Summer Summer

Wake at 5:30 and think about going back to sleep but realise I don't feel tired for the first time in almost a week. When I pull the curtains back the sun is shining palely through a heavy mist in the fields, I let Norman out into the garden and then prepare his breakfast in the kitchen. After he is fed, I make rye toast and honey with black coffee for me and eat whilst listening to the World Service on the radio. After showering and dressing I take Norman for a walk round the fields, the mist has lifted but the grass is heavy with dew. It is going to be a beautiful day, and it is only half past seven. We walk for an hour and I keep bringing up copious amounts of dark green phlegm, perhaps I feel a little better as the catarrh is starting to break up. We get back to the bungalow for a quarter to nine and I make a pot of tea and sit in the garden in the warm sunshine with my shirt off reading my library book for an hour. Afterwards I make a list of all the jobs that have been backed up whilst I have been ill and decide that I will ease myself gently into better health and only tackle some ironing and mowing the lawns today. It is too nice to be inside so I run an extension from the garden room and iron in the garden. By midday it has become too hot to continue, so I take a break for lunch. After breakfast I took a large pork chop out of the freezer to defrost, and I dip this in egg and breadcrumbs to make a schnitzel and serve it with oven chips and a tossed salad, with crusty bread and butter. I cut off the bone for Normy and serve it with the egg left from making the schnitzel. We eat in the garden both under the shade of the sun umbrella. After lunch I read for a while and then lie down and sleep until half past three. When I wake up I drive to Sarah's to check on the progress of her painters and then call at the supermarket for a baguette and some roast beef slices. When I get home I give Norman his tea and then at five, when things have cooled down a bit, I mow the lawns front and back. After I have cleared away, I put Normy on his lead and walk him down to the little wooden bridge at the end of Carr Lane. It is a lovely summer's evening, swallows are flying high in a clear blue sky as we slowly walk home. When we get in I make a beef baguette and a pot of tea and eat in the Garden Room watching the evening close in across the fields. Later I read for an hour and then go to bed around ten thirty. If my recovery continues I may attempt to finish Andrew's garden tomorrow afternoon.