Soulful

I've been feeling rough today, rougher than yesterday. I woke at 5am, hungry, and since I didn't get back to sleep I got up just after 6. Insomniac friends welcome me to their club, but it's no good for me, getting up this early. I'm useless until I've caught up, which I have to do quite quickly or I lose the whole day. Even now I struggle to remember, but I think I took Hugo up to the Woodland Trust for a canter but had to turn back quite quickly. Immediately he stepped in beside my legs and walked quietly with me. Heartbreaking, but I was all over the place and could hardly walk straight. Back home we came, and the two of us fell asleep in the garden room. And then the summerhouse. It's been like that since Friday. If only my head would return to normal.

I got quite excited at one point because a man with a ride on lawnmower appeared in the field beside me. As he came into view I waved, and indicated the nettles along my boundary, with raised eyebrows, thinking that's what he'd come for. He nodded affirmatively, and said he'd try not to fall into the ditch ha ha ha. But then he just cut a swathe along the edge of the barley, several feet away from the nettles, the entire way around the field, and left. Oh well, there are worse things than nettles. Hugo and I walked along this new path, him off the lead for once but just sniffing the ground quietly and trotting behind me. But the smell! Crushed nettles, mown grass and the ever-present scent of hawthorn which is driving me crazy this year. It's a blissful bouquet, no doubt enhanced by the smell of cow parsley which is abundant just now, and all the other growing things. Mark had a bonfire, and the sweet aroma of burning wood  brought the final Proustian moment. Perhaps I indulge my senses more than my intellect in these pages. Perhaps I do in life. But to live in the moment and experience to the full such occasions as these seems to me to be more important than anything. Salva animam meam.