye for the rest of the day.
And it’s a good job we did go on our walk! On our return journey an hour later, as we headed back through the village to the village hall car park, I heard a shout from a nearby window.
‘Excuse me!’ shouted the voice. ‘Can you just wait a minute?’
As I was the only person on the road, I guessed the caller was referring to me. And so we waited and, within a few seconds, a lady (whom we’d met a couple of weeks ago out walking her tiny and aged Yorkshire terrier) appeared from her bungalow front door.
‘Nell!’ she crooned. For yea verily, ‘twas not me she was calling after but the ginger noblet herself!
‘Lovely Nell!’ said the lady again, whilst Nell did all the ingratiating things she does in order to glean as much fuss from a human as possible. ‘I’m so glad I caught you. I’ve got a present for you!’
And she presented Nell with a packet of these:
It turns out that this lady loves cockapoos and she loved meeting Nell and had told all her friends about meeting Nell, and how wonderful Nell was and amazing and adorable and… how I got that dog’s head through the car door to go home, I do NOT know. Sigh…
Anyway, I thanked the lady for her VERY kind gift and drove home thinking how a little bit of lovely can go a long way to making a week that started off a bit ‘blah’ seem so much better.
And that I shall make an extra effort to do some little bit more lovely stuff myself.
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