Sufficient unto this day

We get up at seven, just as the day starts to dawn, Norman stretches, yawns and rolls on his back for a wriggle, the action of a happy dachshund. I pick him up, sit him on my knee, massage his old shoulders and tell him what a good boy he is, before letting him out into the garden. I make breakfast for us, and then sit in the garden room drinking my coffee whilst listening to the news. We make an earlier start today, as I have agreed to meet Felicity at the Poppy Seed between ten thirty and eleven. I wash, shave, dress and then load the dog in the car and drive to Cherry Burton, where the two terriers are waiting for me and raring to go. We arrive on the Westwood for nine thirty and make our way into the woods at Newbegin Pits. I phone Felicity as I walk, to make sure of the arrangements for coffee, and of course, the old girl has completely forgotten about it. Her memory, as well as her health, is starting to slip, so we agree I will pop in to see her later in the week. It is a mild morning, and for some reason, the cattle seem to have chosen to spend the night in the woods. They only have a few days of outdoor grazing left this year. They will be taken indoors when the clocks go back this weekend. Perhaps they like the beautiful autumn show of leaves, or are grazing on the fallen foliage. It is a mild day, with a grey overcast sky and ground fog again. A light wind blows in from the Northeast, and now there is no time pressure, we stroll contentedly on our way, inventing new routes to Burton Bushes. Today we walk diagonally across the common, taking in Newbald Pits, another small wood that has grown over the medieval chalk pit excavations after which they are named. We are now in mid autumn, the most liminal time of the year and the people of old must have felt the same way, hence Halloween. The shifting shapes and colours on the common and the woods as the mist and fog swirls about, adds to this feeling of undecidedness and transition. I like the fact of having lots of weather and seasons, uncertainties and surprises. If the weather doesn't suit in Beverley, one only has to wait for a little while for it to change. As we make our way downhill towards the boulevard of hornbeams that marks Newbald Road, I call Leslie, he sounds worried, so I agree to call in and see him on my way home. When I arrive, his concern is that his sinuses are blocked and consequently he can't breath through his nose. He has some menthol tablets, doesn't feel ill, and so I suspect it may be due to the air in his bungalow being too dry, because he has the thermostat turned way up. I suggest he puts a damp towel on the radiator in his bedroom and perhaps try to turn the heat down a notch. We have a coffee together and then I change the dressing on a lesion he has on his leg before leaving. Norman has slept on the back seat of my car during the visit and when we get home he is thirsty and ready for his dinner. I warm through our meat pie and microwave some potatoes, carrots and peas, and serve these with oxo gravy. Normy sleeps in his basket and I read a copy of the International Herald tribune that Leslie has given me, before heading off to the leisure centre for my swim. There are three major factors in most physical activities, balance, timing and breathing. This is particularly true of swimming and the primary factor is balance. Every stroke has a glide position, where the body should be perfectly balanced in the water, streamlined and causing the minimum resistance. The power aspect of the stroke occurs in the transition from one position of balance to the next and this should be achieved with the minimum of effort or resistance. This is the timing or rhythm aspect of stroke and finally, breathing can only be effective, if it is integrated into the stroke in a seamless way. Being able to breathe easily and effectively is the key to relaxation and hence fluency in movement. Of course all of these factors fit together in a continuous feedback process. Balance for me, is the key to many things in life, in both space and time. Temporal balance for most people, is an acquired skill. When learned, it allows us to deal with our life with full attention, not too burdened by events of the past, nor pulled by hopes or worries of the future. We all have swings in mood and it is too easy to fall in to the trap of believing that current circumstances, or moods, have some sort of permanence. I find it helps, when these mood swings occur, and which affect us all to some degree or other, to shorten my horizons of time. It is a bit of a trope to talk about living in "the now", but until you have explored the present, it is largely meaningless. How long is now? A minute, a femto second, an hour. My explorations suggest that "now", is the subjective experience of the world without, hopes, fears or worries. When found in meditation "now" seems eternal and utterly unproblematic. Most of us, however, can't spend our lives in blissful contemplation and have to engage with others and the world in a continuous way. For most of us, most of the time, the problems of this day are well within our competence and hence "now" can be achieved with a little conscious effort. I call this "shortening my event horizons", and find active meditation, the absorption in some creative task, swimming is one for me, helps to balance my life. When I arrive in the pool, I repeat yesterday's session, swimming a little over two thousand metres, split evenly between the four strokes. After my swim, I take tea in the cafe before driving home for five and feeding Norman. While he is eating, I wash the pots, then load him in the car and drive to Sarah's house, arriving twenty minutes early for my baby sitting duties. This gives me time to walk Normy round Seven Corners Lane for his toilet duties. The walls of the lane are made of very old, hand made bricks, that have weathered and eroded over the years and are draped with ivy and briar rose. In the fading light they are quite magical, we see Jan Morrison and her dachshund puppy, Toffee, (his coat is the colour of butterscotch), he is young and full of life. It cheers me up, Norman quite likes him too, which is unusual as he doesn't usually do kids. When we get back, Louis is eating his tea and Sarah is changing, she, Richard and Alice, are going to see Richard's daughter, Charlotte, in her school play. At seven thirty it is Louis' bedtime and he goes off on the promise of a Grandad bedtime story. He wants a Spider-Man story, which I reset it in medieval Beverley and borrow liberally from King Arthur and Grimm's fairy tales. Louis becomes spider boy, who has to rescue his pet Ronnie, the talking Raven, from the web of a giant spider who lives in the roof of the minster. To aid him in his quest, he is given a magic sword, which he pulls from a rock on the Westwood and uses to slay the spider. In the fight he is bitten by the spider and falls into a deathlike sleep for a whole week and when he wakes up he discovers he has spider superp powers. This story should be able to run for a week or so. Louis falls asleep in my arms and I tiptoe downstairs and try to continue reading Ismail Kadare's "The accident", but find I am not in the mood to read tonight, then doze until Sarah and Alice return around a quarter to eleven. We drive home and I drink a glass of milk and eat a couple of oatmeal biscuits before turning in around half past eleven.