TheBanyanTree: Don't waste the sunshine

[John Bailey]

Friday April 23, 2004

DON'T WASTE THE SUNSHINE

The first time in the year when you dig out your summer shorts and spend a 
whole day flopping about with bare, winter-white legs exposed to the 
elements is worthy of note. It's the first real day of summer by my 
reckoning and I've done little else today but potter about the house and 
garden, seeking sun and shade alternately, looking at the sky, counting the 
falling plum-blossom petals drifting across from my neighbour's magnificent 
tree, exchanging news with the magpies and admiring the aerobatic skills of 
the house martins as they scoop their insect breakfasts from the soft, 
golden air.

It's been a lovely day and we're probably in for a short run of the same 
thing before the weather pattern changes. It'll not last long enough to 
become wearisome, but it is likely to bring some colour back to my skin 
before colder conditions force me to don long trousers again.

So, what have I done with my lazy day?

I started out on going through my household files one by one, in 
alphabetical order, checking for those that still need a change of address 
notification and making the necessary phone calls or writing the essential 
letters to get the job done. Some companies now prefer you to let them know 
of address changes online. It's almost never an improvement. In the time it 
took me to persuade the AirMiles website, for example, that I was who I 
said I was and that my new address actually existed I could have written 
two or perhaps even three letters. Some files are easy to process, some are 
ridiculously complicated and time consuming. It's taken me well over a 
week, one letter and two phone calls to get the bank to change their 
records. That one's almost done now, and they have told me that, having 
confirmed the validity of my request, they have modified their records. 
Isn't that gracious of them? Used to be you issued an instruction to your 
bank; now, so it seems, you need to make a request, humbly, and with a 
suitable amount of grovel. This is not an improvement.

On my breaks I sat in my chair outside the kitchen door, reading my current 
book -- a biography of Samuel Pepys -- and relishing the sun as it warmed 
me all the way through, switching my consciousness from Pepys's London to 
the reality of the wild-life going about its business all around me.

At the end of the day, I have a small handful of crisp white envelopes 
ready to post and a gratifyingly large gap in the file drawer from which 
I'm pulling manilla folders one by, working on them, and transferring them 
to an empty drawer. There are still a good few to do, and some, the vitally 
important ones, have had to be done out of turn, but I shall stick at it 
until the whole job is done, all neat and tidy.

Mostly, though, it's been a day for enjoying the sunshine. I shall do 
exactly the same tomorrow and, possibly, the day after if the forecast is 
accurate. A blast of summer sunshine in the middle of April is not a thing 
to waste.


--

John Bailey   Lincolnshire, England

journal of a writing man:
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>